MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Glad you're letting non-owners post, b/c I have some questions...

ghumdinger · 06-20-2010, 01:01 PM

Thanks for chipping in!

Walt, I was afraid to hear that. That the annotations are saved back to the PDFs as a flattened image would mean that the PDF is no longer searchable by the Windows Desktop Search ifilter. On the other hand, for reflow, I've spent some time doing some experiments that might be helpful.

I decided to approach it differently - instead of finding the perfect e-reader for reflowing, I'll look at the PDF files themselves.

The softwares I used were Adobe Reader desktop, Foxit on Windows Mobile, and Mobi Pocket Reader.

The "categories" of PDFs:

1. Scanned PDFs OCRed with Acrobat Searchable Image/ Image Exact
2. Scanned PDFs OCRed with Acrobat ClearScan
3. Scanned PDFs OCRed with my scanner's bundled ABBYY.
4. Web articles printed to PDF
5. Downloaded eBooks.

I won't bore you with the results for each, but what was surprising and exciting for me was that there was A HUGE difference in reflow quality for scanned PDFs depending on how they were OCRed.

PDFs OCRed with Acrobat's Searchable image CANNOT REFLOW in Foxit on WM, reflows alright on Adobe Reader desktop, and CANNOT reflow as well on MobiReader.

PDFs OCRed with Acrobat's Clearscan were reflows BADLY in Foxit on WM, REFLOWS BADLY (funny that clearscan is worse than searchable image on Adobe Reader) on Adobe Reader, and had lots of defects when coverted to MobiReader's PRC.

Now, the optimistic part. The SAME pdf OCRed using ABBYY reflowed well for all three. I guess it has to do with how ABBYY adds in formatting info to the PDF such as paragraph marks etc.

So for reflow problems, I guess one way to solve it is to run it through an OCR application.

Web articles printed to PDF reflowed well for all three.

As for my search, I've kind of changed tack and given up on PDF as a format for annotations. I doubt I'll find any device (less laptops and tablets) that'll do it. Actually to be honest with myself, PDF's annotation support isn't that good anyway. For e.g., in the comment panes showing all annotations, highlights have no titles to them, making a review/ revision of a book/ article quite difficult.

I'm looking at MobiReader's PRC format as my format of choice for e-books and storing my annotations. What do you guys think? Are there any other formats that you would recommend? The only holdback is still the search issue; I'm not sure if the PRC format has an ifilter (to allow Windows Desktop Search to do in-content search and indexing).

Unfortunately, it seems (from the specs page) that the eDGe only supports ePub (know nothing about it) and PDFs. I still find the idea of a dualbook quite fancy though. I was still thinking how nice it would be to use the eDGe with something wackily ergonomic like a Kinesis split 2-piece keyboard!

Regardless, I would love to hear from you guys how you use the eDGe in school, at home and outside!

06-20-2010, 01:01 PM	#14
ghumdinger Edge User	Different tack Thanks for chipping in! Walt, I was afraid to hear that. That the annotations are saved back to the PDFs as a flattened image would mean that the PDF is no longer searchable by the Windows Desktop Search ifilter. On the other hand, for reflow, I've spent some time doing some experiments that might be helpful. I decided to approach it differently - instead of finding the perfect e-reader for reflowing, I'll look at the PDF files themselves. The softwares I used were Adobe Reader desktop, Foxit on Windows Mobile, and Mobi Pocket Reader. The "categories" of PDFs: 1. Scanned PDFs OCRed with Acrobat Searchable Image/ Image Exact 2. Scanned PDFs OCRed with Acrobat ClearScan 3. Scanned PDFs OCRed with my scanner's bundled ABBYY. 4. Web articles printed to PDF 5. Downloaded eBooks. I won't bore you with the results for each, but what was surprising and exciting for me was that there was A HUGE difference in reflow quality for scanned PDFs depending on how they were OCRed. PDFs OCRed with Acrobat's Searchable image CANNOT REFLOW in Foxit on WM, reflows alright on Adobe Reader desktop, and CANNOT reflow as well on MobiReader. PDFs OCRed with Acrobat's Clearscan were reflows BADLY in Foxit on WM, REFLOWS BADLY (funny that clearscan is worse than searchable image on Adobe Reader) on Adobe Reader, and had lots of defects when coverted to MobiReader's PRC. Now, the optimistic part. The SAME pdf OCRed using ABBYY reflowed well for all three. I guess it has to do with how ABBYY adds in formatting info to the PDF such as paragraph marks etc. So for reflow problems, I guess one way to solve it is to run it through an OCR application. Web articles printed to PDF reflowed well for all three. As for my search, I've kind of changed tack and given up on PDF as a format for annotations. I doubt I'll find any device (less laptops and tablets) that'll do it. Actually to be honest with myself, PDF's annotation support isn't that good anyway. For e.g., in the comment panes showing all annotations, highlights have no titles to them, making a review/ revision of a book/ article quite difficult. I'm looking at MobiReader's PRC format as my format of choice for e-books and storing my annotations. What do you guys think? Are there any other formats that you would recommend? The only holdback is still the search issue; I'm not sure if the PRC format has an ifilter (to allow Windows Desktop Search to do in-content search and indexing). Unfortunately, it seems (from the specs page) that the eDGe only supports ePub (know nothing about it) and PDFs. I still find the idea of a dualbook quite fancy though. I was still thinking how nice it would be to use the eDGe with something wackily ergonomic like a Kinesis split 2-piece keyboard! Regardless, I would love to hear from you guys how you use the eDGe in school, at home and outside! Last edited by ghumdinger; 06-20-2010 at 01:04 PM.