As I have said here before, I usually prefer to convert my ebooks which are
based on html/text so that they can ultimately be searched or used with the dictionary look-up feature of my ebook reader. When dealing with a .pdf there is no easy way to preserve the layout (without rendering it as an image). I usually give up converting .pdf to .txt/.rtf/.html and then to ebook format!
And I do have a lot of converting expertice; it's just not possible to extract the 'look' so that I'm comfortable with it! And if it's not paletable to me, I can't read it!
And then along came
PDFRead! What a great program created by ashkulz (who has recently re-joined our mobileread community and made a splash with his
impserve). Using landscape-full mode seems the way to go to increase the legibility and the dilation helps a lot!
You know what they say, "If you can't beat them, join them!"
Also promising is the
pi (
pdfto
image) program created by caritas, where, as you mentioned, the .pdf can be split in half vertically and then the lines can weaved back alternatively, so as to preserve the textual flow (and images).