iPhone PDF, MobileMe, Stanza(?), Calibre(?)

[juanantoniod]

Hello Everyone,

I am trying to find a good way to read my school text books (booklets), which are provided in PDF, on the iPhone (4). The booklets are formatted with tables, pictures, and tend to have wide "gutters", where the text is shifted more to the outside of the page.

I really love all the options of Stanza on iPhone, but it does not read PDFs with all its options invoked. What I particularly like is the option of specifying background and text color by name (since I am a bit color deficient), and line spacing. The two problems it has with PDFs is that when reading light text on a black background, it makes color pictures look like negatives; it also is hard to get it to zoom in on just the text, without zooming in on each page individually. I would like for it to focus on only the text portion of the page and zoom in automatically, much like comic readers move from box to box down the page. Although the gutters tend to be wide, the text column width is static.

I read the 101 on this forum and learned a little about Calibre, then read further about Calibre2Web. I am using MobileMe, so I would like to know if there is a way to use Calibre to optimize the reading of my PDFs in Stanza iPhone, and then possibly utilize Calibre2Web, using MobileMe as the storage medium, and if so, how?

Alternatively, is there a better way to read PDFs like thse on iPhone, with dark (black) background and colored (blue) text, while still maintaining the original color of graphics and photos?

Thank you for any help you can give me; if this has already been answered previously, I would appreciate a link to the appropriate post. I am grateful for any advice you can offer on using these services together, or something else you think is even better.

Take good care,

~Antonio

[amjbrown]

If you are serious about PDF reading on the iPad for text books where features like text flow etc. are actually destructive rather than helpful, then I recommend you get a dedicated tool. There are lots, and choosing is hard. I went for iAnnotate for the annotataion capability.

http://www.ajidev.com/iannotate/

It's a few bucks, but worth it imho.

Good luck!

amjb

[juanantoniod]

So, if I am understanding you correctly, Calibre into Stanza will basically _reflow_ (destructively) my PDF content. What I need is a *dedicated* PDF reader, such as aji. I _don't_ want to be trying to read a PDF as an ebook, I want to read a PDF on iPhone with a reader that supports the features I desire. If I have misunderstood, please do tell me.

Also, if anyone has a resource listing of PDF readers for iPhone, which compares features, etc., that would be awesome!

Best,

~Antonio

[amjbrown]

I am not an expert, but it's not Calibre, it's what Stanza or any e-reader software attempts to do with the document.

Sounds like you need a dedicated PDF viewer (I use the term rather than reader deliberately). That way you see what the author intended, and if it is too small (unlikely on the iPad) you zoom in.

Most of the PDF reader comparisons I found were out of date - this is a fast moving area! I do recommend the aji product, and I am sure other MT readers will have their own favourites.

amjb

[juanantoniod]

I appreciate the definitive information, and I will check out the aji app(s).

~Antonio