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wallcraft · 02-19-2009, 10:59 PM

I tend to use Windows MobiPocket Creator - which (like Calibre) allows you to edit the author and title. You can also just email the files to Amazon and they will use a program similar to MobiPocket Creator to convert them for you to MOBI (AZW).

In all the above cases, if the PDF was originally mostly text the conversion will produce a mostly text MOBI that will reflow (and resize the font) like any other conventional MOBI file. If the original PDF was images (e.g. scans of pages), then what you get back is a MOBI of images and there is no reflowing and rescaling possible. How good the conversion from PDF to (text-based) MOBI is depends on how complex the PDF's layout is. For "simple" PDFs generated from standard letter/A4 Word (say) documents it should work well, for complex layouts with fancy graphics it can be very poor. Sometimes switching to a different conversion tool can help, but usually at this point manual editing is needed if you want something acceptable. Or you can use a tool that always produces images for these cases. It now seems that the Amazon conversion can sometimes detect PDFs it can't convert well to text and it then goes ahead and produces images (even though the original PDF is not entirely images).

If Calibre can change the font size and bring up a TOC then most likely so can the Kindle. A slightly better test might be to use Windows MobiPocket Reader. Once again if WMR can display the MOBI well, then so will the Kindle. The largest difference is that the Kindle always uses exactly the same font for all MOBI/AZW ebooks, and has only 6 font sizes and no layout options except justification (hit J when on the font menu to see these options).

Windows MobiPocket Reader can also grab RSS feeds, but my impression is that Calibre does a better job when there is a recipe available.

02-19-2009, 10:59 PM	#2
wallcraft reader Posts: 6,977 Karma: 5183568 Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Mississippi, USA Device: Kindle 3, Kobo Glo HD	I tend to use Windows MobiPocket Creator - which (like Calibre) allows you to edit the author and title. You can also just email the files to Amazon and they will use a program similar to MobiPocket Creator to convert them for you to MOBI (AZW). In all the above cases, if the PDF was originally mostly text the conversion will produce a mostly text MOBI that will reflow (and resize the font) like any other conventional MOBI file. If the original PDF was images (e.g. scans of pages), then what you get back is a MOBI of images and there is no reflowing and rescaling possible. How good the conversion from PDF to (text-based) MOBI is depends on how complex the PDF's layout is. For "simple" PDFs generated from standard letter/A4 Word (say) documents it should work well, for complex layouts with fancy graphics it can be very poor. Sometimes switching to a different conversion tool can help, but usually at this point manual editing is needed if you want something acceptable. Or you can use a tool that always produces images for these cases. It now seems that the Amazon conversion can sometimes detect PDFs it can't convert well to text and it then goes ahead and produces images (even though the original PDF is not entirely images). If Calibre can change the font size and bring up a TOC then most likely so can the Kindle. A slightly better test might be to use Windows MobiPocket Reader. Once again if WMR can display the MOBI well, then so will the Kindle. The largest difference is that the Kindle always uses exactly the same font for all MOBI/AZW ebooks, and has only 6 font sizes and no layout options except justification (hit J when on the font menu to see these options). Windows MobiPocket Reader can also grab RSS feeds, but my impression is that Calibre does a better job when there is a recipe available.