[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by BlackVoid

I have decent pdfs and txts mainly. They are quite ok to read on a PC - no format problems at all.

pdflrf - this tool makes very big files, which turned me off. Only a few books would fit on the reader and I guess it is going to be slow too (did not try the file on the reader, but when I have seen a 1 MB pdf turned to a 17 MB monster, I gave up).

I've had cases where the resulting LRF was smaller then the original PDF. But it would make the PDF more readable even if larger.

libprs500
This program has absolutely no respect for any formatting. Paragraphs are merged together, 3 line pages broken in mid-sentence, paragraph indentation lost and similar problems all over.

You only get problems like that if you start with a lousy source. That's what you get from darknet downloads. A lot of sources are just way poorly formatted.

Thanks for the rtf tip, I might try that.

If you clean up the text in Word and save as RTF, you can load into Book Designer and output a nice LRF.

I was also thinking that maybe with Adobe professional PDFs could be converted to better run on the reader - is this the case? I am skeptical because the official Sony guide for PDFs suggests to save the file in RTF and then convert back to PDF - I do not think this would work well. When I save rtf from PDF, a lot of problems appear. Can you actually reformat the page size in Adobe without losing paragraphs and indentation?

Even Acrobat Professional does not output a perfect conversion.

Still, this is a lot of hassle for something as simple as text formatting. Sony should have included a decent tool for lrf conversion or the reader should support a wider variety of formats. Html support is a serious omission. Even decent txt / rtf documents look crappy on the reader with awkward line breaks and paragraph problems.

The tools we have now work very well if you don't start with such poorly formatted source. It's would be that way for any conversion.

BookDesigner - I have tried this and could not find an option to save in LRF format. What am I missing?

Did you properly install Book Designer? See the thread https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11786 on where to get the installer and the update and how to install on Vista. Also you'll need the Book Cleaner files too available at https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11649

Once it's properly installed and working, you just go to the Make eBooks menu and select Sony Reader (LRF) and you get a dialog as to how to make them, set the options and go.

I would be very interested how the other readers handle these kind of problems. Is it just the Sony reader, or do the other readers have these issues as well? I love the actual hardware and the e-ink display very much, but software support is abysmal for the Sony reader. I would even consider shelling out the money for the Iliad, provided it handles formatting much better.

Other readers would have the same trouble. It's not Sony vs. other readers. It's your source is poor and you are not doing a very good job fixing the mess.