Calibre PDF to RTF conversion doesn't reflow sentences anymore

[Josieb1]

Hi

I often get asked to proof read ebooks before they go on sale and I am always sent a PDF to check. I don't read PDFs natively on a Kindle so I always convert to RTF and then on to mobi. The has always worked okay but recently I have noticed that the conversion to RTFK breaks sentences up, so they appear on separate lines, this then flows over to the mobi format and makes reading very difficult as the text flow is all wrong.

Does anyone know why this might be happening now? Or what I can do to reflow the sentences properly? I don't play with any conversion settings I just let the defaults do the conversion.

I know PDF is not a good format to convert from but I don't have any options in the format I am supplied with, so any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Joanne

[DoctorOhh]

Read the sticky post titled "Read this before Posting PDF Questions" you might gain some insight.

Good Luck.

[Josieb1]

Thanks Dwanthny for the link, I don't know this site well enough to have seen it before.

I had a quick read through in my lunch break and its not much use as PDF is a horrible format, but I don't have any choice but to work with what I have............sigh

[jackie_w]

Have you tried adjusting the 'Line unwrapping factor' value on the Convert - PDF Input page. I think the default value is 0.50, so you could experiment with 0.4 or 0.6 to see if it improves the output? I suspect the 'ideal' value varies by PDF. It won't be perfect but it might be better.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

Have you tried adjusting the 'Line unwrapping factor' value on the Convert - PDF Input page. I think the default value is 0.50, so you could experiment with 0.4 or 0.6 to see if it improves the output? I suspect the 'ideal' value varies by PDF. It won't be perfect but it might be better.

@jackie_w, thanks a million

A setting of 0.3 worked well on a couple of my recalcitrant PDF's that I'd been pushing down my work basket for weeks.

For no good reason I first wound it up from .45 to .6 and then .7. When that didn't work I wound it back to .3 and it worked a treat.

The tool tip (shown below) doesn't mean much to me, maybe someone could explain. Being an engineer I like to know why & if possible how things work, in this instance I haven't a clue.

Good luck Josieb1 and thanks for asking the question.

BR

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

For no good reason I first wound it up from .45 to .6 and then .7. When that didn't work I wound it back to .3 and it worked a treat.

BetterRed I'm glad you got the help you needed.

FYI to others reading this thread the sticky post titled "Read this before Posting PDF Questions" has this information included within it.

Some of my paragraphs are split into multiple paragraphs
They weren't actually split into new paragraphs - this is how pdf works. There is no concept of a 'paragraph' in pdf - every line is basically it's own paragraph. Calibre attempts to rebuild the actual paragraphs using punctuation and line length clues. This is prone to errors, and for some documents will require manual cleanup in a program like Sigil. Using Sigil requires converting to epub first, editing the epub in Sigil, and then converting to the final intended format.
Before you attempt manually cleaning up the file, you can try changing the 'Line unwrap-factor' - under pdf input in the conversion options. The default setting for this is 0.45, you can set this lower to make line unwrapping more 'aggressive', but be aware that doing this may unwrap lines which shouldn't be unwrapped.

[BetterRed]

@dwanthny

I've read that Sticky a couple of times. As I read the threads on PDF conversions its gradually beginning to make sense.

For this particular issue the trigger words I was looking for were 'flow', 'join' or 'fold', I guess 'unwrap' sort of means the same thing, but I have predilection for antonyms over negations. Not sure I understand why a smaller factor is more 'aggressive', not that it matters

BR

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

I've read that Sticky a couple of times. As I read the threads on PDF conversions its gradually beginning to make sense.

If it makes sense to you you're doing better than I am. I simply gave up using PDFs as a source file.

[Josieb1]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

Have you tried adjusting the 'Line unwrapping factor' value on the Convert - PDF Input page. I think the default value is 0.50, so you could experiment with 0.4 or 0.6 to see if it improves the output? I suspect the 'ideal' value varies by PDF. It won't be perfect but it might be better.

Thanks Jackie W, my apologies for the delay in thanking you. I have been playing and a line wrapping factor of 20 is working out much better for my PDFs