"Best Practice" for PDF?

[drmathprog]

Is there a consensus on whether or not the 505 is usable for PDF documents, and if so, how best to handle PDF?

I've tried several approaches so far, and my results are very unpredictable. Rasterfarian seems to produce very accurate conversions, but the text is often too small to be readable, even with the largest 505 font. I've demoed a few conversion programs (ABC Amber Pdf and text converter, Docudesk deskUNPDF, etc). None seem to be a great solution. Some produce a terrific MS Word format conversion, but I don't know how to get from there to a good 505 format. Some produce complicated html which I can't get Calibre to process correctly.

[sony_fox]

You can just read pdf's straight on the 505. I've had no problems with them so far. I've uploaded them through Digital editions or the Elibrary software easily.

The font size tends to be a bit small - increasing it leads to weird word breaks - but basically it's fine. Mind you I've got good eyes and am used to reading small print paperbacks.

[ChefDude]

i converted all my pdfs to lrf using calibre.

my 1 week ownership observations are that .lrf is quicker for the 505 to index and bring up the book to read. Then again, i'm not worried about images and tables for the novels i have converted (700+ so far).

[vivaldirules]

If the PDF is composed of scanned images, then the 505 doesn't reflow the text since there isn't any text to reflow. For PDFs containing text, the text is displayed on the 505 with left justification instead of full justification and that just looks awful to me. So I almost always run all PDFs through an early version of PDFLRF: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13135. It takes awhile to get used to the program and with the different options (which I suggest that you try in order to find what's optimum for different PDFs), but it works for me almost all the time. I probably wasted about 30 hours or more fooling with it and other utilities trying to find something that worked satisfactorily. I haven't tried any newer utility in the past year and a half so there may be better methods by now.

[frabjous]

If it's text based PDF, and it is at all complicated, or has things that I doubt calibre's ability to handle (e.g., mathematical notation and the like), then I use SoPDF on it. This preserves the look exactly, but splits the page and removes the margins, which is usually enough to get a readable font size.

If it's a scanned/image-based PDF, I use PDFLRF to do more or less the same thing, which works pretty well unless the PDF had very wide lines of text.

PDFLRF and Rasterfarian are pretty similar, actually, but I find that I like my results a little better with PDFLRF.

But if you can get it into Word format decently, can't you just change the page and font size, and convert back to PDF? Use Sony's own recommendations here:
User’s Guide to Creating PDFs for the Sony® Reader

[gyuen]

Hello,

After a bit of experimenting, I read only PDFs now instead of any ePUBs. Usually i download books from wikisource and then format it. I have a template and also some word macros that modify document so it turns out ok. Then I create a PDF from Word.

The settings I use:

90x120mm page size, 0mm margins
11 pt Times New Roman, 13 pt leading

They turn out great. 10 pt fonts are also readible.

[tech_au]

After playing around with alot of the pdf converter programs I found Mobipocket creator does a good nofuss conversion of textbased PDFs to html.
Then use calibre to convert the html to a rather good lrf or epub.

[Elfwreck]

Quick & dirty Word to Sony PDF:

- Change page size of the Word document to 3.54" x 4.60" (90mm x 117mm).
- Put very small margins (I use .1" margins all around; if you like more whitespace, add a bit to that.)
- Font size: I use 9pt font, but I like small-ish text; 9-12 pt font size is about right for most people. I use Fontin; Georgia's also good for the Reader.

Select all text. Edit paragraph settings; change to single-spaced. (Not all PDF converters do this.) Keep all text selected. Edit font settings; change to 100% size, normal expansion.

If you're comfortable with Word formatting, find the chapter headers and change them to a "Heading" style; that way, when it converts to PDF, they'll automatically be bookmarked & the Sony will read them as Table of Contents entries. (I often use Heading 3, because that's the least jarring on my eyes.

- Edit properties (Document --> Properties); make sure the title & author are what you want to show up in the Sony Reader's listings.

Convert to PDF; save converted PDF to the Reader or memory card.

[drmathprog]

Originally Posted by tech_au

After playing around with alot of the pdf converter programs I found Mobipocket creator does a good nofuss conversion of textbased PDFs to html.
Then use calibre to convert the html to a rather good lrf or epub.

In my experience, Mobipocket seems geared towards text-only books. When I try it on books with illustrations, it seems to always fail.

[ahi]

Originally Posted by drmathprog

Is there a consensus on whether or not the 505 is usable for PDF documents, and if so, how best to handle PDF?

I've tried several approaches so far, and my results are very unpredictable. Rasterfarian seems to produce very accurate conversions, but the text is often too small to be readable, even with the largest 505 font. I've demoed a few conversion programs (ABC Amber Pdf and text converter, Docudesk deskUNPDF, etc). None seem to be a great solution. Some produce a terrific MS Word format conversion, but I don't know how to get from there to a good 505 format. Some produce complicated html which I can't get Calibre to process correctly.

PDFs *made for the Sony PRS-505* work better than anything else. PDFs made for any other size screen work worse than everything else and can be difficult to impossible to convert properly.

- Ahi

[tech_au]

Originally Posted by drmathprog

In my experience, Mobipocket seems geared towards text-only books. When I try it on books with illustrations, it seems to always fail.

Yes, Mobipocket creator is not perfect for pdfs with diagrams or illustrations but works well for text-only pdfs.
I have not found anything that works well with pdfs with diagrams and pictures.
I used a sample issue of Scientific american magazine and tried numerous convertors and it was almost readable and formatted good enough but not quite so I gave up. Only a large size reader displaying pdf natively would yield good results I think.

[frabjous]

Originally Posted by tech_au

I used a sample issue of Scientific american magazine and tried numerous convertors and it was almost readable and formatted good enough but not quite so I gave up. Only a large size reader displaying pdf natively would yield good results I think.

Could you post the article or a link to it, and maybe I'd suggest a tool. I definitely wouldn't try anything like calibre or mobipocket. PaperCrop might have been helpful, if it was formatted in columns; maybe a combination of that with something else.

[tech_au]

Originally Posted by frabjous

Could you post the article or a link to it, and maybe I'd suggest a tool. I definitely wouldn't try anything like calibre or mobipocket. PaperCrop might have been helpful, if it was formatted in columns; maybe a combination of that with something else.

I think the double column text with pictures in between was what the difficulty was. The text would either be too small to read or the columns didn't flow properly or the pictures would be broken up inappropriately. As I was mucking around with in about 9 months ago I no longer have the sci american pdf but I have had some success with mobipocket creator on other simpler formatted magazines like Escape Velocity(from escapevelocitymagazine.com) which also has pictures with text flowing around it but only single column.

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by frabjous

Could you post the article or a link to it, and maybe I'd suggest a tool. I definitely wouldn't try anything like calibre or mobipocket. PaperCrop might have been helpful, if it was formatted in columns; maybe a combination of that with something else.

Go to SciAm Digital and click on "Learn More" in the Subscribe box. This brings up a page with the 20-page PDF sample, which is essentially a PDF of the print magazine. The sample includes a background image on some pages, lots of illustrations and sidebars, and varied page layouts.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

Go to SciAm Digital and click on "Learn More" in the Subscribe box. This brings up a page with the 20-page PDF sample, which is essentially a PDF of the print magazine. The sample includes a background image on some pages, lots of illustrations and sidebars, and varied page layouts.

For an ebook reader, it's a mess.

I could read it on the PRS-505 without editing, but it'd involve some eyestrain. (If I loved the magazine, I'd read it that way.) It reflows the article text okay, but the formatting goes a bit crazy, especially for pages like the table of contents. (And often, the article text appears before the article headers.)

Aside from the fact that it's locked (which is easy to fix if you have the right software, and impossible otherwise), it's a nightmare to reformat. There's not enough whitespace around the edges to make much difference if it were cropped, and the columns aren't neatly organized in twos or threes; some pages have those, and some have text in squares, and some have text/picture combos that will be hard to convert to good ebook formats. Saving it as Word or HTML still winds up with weird line breaks and headers and footers mixed in with other content. Converting to other ebook formats would keep the scrambled text unless someone wanted to spend a couple of hours reformatting.

The only comfortable way to read such PDFS is on a computer or a large-screen device.