JAP: the XMas gift for mobileread community

[SeNS]

Hello everybody! I'm glad to introduce to mobileread community my program called JAP: Just Another Printer as my XMas gift :-)

JAP is an image-book creation program to produce readable files for the most popular eBook reading devices (Reb-1200/GEB-2150, Sony Reader/Librie, Hanlin V8, PPC) from the PDF and DjVu files, or from set of pictures/scans.

Program was written for the Russian brotherhood site community ( http://www.the-ebook.org/forum/ ) and now reached version 1.9.9 (next one will be RC 2.0)

"JAP" full installer can be freely downloaded from http://files.ebook.googlepages.com/Setup.exe

Internet installer http://files.ebook.googlepages.com/SetupI.exe

Unfortunatelly there are no English site, support forum or help-file but I'm working on it. Also I'm looking for volunteers to write a help file for JAP.

Please post your comments, suggestions, bug reports and wishes here (may be site-admins will make this topic permanent).

And Marry XMas and Happy Holidays!

[Mitchll]

Just tried it out. It is the best solution I have found to use pdf on the SOny Reader.
I look forward to the next version.
THANKS and HAPPY HOLIDAYS.

[alex_d]

People who've found this useful should also check out PDFrasterFarian. It does a similar conversion of PDF->image-LRF. It sadly lacks the beautiful interface, but, for now at least, gives much better results. It increases boldness and contrast of text, has better support for portrait/landscape, and gives true autocropping.

I hope that maybe you and I could work together to create a solution that has both a great GUI and great results.

Take a look at this comparison
image 1 is the original pdf
image 2 is JAP
image 3 is PDFrasterFarian v2

[SeNS]

I think your comparison is not correct. JAP is useful for a splitting one letter-size PDF page on two (or more) small (it's only way for comfortable reading imho). Also it gives a full control on the sub-pages location (if you need to pick out diagram or picture). Many people used JAP for a months beginning from v. 0.9 :-) (it was announced in June 2006 at www.the-ebook.org)

Unfortunatelly I can't get PDFrasterFarian working (RAR gives CRC error on the 3-rd archive) but if you upload your test pdf I can make some pictures from JAP output.

Here are my tests:
source file: http://files.ebook.googlepages.com/c...espiration.pdf
lrf: http://files.ebook.googlepages.com/c...espiration.lrf
and picture (Jinke V8 & Reader, Jinke looks better because of using internal bitmap format):

Could you please test PDFrasterFarian with my file and post pictures? Thanks.

P.S. Thanks for testing, I updated a little bit a lrf plugin. New version available at usual location now.

[SeNS]

P.P.S. Probably it's possible to get a better results on Reader screen but I need to find out which image format and sizes (now 584x754) are better to avoid picture distortion.

[alex_d]

I've converted your pdf into portrait, landscape, and quarters modes using settings which I felt were optimal. Let me know how you like it. Note, landscape mode uses the Reader's actual landscape mode (hold the size button). I also posted my test pdf. It'd be great if you could post pics. It's a big hassle for me. (p.s., use the attach files feature of the forum. this creates nice thumbnails.)

Hm, about the rar crc. I tried downloading the rars and it works (and no complaints on the other thread). You should try redownloading. Also, the correct resolution for the Reader is 565x754. However, the lrs xsize and ysize also have to be set right, to 637x849. Took me quite while to figure those out, hope that saves you the effort.

[SeNS]

Originally Posted by alex_d

Let me know how you like it.

Text enhancement looks impressive but it takes too much conversion time (read below)

Originally Posted by alex_d

Hm, about the rar crc. I tried downloading the rars and it works (and no complaints on the other thread).

I redownloaded all archives and now it works.

Originally Posted by alex_d

Also, the correct resolution for the Reader is 565x754. However, the lrs xsize and ysize also have to be set right, to 637x849. Took me quite while to figure those out, hope that saves you the effort.

Thanks, I rebuild LRF module. New module available at usual location (probably I'll make a separate setup files or internet setup, no reason to download whole installation every time)

Alex, I've tryed "PDFrasterFarian" on Russian S&F magazine "ESLI" (you could download 2006 year issues from http://files.ebook.googlepages.com/ but conversion takes too much time (imho, absolutly non-reasonable). Simply I can't wait more than one hour (just for 306 pages!). Could you please give some tips how to improve "PDFrasterFarian" speed? You can try on the "ESLI" January issue as I did.

Sorry for picture quality but I should use a flash.

[alex_d]

Yea, conversion does take a lot of time and that is the biggest problem. The issue is that i'm not writing the tools myself and can't really do any optimization. Ghostscript is surprisingly slow at rasterizing and autocropping (Adobe Reader can display a page in under a second... ghostscript will in some cases rasterize it for MINUTES), and then the image tools are also fairly slow at doing their steps. Maybe I should try to recompile ghostscript and imagemagick to use SSE (i might be using 386 binaries.. ill check).

The two big settings in pdfrasterfarian which affect speed are:
autocropping (adds like 10 mins per 100 pages)
boldness value (the lower the faster. much faster)

In the end, though, you'll be spending a week reading that 300 page document, so an hour to convert doesn't seem too much of a deal-breaker. But I'll see what I can do compiler-side.

[SeNS]

Actually I reading eBooks on tablet pc (I badly need a backlight) and keep my eInk's just as gadgets so I don't have to convert anything But now the JAP-generated files (with page size corrections what u gave) looks on Reader the same as on Jinke. As for me it's enough for reading however I'll look forward to improve quality on the thin fonts (I have some ideas; probably u can suggest something).

JAP uses XPdf as a PDF renderer; it's not so good than Adobe native products but much faster than ghostscript. You can make XPdf as a native win32 library or command line application. Also take a look to the http://www.the-ebook.org/forum/viewt...?p=65125#65125. Where are two russian guys who made lrs2lrf converters, both works many times faster than SONY's dll :-) Also both programs are freeware.

[Gameboy70]

Is there a mirror for the download? The JAP installer keep choking, with the following "NSIS Error" message:

The installer you are trying to use is corrupted or incomplete. This could be the result of a damaged disk, a failed download or a virus.

You may want to contact the author of this installer to obtain a new copy.

It may be possible to skip this check using the /NCRC command line switch (NOT RECOMMENDED)

[SeNS]

Just re-tested installer, works fine for me. Please try to re-download and re-run. Also you can try a new small internet version of installer, located at http://files.ebook.googlepages.com/Setup-new.exe

[mosh]

Sens,

Thank-you for the great tool.

A bug that I discovered is that when I try to export to LRF a second time the export module does not list pages and if I try to proceed it produces a floating point error (probably div/0 ?).

Mosh

[hn_88]

Thanks for a polished tool, SeNS.

Can you give a short description on how to customize the results? With the default settings, I get text which goes sideways (like landscape upside down) and also the font size is too small for my liking.

[SeNS]

Originally Posted by hn_88

Can you give a short description on how to customize the results? With the default settings, I get text which goes sideways (like landscape upside down) and also the font size is too small for my liking.

JAP is really simple to use but required a few easy seteps to prepare document. You need to setup virtual pages (frames) number first, properly locate 'em for odd and eve pages second and tweak brightness & contrast. For better results frames proportions should be 3/4 or 4/3. You can use frame movement and resizing with pressed Shift or Alt keys for that. Some pages could be processed separately - you should check "Custom" flag for these pages. Try to explore JAP menu and play with mouse buttons; also popup hints (move mouse cursor to the control and freeze for a few seconds) can be helpful. I know there is a big lack of help file but probably one from mobilereaders can help me with it.

[mosh]

Originally Posted by hn_88

Thanks for a polished tool, SeNS.

Can you give a short description on how to customize the results? With the default settings, I get text which goes sideways (like landscape upside down) and also the font size is too small for my liking.

hn_88 try rotating the page -90 or +90 deg. I find that doing so helps.