Quote:
Originally Posted by StanByk
Hi,
A couple of days ago I bought my first ebook in pdf format (Robert Harris, Pompeij) and the layout, frankly is appalling. On the Small font settings on my 505 it is virtually unreadable. The font is super tiny and there is a lot of space between the text and the left and right side of the screen. When I zoom in to medium font settings, it doesn't seem to recalculate the page breaks. Now the font is large enough for me to read it, but I always get a full page, followed by half a page. I also noted that the page numbers at the bottom stay the same on both of these two pages.
Is this common with pdfs? It is a rather unpleasent reading experience and I am annoyed because I paid money for it. By the way, I bought the book from BooksAboutEverything.
Thanks
Robert
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No in fact if you down load a PDF from
Feedbooks (all books are free and most are in public domain) you will see PDF look quite fantastic on the 505. Also SONY's manual is also in PDF format.
The problem lies in the PDF technology. It gives full control of page layout (e.g. graphics and text) by fixating the paper size.
Most commercial PDF are created with a paper size of A4/letter. Since PDFs are not reflowable the 505 has to shrink the text to fit in the small screen. Imagine trying to shrink a letter/A4 paper down to a 6" screen.
It just wont look good.
So SONY implemented a solution to view these PDF on a smaller screen by reflowing the text. The problem is all graphics and format are lost. Also since the average PDF page is bigger than a the SONY screen text tends to over flow to the next screen.
Also SONY only relfows one page at a time not the whole book so you get this full page plus a half page.
The page number is in sync with the PDF. To test this look at the last sentence/word of the PDF then zoom in. On the second page you will see that sentence/word.
In the end I think SONY just does not do a good job reflowing text but its better than not being able to read a PDF.
For me I like small fonts and think that removing the margins on the PDF tends to work for me. There is a tool here called soPDF that removes the margins on a PDF.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pepak
Not really. The text is still a picture, but a PDF usually has an additional text-only layer that the readers can use for plaintext rendering. Unfortunately, this text layer is often just an uncorrected OCR of the image and can differ quite significantly from the "image representation".
You are mistaken. The readers handle it about as well as they can, but if the PDF is formated for A4 and the text layer is crap, there is not much they can do.
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I've read many PDFs on a Window Mobile phone and also on a BlackBerry and after seeing how well those devices re-flow PDF I have to agree with thibaulthalpern. I think all eReaders do a terrible job re-flowing PDF. PDF does not deserve the Bad rep it gets here. In truth people need to start expecting more out of their eReaders who claim to support PDF.