Thread: Best PDF viewing or conversion?
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Old 02-03-2010, 11:53 PM   #4
Solitaire1
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Quote:
Originally Posted by c0r1nth14n View Post
I will soon be purchasing my first eReader soon. I only want it for reading books, and I already have many books on my computer as PDFs. They are just plain text, no complex charts or graphs. I know many eReaders have trouble displaying PDFs, so what I'm wondering is, can I easily convert PDFs into another format for better viewing? I've been leaning towards buying the Kindle 2, but the PDF viewing is a major factor for me and I'm not sure if I'll be able to read these books well or not. any tips on what I can do and which eReader to buy are greatly appreciated. Thanks!
From what I've seen, the main reason many ereaders have a problem with PDFs is that they are formatted for a larger size than the ereader's screen, such as standard letter sized paper (8.5 inches x 11 inches). When viewed on an ereader, the page is shrunk down to fit on the screen, making the text barely readable. Some ereaders can reflow the PDF text to make it larger, but my experience with this is that it negatively affects the formatting of the document.

I've found that the PDFs that work best with an ereader are ones that are formatted for the ereader's screen. When that is the case, the PDFs are rendered perfectly with all of the formatting intact.

As an example, the following thread contains information on how format an ebook as a PDF using StarOffice/OpenOffice.org (just adjust the page size to match the size of your ereader's screen):

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=70936

I hope this helps.
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