MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Reader Question: How do you read technical books (.pdf/.chm/.html)?

Poow7hae · 10-03-2007, 11:56 PM

I download PDFs, like RFCs, and resize with ghostscript and gv for reading on my PRS-500. With this method, you can zoom in just enough to read a letter size page without going blind.

Basically, you want to find a window around the text body, smaller than the page, and just large enough to see the important text; and create a new PDF focused on that window. gv displays coordinates under the cursor, so that's a good choice for measuring the window, then you make a new postscript file like this:

Code:

%!PS-Adobe-3.0 EPSF-3.0
[/Author (AUTHOR)
 /CreationDate (DATE)
 /Title (TITLE)
 /DOCINFO pdfmark
[/CropBox [XLL YLL XUR YUR] /PAGES pdfmark
/_begin_job_
{
        /tweak_save save def
        /tweak_dc countdictstack def
        /tweak_oc count 1 sub def
        userdict begin
}bind def

/_end_job_
{
        count tweak_oc sub{pop}repeat
        countdictstack tweak_dc sub{end}repeat
        tweak_save restore
}bind def

[ /Title (BOOKMARK)  /OUT pdfmark
_begin_job_
 (PDFFILE) run
_end_job_

Replace AUTHOR, DATE, TITLE, and BOOKMARK with meaningful data. Replace PDFFILE with the name of the file you want to convert. Replace XLL YLL XUR YUR with the coordinates from gv. Then run ps2pdf on your new postscript file and upload the new pdf. You can repeat the last block of code on a bunch of PDFs, allowing you to group files together.

You probably don't believe me, so look it up here: pdfmark Reference.

10-03-2007, 11:56 PM	#7
Poow7hae Junior Member Posts: 1 Karma: 10 Join Date: Oct 2007 Device: PRS-500	I convert for PRS-500 I download PDFs, like RFCs, and resize with ghostscript and gv for reading on my PRS-500. With this method, you can zoom in just enough to read a letter size page without going blind. Basically, you want to find a window around the text body, smaller than the page, and just large enough to see the important text; and create a new PDF focused on that window. gv displays coordinates under the cursor, so that's a good choice for measuring the window, then you make a new postscript file like this: Code: %!PS-Adobe-3.0 EPSF-3.0 [/Author (AUTHOR) /CreationDate (DATE) /Title (TITLE) /DOCINFO pdfmark [/CropBox [XLL YLL XUR YUR] /PAGES pdfmark /_begin_job_ { /tweak_save save def /tweak_dc countdictstack def /tweak_oc count 1 sub def userdict begin }bind def /_end_job_ { count tweak_oc sub{pop}repeat countdictstack tweak_dc sub{end}repeat tweak_save restore }bind def [ /Title (BOOKMARK) /OUT pdfmark _begin_job_ (PDFFILE) run _end_job_ Replace AUTHOR, DATE, TITLE, and BOOKMARK with meaningful data. Replace PDFFILE with the name of the file you want to convert. Replace XLL YLL XUR YUR with the coordinates from gv. Then run ps2pdf on your new postscript file and upload the new pdf. You can repeat the last block of code on a bunch of PDFs, allowing you to group files together. You probably don't believe me, so look it up here: pdfmark Reference.