The problem is that (I think) any conversion of format X to format Y (e.g. PDF to MOBI) is going to remove leading spaces and multiple spaces. I believe this is because conversions use HTML as the intermediate file format and HTML does not (normally) believe in leading/multiple spaces.
- The only way you can retain the spaces in HTML, and hence the layout, is if you wrap <pre>...</pre> tags around your text. This is why I outlined a method of doing it this way in the thread I pointed you to. However, <pre> tags can be problematic if your lines are too long as the text will disappear off the right-hand edge of your reader.
- Another option is to copy the entire text from the PDF and paste into a .TXT file. Manually edit the TXT to remove any 'waste' leading spaces if you want. Then, don't convert it, just send the .TXT file to your reader and see what it looks like (do Kindles read TXT files?). I found this to be perfectly readable on my Sony, but it did display in the reader's default serif font not monospace. Is this a problem? Sample attached below.
- Another way to retain layout, is to read the original file as a PDF on your reader. The problem is usually that 'wasteful' margins leave the text as a tiny area in the middle of your 6-inch screen. You can try to get round this by using a software utility to crop off the whitespace from the PDF then send the cropped PDF to the reader. There are quite a lot of candidates around, I have had some success with both BRISS and soPDF.
If you try to do a conversion of a TXT file, I notice there is a Convert - TXT Input - Preserve spaces option, but the spaces weren't preserved for me. I don't know if I was using it wrongly. I didn't pursue it because I settled for one of the previous options.
Unless you want to splash out on an iPad or some other 'big screen' reader I can't think of any other options. Perhaps someone else will come up with a bright idea.
