Quote:
Originally Posted by ddave
frabjous,
I'm especially interested in which program works well with embedded equations and graphs.
thanks.
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When there are equations and graphs, any text-based conversion of the PDFs is risky. However, with the exception of SoPDF, all the programs I suggested above actually convert the original PDFs to images, and then do some processing on the results, like removing unnecessary whitespace, dividing columns, and spanning a single page over multiple screens. Equations and tables should look exactly the same as they do in the original PDF. I've had the best luck with PDFLRF overall; the only real problem is that it sometimes cuts a line of text in half vertically, but you can set it to do overlap, so if you get half the line on one screen, you should get the whole line (not just the other half) on the next.
The downside to image-based files, however, is that they can dramatically increase file size. With an SD card and file rotation, that doesn't bother me much.
SoPDF doesn't convert to images unless it begins with an image-based PDF already (e.g., from a scan), but it leaves things in PDF format, so it should still preserve the structure of equations and charts, at least if you don't do reflow, without increasing file size. I use it to remove margins/whitespace, and fit to page width (minus margins) landscape, spanning the height of the page over multiple screens. Acrobat can remove the margins/whitespace too, but SoPDF is much faster.
So I mainly just use PDFLRF or SoPDF depending on the original. Occasionally I might use PaperCrop or Acrobat if the original had more than two columns on a page (PDFLRF works fine with two) or some greater TLC is required.