Is it possible to remove the margins in book reading mode?
 

Hi,

Just got my kindle 3 firmware 3.02 no hack yet.

I notice the kindle is capable of edge to edge display in its web browser. I want to remove the margins in book reading mode. I also want to hide the location bar at the bottom and have it shown only when I bring up the menu. I have poor vision and am using the third or fourth largest font size, depending on the font, and I want to maximize the amount of text on one page given my constraint. I am already using condensed font and smallest line spacing.

Is this possible?

Thanks in advance.

Welcome to MobileRead, Barty.

Someone should step in soon with help. Enjoy the forums, and the free books available here.

Thank you.

Oops I put a thumb down icon in my original post. Thought it was a question mark. Like I said I don't see very well :). Post edited.

Is it possible to make this work with pdf-files too? It works with my mobi files, but not pdf.

No, you'll have trim the margins of your PDF file. (Supposedly, I try to stay as far away as possible from PDFs).

Stick the PDF into Caliber, take the MOBI format and enjoy life :)

Thanks for the replies.
A few questions concerning Calibre:
Some of my pdf files won't convert to MOBI. What could the reason be? DRM issues? And if so - how to tell? Conversion settings in Calibre? This is an example of an error message when trying to convert a pdf book to MOBI:

Convert book 1 of 1 (The 10000 Year Explosion How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution‎)
Resolved conversion options
calibre version: 0.7.20
{'asciiize': False,
'author_sort': None,
'authors': None,
'base_font_size': 0.0,
'book_producer': None,
'change_justification': u'original',
'chapter': u"//*[((name()='h1' or name()='h2') and re:test(., 'chapter|book|section|part|prologue|epilogue\\s+', 'i')) or @class = 'chapter']",
'chapter_mark': u'pagebreak',
'comments': None,
'cover': None,
'debug_pipeline': None,
'disable_font_rescaling': False,
'dont_compress': False,
'extra_css': None,
'font_size_mapping': None,
'footer_regex': u'(?i)(?<=<hr>)((\\s*<a name=\\d+></a>((<img.+?>)*<br>\\s*)?\\d+<br>\\s*.*?\\s*)|(\\s* <a name=\\d+></a>((<img.+?>)*<br>\\s*)?.*?<br>\\s*\\d+))(?=<br>)' ,
'header_regex': u'(?i)(?<=<hr>)((\\s*<a name=\\d+></a>((<img.+?>)*<br>\\s*)?\\d+<br>\\s*.*?\\s*)|(\\s* <a name=\\d+></a>((<img.+?>)*<br>\\s*)?.*?<br>\\s*\\d+))(?=<br>)' ,
'html_unwrap_factor': 0.40000000000000002,
'input_encoding': None,
'input_profile': <calibre.customize.profiles.InputProfile object at 0x67e0c90>,
'insert_blank_line': False,
'insert_metadata': False,
'isbn': None,
'keep_ligatures': False,
'language': None,
'level1_toc': None,
'level2_toc': None,
'level3_toc': None,
'line_height': 0.0,
'linearize_tables': False,
'margin_bottom': 5.0,
'margin_left': 5.0,
'margin_right': 5.0,
'margin_top': 5.0,
'max_toc_links': 50,
'new_pdf_engine': False,
'no_chapters_in_toc': False,
'no_images': False,
'no_inline_navbars': True,
'no_inline_toc': False,
'output_profile': <calibre.customize.profiles.KindleOutput object at 0x67e0f70>,
'page_breaks_before': u"//*[name()='h1' or name()='h2']",
'personal_doc': u'[PDOC]',
'prefer_author_sort': False,
'prefer_metadata_cover': False,
'preprocess_html': False,
'pretty_print': False,
'pubdate': None,
'publisher': None,
'rating': None,
'read_metadata_from_opf': '/var/folders/8S/8ST3V+NqE80WdE8G96LNsU+++TI/-Tmp-/calibre_0.7.20_tmp_J3ltQX/calibre_0.7.20_5jfY1E.opf',
'remove_first_image': False,
'remove_footer': False,
'remove_header': False,
'remove_paragraph_spacing': False,
'remove_paragraph_spacing_indent_size': 1.5,
'rescale_images': False,
'series': None,
'series_index': None,
'smarten_punctuation': False,
'tags': None,
'timestamp': None,
'title': None,
'title_sort': None,
'toc_filter': None,
'toc_threshold': 6,
'toc_title': None,
'unwrap_factor': 0.45000000000000001,
'use_auto_toc': False,
'verbose': 2}
Python function terminated unexpectedly: Spine is empty
InputFormatPlugin: PDF Input running
on /Users/Malthe/Calibre Bibliotek/Cochran/The 10000 Year Explosion How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution (113)/The 10000 Year Explosion How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution - Cochran.pdf
Converting file to html...
pdftohtml log:
Fontconfig error: Cannot load default config file

Retrieving document metadata...
Generating manifest...
Rendering manifest...
Parsing all content...
Parsing index.html ...
Failed to parse content in index.html
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages/calibre/ebooks/oeb/reader.py", line 159, in _manifest_prune_invalid
File "site-packages/calibre/ebooks/oeb/base.py", line 1060, in fget
File "site-packages/calibre/ebooks/oeb/base.py", line 789, in _parse_xhtml
File "site-packages/calibre/ebooks/conversion/preprocess.py", line 431, in __call__
File "site-packages/calibre/ebooks/conversion/preprocess.py", line 152, in __call__
File "site-packages/calibre/ebooks/conversion/preprocess.py", line 133, in dehyphenate
File "lib/python2.6/re.py", line 190, in compile
File "lib/python2.6/re.py", line 245, in _compile
error: unbalanced parenthesis

Spine item 'id1' not found
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/Applications/calibre.app/Contents/Resources/Python/lib/python2.6/site.py", line 147, in main
return run_entry_point()
File "/Applications/calibre.app/Contents/Resources/Python/lib/python2.6/site.py", line 116, in run_entry_point
return getattr(pmod, func)()
File "site-packages/calibre/utils/ipc/worker.py", line 99, in main
File "site-packages/calibre/gui2/convert/gui_conversion.py", line 24, in gui_convert
File "site-packages/calibre/ebooks/conversion/plumber.py", line 841, in run
File "site-packages/calibre/ebooks/conversion/plumber.py", line 968, in create_oebbook
File "site-packages/calibre/ebooks/oeb/reader.py", line 72, in __call__
File "site-packages/calibre/ebooks/oeb/reader.py", line 594, in _all_from_opf
File "site-packages/calibre/ebooks/oeb/reader.py", line 289, in _spine_from_opf
calibre.ebooks.oeb.base.OEBError: Spine is empty

Okay, I just figured out the answer is to downgrade to version 0.7.19 --> Link

Weeee, it works. Just saved my day. Thank you mobileread :)

Phew. Removing unwanted lines, like this, 0465002214_Cochran 11/20/08 2:41 PM Page xi, seems very confusing to me --> Link.

UPDATE:
I modified reader.pref again and this time the value is not reverted. maybe last time I was in reading mode and the reader restored the value.

I followed this instruction to modify "reader.pref". Then I ejected kindle and re-connected it. To my surprise, in "reader.pref", "HORIZONTAL_MARGIN=" becomes 40 again.
How could I prevent this value from being reverted by the kindle system?
Thank you so much.

By making very sure that you are on the Kindle's Home screen when you plug it in and make the changes. If you have a book open when you plug it in... the changes won't take.

You can also set Justification to Left instead of Full, which should make the larger text sizes less annoying: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=99661

Pdf margins
 

The trouble is that Kindle 3 adds about 15 - 20 px-wide additional margins when viewing pdf in landscape mode, which I find annoying. Isn't there any hack to remove them? Pdfs typically have margins already, so this is a waste of space. (Of course the margin on the bottom must be there because of the progress bar, but not the other three.)