I have not discovered any automated conversion tool that works well enough that I find the result 'acceptable,' or in any way preferable to reading the PDF directly (after cropping).
It's true that sometimes conversion works 'well enough', but in less time than it takes to evaluate whether an automatic conversion is going to work 'well enough', I can crop a PDF and start reading. By contrast, any conversion workflow that achieves what I regard as good results seems to involve considerably more time, skill, effort and uncertainty (in general).
Quite possibly I'm less tolerant of conversion artifacts than most people, and I have a high tolerance for the small text that often results when trying to read squished PDFs, so I make no claims that the way I do things is 'best' for everyone.
And I nevertheless continue to explore conversion techniques, since it is an endlessly fascinating problem.
