PDFRead 1.8.2 released!

[nrapallo]

Originally Posted by =X=

Now only modifying the margin and Font will preserve the images and font quality in addition to keeping the final eBook size very small

Anyhow just food for thought

=X=

Yes, I agree, but for some .pdf's even that is not enough. I have a large form factor ebook reader 8" but only 480x600 and I can barely read some .pdf's that have their margin's "cut-off" in portrait mode. Remember you have to keep the page aspect ratio and the page may be longer than wider i.e. removing the margin still doesn't bring it to the edge. However, in landscsape mode (two page flips), I can read almost any .pdf (converted to images).

Your case may work well for larger print .pdf, but may not be general enough to handle most (all) cases. I do agree that when .pdf's loose their margin the text does look a lot better and clearer.

Just chomping on that food a bit....

p.s. BTW, I think the font 'loss" you experienced before when you where using PDFRead came from using a too high edge enhancement i.e 6; if the resulting text is too blurry, then and only then would I suggest using high edge enhancement values.

[nrapallo]

Well I finally managed to quash that Sony .lrf bug that stretched short pages!!! I attach just the files that need to be updated within the bin directory of the PDFRead install directory (the one selected when the GUI installer was first executed).

I tried it out with the .pdf =X= posted a while back with GREAT results. However, all I could use was the software lrfviewer.

Could those with a Sony PRS500/505 test to see which resulting .lrf (first 5 pages only) looks better on the hardware reader i.e. MinFilter 3 (orig) with 300 DPI or MinFilter 3 with 500 DPI or MinFilter 5 (new) with 300 DPI or MinFilter 5 with 500 DPI. These sample .lrf's are attached below. How does this compare with PDFLRF now?

Using pdfread-MinFilter3-mod-bin.zip, unzip the modified PDFRead bin files (using the original MinFilter 3 dilate) into the bin directory and overwrite the existing files. Just take a backup first though should you wish to restore those original 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!)

[=X=]

Hi Nick
I took a look at those files the MiniFilter 3 with 500 dilation looked best.

In truth the final result is still undesirable. There are many letters that are missing parts some are truncated a few are altogether missing.

I don't think this is a filtering issue, when I ran looked at the PNG they looked good enough (very comparable to PDFLRF, --maybe a small blur pass to soften the edges). however the transformation form PNG to LRF is where everything goes hay wire.

[nrapallo]

Originally Posted by =X=

Hi Nick
I took a look at those files the MiniFilter 3 with 500 dilation looked best.

In truth the final result is still undesirable. There are many letters that are missing parts some are truncated a few are altogether missing.

I don't think this is a filtering issue, when I ran looked at the PNG they looked good enough (very comparable to PDFLRF, --maybe a small blur pass to soften the edges). however the transformation form PNG to LRF is where everything goes hay wire.

Thanks, =X=, for looking at this again; it's like beating a dead horse, wait,

Those "missing parts" must be tied in with the antialiasing done with 4 or 8 colours. I see this (gray) in the .png as well and they look OK on the PC screen, even magnified a bit. The pylrs routine must not "do justice" to the transformation from .png to .lrf.

Oh well. I tried... and thanks for helping out here!

[kovidgoyal]

If you want control over the transformation, just create an EPUB file instead of LRF.

[nrapallo]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

If you want control over the transformation, just create an EPUB file instead of LRF.

Interesting, so step aside .lrf support and make way for .epub support (for Sony users)? Thanks, Kovid!

I will try and hack together a .epub to try this out again (from the resulting .png's left after the conversion).

Nothing to loose...

[nrapallo]

I used the tutorial here to create an epub using WinZip.

Hope it works on the Sony PRS!

If not, I'll create it using another tutorial posted to teleread.org last year.

EDIT: valid .epub can now be found here!

Any better? vs. attached .lrf?

[=X=]

Originally Posted by nrapallo

I used the tutorial here to create an epub using WinZip.

Hope it works on the Sony PRS!

If not, I'll create it using another tutorial posted to teleread.org last year.

Any better? vs. attached .lrf?

Hum.. You might want to try teleread's tutorial. The ePUB does not work.
It's just a blank page.

On an aside, while I don't mind the fix to shift from LRF to ePUB, you will be excluding PRS-500 folks from benefiting from this tool.

PS PS. I just unzipped your LRF file with Calibres lrf2lrs tool. Those PNGs look very nice. The problem does seem to lie on how PDFReader create the LRF. Does LRF compress the images if they don't lie withing the screen? Is there a way to shrink the file and display as is w/o any image dimension change?

[nrapallo]

Originally Posted by =X=

Hum.. You might want to try teleread's tutorial. The ePUB does not work.
It's just a blank page.

Sorry, I should have used epubcheck to see if it was valid. OK, back to the other tutorial, on how to create a .epub (manually)...

On an aside, while I don't mind the fix to shift from LRF to ePUB, you will be excluding PRS-500 folks from benefiting from this tool.

Yeah, I hear ya! Just experimenting though what works better; it's easy to keep .lrf output as it's already coded.

PS PS. I just unzipped your LRF file with Calibres lrf2lrs tool. Those PNGs look very nice.

You might also try to unzip the .epub file (after renaming it to .zip). In the OEBPS directory you will find the original 0.png to 4.png files used to create the .lrf file. They all are max 584x754 (aspect ratio willing!) images and are the output of PDFRead. These images are given to the pylrf module to generate the .lrf. Pylrf is an external library to the PDFRead code and it's beyond me how to better it!

The problem does seem to lie on how PDFReader create the LRF.

I agree 100%!!!!

Does LRF compress the images if they don't lie withing the screen? Is there a way to shrink the file and display as is w/o any image dimension change?

I am using the Sony PRS maximum screen size (584x754) or less, so there should not be any change to these .png's once them become a .lrf.

I'll try again producing a .epub that the Sony CAN display and then you'll (and I'll) see if the pylrf module is at fault! ... you think?

[=X=]

I've unzipped your ePUB and created the ePUB using Calibre and BookCreator. It looks like the ePUB created by Calibre crashes the PRS/505 device. : there goes by bookmarks. sony needs a better way to store bookmarks!

Anyhow the ePUB does not crash AdobeDE and the images did look good on AdobeDE/Sony Library. So the solution so far seems viable. I need to test it on the SONY first.

=X=

[=X=]

Okay I was able to create an ePUB that did not crash my SONY 505. The trick was to reduce the image width to 90%.

Anyhow I've uploaded a series of different files.

In the end the best view was the (NOTE All except PDF where created from the created in Minifilter3-500.
1) PDFLRF (only slightly better than ePUB)
2) ePUB
3) Calibres LRF
4) PDFRead LRF

=X=

[=X=]

How easy would it be to use html2lrf and html2epub from PDFRead instead of pylrf.

=X=

[nrapallo]

Originally Posted by =X=

How easy would it be to use html2lrf and html2epub from PDFRead instead of pylrf.

=X=

I just produced the first two .epub files below of the .html and images created by PDFRead using the calibre GUI (version 0.4.95).

Could you test them out? Since you reduced them by 90% before to get it to work, it could be that the Sony max size I'm using may be wrong.

I had changed the Sony max size from 583x753 to 584x754 with the last recompile done for the Sony bug fix. As a result, I include two .epub files: one with the old max size of 583x753; the other with the new max size of 584x754.

Hopefully they BOTH don't crash your Sony...

Also, I modified html2mobi by tompe to create the .prc output for PDFRead, so it shouldn't be too hard to use html2lrf or html2epub to create the .lrf or .epub output instead of using pylrf. This forces external programs to be used instead of internal perl code, though; a last ditch solution.

I'll try it out as an experiement, but since PDFRead is due for a complete overhaul soon, I will not try and come out with a new version just yet!

I also attach the .lrf and epub created by the calibre command line tools (html2lrf and html2epub) after the calibre-GUI epub files mentioned above.

Lots of choices, but which is the better alternative?

[=X=]

Yea! None crashed my Reader

Originally Posted by nrapallo

File Type: epub calibreGUI-OEBPS - NR_9-583x753.epub (168.3 KB, 0 views)
File Type: epub calibreGUI-OEBPS - NR_9-584x754.epub (198.3 KB, 0 views)
File Type: lrf calibre-bierig-MinFilter-3-500-1-5-583x753.lrf (203.4 KB, 0 views)
File Type: epub calibre-bierig-MinFilter-3-500-1-5-583x753.epub (167.7 KB, 0 views)
File Type: lrf calibre-bierig-MinFilter-3-500-1-5-584x754.lrf (227.1 KB, 0 views)
File Type: epub calibre-bierig-MinFilter-3-500-1-5-584x754.epub (197.7 KB, 0 views)

WINNER! calibre-bierig-MinFilter-3-500-1-5-584x754.epub
This file was the best by far the font crisp was not observed

The only flaw was the left margin was to wide and pushed the text off of the right side truncating the words.
But the fonts were beautiful, it brought to me eyes.

Detail of Files
Neither OEBPS worked, both gave me a Warning error.

It seems like you used different settings for each file as there was quite a lot of variance

The calibre-bierig-MinFilter-3-500-1-5-583x753.epub had the image inverted so no need to comment on how bad the imaged looked... wait I guess I did comment on it.

The LRF files looked quite different the 583 look better. There looked to be some blur/smooth on this version that softened the font's edges


Score
Scale of 1-10

10 584x754 EPUB
0 583x753 EPUB
- OEBPS (couldn't view)
7 583x753 LRF
4 584x754 LRF

[nrapallo]

Originally Posted by =X=

WINNER! calibre-bierig-MinFilter-3-500-1-5-584x754.epub
This file was the best by far the font crisp was not observed

OK, finally, the output of PDFRead appears on the Sony as it does on the "other" devices!!!! This winning file was produced by calibre's html2epub and the html and images from PDFRead (without modification!).

The only flaw was the left margin was to wide and pushed the text off of the right side truncating the words.
But the fonts were beautiful, it brought to me eyes.

The html only has a 2px margin, so maybe I should use a zero margin? Was this on every page, since, if not, then that white margin is just the aspect ratio holding back the width from going out to the margin (see page 3 of the converted bierig.pdf). This is the html file used:

<html>
 <head>
  <title>bierig - epub - MinFilter3 - 500DPI</title>
  <meta name="author"    content="bierig.pdf">
  <meta name="genre"     content="Test">
  <meta name="category"  content="Test">
  <meta name="generator" content="PDFRead v1.8.2b">
  <style>p {text-indent:0em; margin-left:2px; margin-right:2px; margin-top:0em; margin-bottom:0em; text-align:none}</style>
 </head>
 <body>
  <h2 align="center">bierig - epub - MinFilter3 - 500DPI</h2>
  <h2 align="center">by</h2>
  <h2 align="center">bierig.pdf</h2>
  
  <p style="page-break-before: always">
  <p><a name="img0"></a><img src="0.png"/></p>
  <p><a name="img1"></a><img src="1.png"/></p>
  <p><a name="img2"></a><img src="2.png"/></p>
  <p><a name="img3"></a><img src="3.png"/></p>
  <p><a name="img4"></a><img src="4.png"/></p>
 </body>
</html>

Detail of Files
Neither OEBPS worked, both gave me a Warning error.

These were created by zipping the html and images and converting the .zip using the calibre GUI. I don't know why it didn't work. I attach the .zip file I used in case someone else wants to try it (Kovid?).

It seems like you used different settings for each file as there was quite a lot of variance

The calibre-bierig-MinFilter-3-500-1-5-583x753.epub had the image inverted so no need to comment on how bad the imaged looked... wait I guess I did comment on it.

The LRF files looked quite different the 583 look better. There looked to be some blur/smooth on this version that softened the font's edges

Yes, just ignore those 583x783 files as I did hand edit them to reduce the max size but the imaging software converted them to 256 colors so I had to reduce them back to 8 colors manually. Again, they are a non-issue so just scrap them; not what PDFRead would produce! BTW, they were smoothed in the resize process so that's why they appear softer/blurred.

Score
Scale of 1-10

10 584x754 EPUB
0 583x753 EPUB
- OEBPS (couldn't view)
7 583x753 LRF
4 584x754 LRF

Well, that settles it! For the Sony, PDFRead conversions from .pdf to .epub achieve the best results (using calibre's html2epub command line program!!!)!

It would appear that the .lrf version created by html2lrf or PDFRead BOTH suffer from the same affliction--poor rendering on the Sony hardware reader despite looking good in the software viewer!