PDFRead 1.8.2 released!

[nrapallo]

Originally Posted by jd1123

Having an odd problem with the latest version:

When converting some PDFs, instead of making a prc file, it opens the temp directory where all the pngs are stored. This happens rather randomly, but is frustrating for long ebooks. Is this a known problem? Thanks.

The opening of the temp directory most definitely signifies that the ebook creation failed somehow. PDFRead does that, by design!

Can you load the resulting .opf into Mobipocket Creator and complete the conversion there?

Can you view the resulting .html in a browser to see if it looks ok?

Perhaps a system restart might fix it. Perhaps not.

[nrapallo]

Originally Posted by nrapallo

I (Nick Rapallo) have been hacking PDFRead v1.7 since fall 2007 (prior to my join date here) and became a developer along with Ashish Kulkarni.

For the history buffs (and anniversary celebrants):

My initial exposure to PDFRead was an April 2007 announcement made by Ashish in the REB1200 Yahoo group.

Below is my first post on those modifications that would eventually find themselves into PDFRead v1.8.2. See the attached image for a screenshot of that post (or the text form here):

Message #4639 of 5148
Thu Apr 26, 2007 4:47 pm
------------------------------
"nrapallo" <nrapallo@yahoo.ca> 
nrapallo 


reading PDFs on the REB1200    

Re: reading PDFs on the REB1200 

Ashish:

My compliments in providing a way to expand the number of ebooks
accessible by our legacy device, namely the REB 1200.

I noticed that the resulting .imp files are grayscale for the
REB1200. I realize that to keep file size to a minimum, grayscale
is the way to go. But since the REB1200 is capable of 15-bit color,
could you provide an option to convert to color .png files using 'n'
colors where 'n' is at least 16 and at most 32768 (default could be
256).

I know that the resulting files will be HUGE, but that could be for
the user to contend with. Possibly choosing 'n' to be a lower
figure could reduce the files size significantly. The user can
experiment and settle on the most acceptable trade-off.

I surmise that you may have also chosen to work with grayscale .png
files as most current ebook readers, that your software is intended
for, are non-color devices, however, displaying color (from well-
formatted .pdf files) is what the REB1200 is suited to!

Just a suggestion...

Regards,
-Nick

--- In REB1200@yahoogroups.com, "Ashish Kulkarni" <dustinefog@...>
wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> I've released a new version of this tool (PDFRead 1.6). It adds lots
> of new features and fixes some problems encountered while creating the
> IMP using eBook publisher. Please see this page for details:
>
> http://pdfread.sourceforge.net/#changes
>
> Regards
> ashish

Two years and counting...

[frikk]

Hey guys.

Does PDFRead support splitting? I have some large text books where I imagine splitting the books up by chapter into separate files may be a good idea (slow read times). Is there any kind of functionality like this, or would it rely on a third party tool?

[frikk]

Hello. PDFRead rocks! Thanks guys!

I do have a bug report. Is here the appropriate place to put it? I have found that on my PDFs that have an incomplete last page, pdfread ends up stretching it out. Any ideas? I've attached an example document that this happens to, with the prs505-p profile.

[nrapallo]

Originally Posted by frikk

Hey guys.

Does PDFRead support splitting? I have some large text books where I imagine splitting the books up by chapter into separate files may be a good idea (slow read times). Is there any kind of functionality like this, or would it rely on a third party tool?

If you place an empty file called 'debug' in the PDFRead install directory, then the resulting .png's are left behind and can be reassembled however you see fit. A bit more work, but at least you will know where to split things.

There is no way to automate a split as only images are extracted from the .pdf source, not text/tags.

[nrapallo]

Originally Posted by frikk

Hello. PDFRead rocks! Thanks guys!

I do have a bug report. Is here the appropriate place to put it? I have found that on my PDFs that have an incomplete last page, pdfread ends up stretching it out. Any ideas? I've attached an example document that this happens to, with the prs505-p profile.

You just found the old Sony stretched page bug that was fixed with the EDIT: 14 Oct 2008 - FOR SONY USERS at the bottom of post #1 in his thread.

After executing the PDFRead Installer, from pdfread-MinFilter3-mod-bin.zip unzip the modified PDFRead 1.8.2.1 bin files (using the original MinFilter 3 dilate) into the bin directory and overwrite the existing files.

Should you wish to try the new MinFilter 5 dilate, unzip pdfread-MinFilter5-mod-bin.zip into the bin directory instead! (Note: you may have to increase the DPI to 500 when using the MinFilter 5 dilate to get acceptable results!)

Below are three Sony-PRS .lrf files, one using MinFilter3 with 300 DPI, another using MinFilter5-300DPI and another using MinFilter5-500DPI. Notice the differences?

Apparently, those same images in a .epub look even better!

[frikk]

Originally Posted by nrapallo

You just found the old Sony stretched page bug that was fixed with the EDIT: 14 Oct 2008 - FOR SONY USERS at the bottom of post #1 in his thread.

After executing the PDFRead Installer, from pdfread-MinFilter3-mod-bin.zip unzip the modified PDFRead 1.8.2.1 bin files (using the original MinFilter 3 dilate) into the bin directory and overwrite the existing files.

Should you wish to try the new MinFilter 5 dilate, unzip pdfread-MinFilter5-mod-bin.zip into the bin directory instead! (Note: you may have to increase the DPI to 500 when using the MinFilter 5 dilate to get acceptable results!)

Below are three Sony-PRS .lrf files, one using MinFilter3 with 300 DPI, another using MinFilter5-300DPI and another using MinFilter5-500DPI. Notice the differences?

Apparently, those same images in a .epub look even better!

Thanks a bunch!

[freecia]

Having a small issue with getting PDFRead to work on OSX. Followed the various posts so far as I can tell, also installed PIL successfully after installing freetype2.

Can someone take a look?

cmd:
python src/pdfread.py -p prs505-p -o output.prc -t Title -a "Author Name" -i pdf --dpi=16 -d ./temp input.pdf

terminal:
Temporary directory: ./temp

Page 1/621: EXTRACT RASTERIZE CROP DILATE SAVE Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/Applications/Kindle/PDFRead/src/pdfread.py", line 207, in <module>
main()
File "/Applications/Kindle/PDFRead/src/pdfread.py", line 84, in main
options.unpaper_args, options.no_crop, options.no_dilate)
File "/Applications/Kindle/PDFRead/src/pdfread.py", line 63, in convert
output.add_page(page, mode_tranform(image))
File "/Applications/Kindle/PDFRead/src/common.py", line 153, in add_page
self.downsample(image, filename)
File "/Applications/Kindle/PDFRead/src/common.py", line 163, in downsample
call('pngnq', '-fs', '1', '-n', str(self.colors), 'page.png')
File "/Applications/Kindle/PDFRead/src/common.py", line 201, in call
stderr = subprocess.STDOUT)
File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/subprocess.py", line 593, in __init__
errread, errwrite)
File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/subprocess.py", line 1079, in _execute_child
raise child_exception
OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory

Produces this error using python 2.5 and 2.6

Note: all fixed! Thanks for the reminder nrapallo. I had to sudo the install cmd for pngnq.

[nrapallo]

Originally Posted by freecia

File "/Applications/Kindle/PDFRead/src/common.py", line 163, in downsample
call('pngnq', '-fs', '1', '-n', str(self.colors), 'page.png')

OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory

I don't have any way to test this on MAC OS X, but those lines above seem to indicate that either
- the 'pngnq' command cannot be found in the commands' path or bin directory or
- the newly created file 'page.png' cannot be found in the temp directory (or with the '.png' extenstion).

Do you see these files named EXACTLY as above in those directories? Did you use the empty 'debug' file in the PDFRead install directory to leave behind the temp directory's contents?

Have you tried this without the '-d ./temp' and let MAC OS X determine where the temp directory will be?

[alrumich]

Can the original resolution of images be preserved?

[nrapallo]

Originally Posted by alrumich

Can the original resolution of images be preserved?

Yes, somewhat but only if you know the original resolution and it's contant throughtout the document.

Just override the profile settings by using the 'Size H and V' input boxes (the GUI limits the H and V sizes to be max four digits, i.e. 9999).

If you are not making an ebook, just use the 'generic' profile, 'html' Out Format and specify the main resolution as above. Just be aware that the resulting images may not all be at that full original resolution as the pages can be cropped, i.e white margin removed.

Hope this helps!

[dsbook]

Hi, I want to transfer pdf files to my ebookwise reader. What all do I have to download? I have Acrobat 5.0 and it has RSA DATA Security on it and I use firefox. Simple please,lol.

I have heard many good things about this program

[nrapallo]

Originally Posted by dsbook

Hi, I want to transfer pdf files to my ebookwise reader. What all do I have to download? I have Acrobat 5.0 and it has RSA DATA Security on it and I use firefox. Simple please,lol.

I have heard many good things about this program

If the .pdf is encrypted or password protected, then PDFRead will not be able to convert the .pdf to images and then to your eBookwise 1150 (aka EBW1150).

You can try it, by just installing the program, after first unzipping it from 'pdfread-1.8.2-Installer.zip'. You should accept the default install directory and then launch the PDFRead GUI by using the shortcut added to your Start Menu.

Then choose the 'EBW1150' profile, like this screenshot:

and also select the Out Format to be 'imp2'.

Use the '...' button after the Input box to select your .pdf to be converted and click 'Convert'.

Hope this helps!

[alxwang]

PDFRead is awesome!
I have a PDF file even adobe can not export to png but PDF Reader just did the job for me!
Thanks.

[JSWolf]

Message deleted