Kindle 3 and PDFs

bpugliese · 11-07-2010, 02:48 PM

Hello there.

I bought a Kindle 3 recently and so far I'm loving it. Still, as everynthing is this life it isn't perfect and I'm struggling with some PDFs.

I've read a bit in the forum about PDF conversion but couldn't find a definitive answer for a format that is more lilely to read without problems on kindle. So I would like to know if any of you has any trick or tip that you can share with me for reading heavily imaged PDFs (scanned books types). Here's what I've tried so far:
- conversion to epub and mobi = total disaster
- OCR = Painfull work, bad results on some books (i.e. books too image crowded, on which even after taking the texts and processing with OCR, leaves a mess and unreadable text + big images)
- croping the margins of the .pdf to fit Kindle screen better = looked promissor in the beginning but ended up as a failure 'cause I wasn't able to turn the pdf pages into a resolution kindle wouldn't have to 'scale' them. Without that, it takes a lot of time to turn pages beacuse of the poor rendering speed in image heavy .pdfs

So far, the 3rd option was the one I think that can be tweaked in a way that will work (i.e. maybe literally 'cutting' each page into separate and sequencial images so i can easily read in portrait mode) I tried with PDFRead (found here in the forums) but it leaves too much blank spaces.

Anyway, guess I wrote too much, I would like to see if anyone else would like to discuss and maybe achieve a method to fit those big bad .pdfs on the small kindle screen

desertgrandma · 11-07-2010, 02:51 PM

Welcome to MobileRead, bpugliese

You've discovered what many of us here already know......the smaller screens just don't do a great job of viewing pdf's.......

But others might chime in with help. Enjoy.

bpugliese · 11-07-2010, 03:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by desertgrandma

You've discovered what many of us here already know......the smaller screens just don't do a great job of viewing pdf's.......

Yeah, kinda frustrating

Still I think i could bear with the screen size, but the load times between pages kill the fun

anyway, I don't have big hopes on this matter beacuse as you say that's a problem that has no real 'solution' but I thought I should post something here and maybe talking with other people more experienced with e-readers I could come up with an idea to maybe get a workaround on reading my PDFs

angelbleu · 11-08-2010, 02:15 AM

While I love my Kindle, I've come to believe that "tablet PC"s like the iPad are probably the only way to go to read PDFs with current technology...

cybmole · 11-08-2010, 02:45 AM

I am waiting for the kindle DX to go on sale in UK, and at a lower price, then I'll get one for PDFs.

right now it would be cheaper to buy a fully functional net book PC with a 10+ inch screen, than to import a kindle DX from USA

curstpriest · 11-08-2010, 10:18 AM

If you wait 6 mos, there are about 8 or so 10 in tablet PCs comming out in 2011 that have sun-viewable low power LCDs, that were on display at computex this year

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HAEB...next=1&index=1

tons of videos about computex

tomsem · 11-08-2010, 12:55 PM

I'd suggest is to make sure you have the latest update (3.0.3). It seems to do better with large PDFs than the earlier versions.

I'm actually reading quite a few PDFs on K3. Works okay when the layout is simple. Wish they'd copy some PDF features from Sony, in particular the zoom mode that displays page quadrants for two-column formats, and reflow would be nice to have in the toolkit.

But they could do all sorts of PDF feature enhancements, and still not really be good enough for some things.

bpugliese · 11-08-2010, 07:11 PM

Hmm ill try updating to the latest firmware (when I find out exactly how I do it

)

Mektub · 11-08-2010, 11:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bpugliese

Hmm ill try updating to the latest firmware (when I find out exactly how I do it

)

Update information is here:

http://tinyurl.com/2w3avbl

Mektub

bpugliese · 11-09-2010, 02:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mektub

Update information is here:

http://tinyurl.com/2w3avbl

Mektub

I was unable to find it by myself

Thanks for the info

EDIT:
update done sucessfully. I'm going to test some PDFs later

Barty · 11-09-2010, 02:02 PM

For PDF, I recommend the old paper and printer technology.

If your PDFs are reflow able, that is, they contain text and aren't just scanned images, you can try the duokan firmware which I hear does a better job. There's a big thread in the developer sub forum.

Starko · 11-10-2010, 07:56 AM

I use Nitro PDF Pro to crop white space in PDFs. It actually has an option to "Remove Margins" automatically although better results can be achieved with manual cropping. Manual cropping is a little more involved but still quite manageable - You can apply your cropping setting to all, odd/even or selected pages. I found that after removing pretty much all of white space most (book) PDFs are really well readable in landscape orientation. And even portrait can be quite OK.

@barty What is duokan firmware? and where one can get it?

jj2me · 11-10-2010, 08:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bpugliese

- croping the margins of the .pdf to fit Kindle screen better = looked promissor in the beginning but ended up as a failure 'cause I wasn't able to turn the pdf pages into a resolution kindle wouldn't have to 'scale' them. Without that, it takes a lot of time to turn pages beacuse of the poor rendering speed in image heavy .pdfs

So far, the 3rd option was the one I think that can be tweaked in a way that will work (i.e. maybe literally 'cutting' each page into separate and sequencial images so i can easily read in portrait mode) I tried with PDFRead (found here in the forums) but it leaves too much blank spaces.

Try PDF Scissors, described here.

Click Start, wait for the pages to load, one on top of the other so you can see what to crop. Select and crop about 1/2 a page of text. Duplicate that rectangle (copy-paste), and drag the second rectangle down to the lower half. Save.

You can do thirds as well, I assume (the rectangles are numbered, but so far I've only tried halves). If you don't get half on your first try, just delete the second rectangle, select the pointer tool, and drag the lower edge of the first rectangle up or down as needed, and repeat.

The Kindle World blog article also mentions BRISS, but I haven't tried that. Maybe I'll try it for even/odd page margin differences if I really need to squeeze every last margin out of a PDF, or if two-column results aren't good (I haven't tested two-column yet). But I've been very pleased so far using PDF Scissors.

bpugliese · 11-10-2010, 11:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jj2me

Try PDF Scissors, described here.

Click Start, wait for the pages to load, one on top of the other so you can see what to crop. Select and crop about 1/2 a page of text. Duplicate that rectangle (copy-paste), and drag the second rectangle down to the lower half. Save.

You can do thirds as well, I assume (the rectangles are numbered, but so far I've only tried halves). If you don't get half on your first try, just delete the second rectangle, select the pointer tool, and drag the lower edge of the first rectangle up or down as needed, and repeat.

The Kindle World blog article also mentions BRISS, but I haven't tried that. Maybe I'll try it for even/odd page margin differences if I really need to squeeze every last margin out of a PDF, or if two-column results aren't good (I haven't tested two-column yet). But I've been very pleased so far using PDF Scissors.

Looks promising. I'll try the program and post my experiences here.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Starko

I use Nitro PDF Pro to crop white space in PDFs. It actually has an option to "Remove Margins" automatically although better results can be achieved with manual cropping. Manual cropping is a little more involved but still quite manageable - You can apply your cropping setting to all, odd/even or selected pages. I found that after removing pretty much all of white space most (book) PDFs are really well readable in landscape orientation. And even portrait can be quite OK.

@barty What is duokan firmware? and where one can get it?

Hmm, I'll try this Nitro PDF. I've done something similar with PDF Tools, but who knows, maybe this 'Nitro' healps, worth trying anyway.

I believe this "duokan firmware" is an alternative firmware you can load to your kindle to enable some other features.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Barty

For PDF, I recommend the old paper and printer technology.

If your PDFs are reflow able, that is, they contain text and aren't just scanned images, you can try the duokan firmware which I hear does a better job. There's a big thread in the developer sub forum.

Old paper and printer is what I'm trying to avoid. Been using it for years and those big ugly printed books are too heavy

For reflowable PDFs, the conversion programs like calibre or even the amazon email conversion actually do a good job. The problem are thos big scanned bastards.

Thanks for the suggestions everyone. I'll post again after I tried these programs you mentioned.

tomsem · 11-10-2010, 01:06 PM

I tried PDF Scissors yesterday. It's somewhat promising and the UI looks nice, but in its current form calling it a 'beta' is generous.

I could not save a cropped PDF on my mac, for example - it brought up an Open dialog instead of a Save dialog, and the only thing I could do was quit the app without saving anything.
I'm also not fond of the fact that it is a web app: Java code loads from the internet and runs locally in the JVM. It's too slow to load up, can't be used when offline, and raises issues of trust/security (the code is also not signed). I would also be reluctant to install Java on Windows just to run this one app (Yet Another thing to update...).
It also needs to have at least ability to crop even/odd pages separately. Too many PDFs have wide margins on the 'binding edge', and are not suitable for one size fits all cropping. Ability to crop page ranges (in combination with even/odd filter) would be good also.

But there are a lot of other tools out there for cropping (and I agree with Starko that cropping is a key to a better PDF viewing experience on a 6" Kindle screen).

11-07-2010, 02:48 PM	#1
bpugliese Enthusiast Posts: 47 Karma: 10 Join Date: Nov 2010 Device: Kindle 3	Kindle 3 and PDFs Hello there. I bought a Kindle 3 recently and so far I'm loving it. Still, as everynthing is this life it isn't perfect and I'm struggling with some PDFs. I've read a bit in the forum about PDF conversion but couldn't find a definitive answer for a format that is more lilely to read without problems on kindle. So I would like to know if any of you has any trick or tip that you can share with me for reading heavily imaged PDFs (scanned books types). Here's what I've tried so far: - conversion to epub and mobi = total disaster - OCR = Painfull work, bad results on some books (i.e. books too image crowded, on which even after taking the texts and processing with OCR, leaves a mess and unreadable text + big images) - croping the margins of the .pdf to fit Kindle screen better = looked promissor in the beginning but ended up as a failure 'cause I wasn't able to turn the pdf pages into a resolution kindle wouldn't have to 'scale' them. Without that, it takes a lot of time to turn pages beacuse of the poor rendering speed in image heavy .pdfs So far, the 3rd option was the one I think that can be tweaked in a way that will work (i.e. maybe literally 'cutting' each page into separate and sequencial images so i can easily read in portrait mode) I tried with PDFRead (found here in the forums) but it leaves too much blank spaces. Anyway, guess I wrote too much, I would like to see if anyone else would like to discuss and maybe achieve a method to fit those big bad .pdfs on the small kindle screen

11-08-2010, 10:18 AM	#6
curstpriest Confused Posts: 402 Karma: 5538 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Bay Area Device: Kindle DXG	If you wait 6 mos, there are about 8 or so 10 in tablet PCs comming out in 2011 that have sun-viewable low power LCDs, that were on display at computex this year http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HAEB...next=1&index=1 tons of videos about computex Last edited by curstpriest; 11-08-2010 at 10:25 AM.

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11-07-2010, 02:51 PM	#2
desertgrandma Enjoying the show.... Posts: 14,270 Karma: 10462843 Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: Arizona Device: A K1, Kindle Paperwhite, an Ipod, IPad2, Iphone, an Ipad Mini & macAir	Welcome to MobileRead, bpugliese You've discovered what many of us here already know......the smaller screens just don't do a great job of viewing pdf's....... But others might chime in with help. Enjoy.

11-08-2010, 02:15 AM	#4
angelbleu Enthusiast Posts: 41 Karma: 10 Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Korea (South) Device: Blackberry Bold	While I love my Kindle, I've come to believe that "tablet PC"s like the iPad are probably the only way to go to read PDFs with current technology...

11-08-2010, 02:45 AM	#5
cybmole Wizard Posts: 3,720 Karma: 1759970 Join Date: Sep 2010 Device: none	I am waiting for the kindle DX to go on sale in UK, and at a lower price, then I'll get one for PDFs. right now it would be cheaper to buy a fully functional net book PC with a 10+ inch screen, than to import a kindle DX from USA

11-08-2010, 12:55 PM	#7
tomsem Grand Sorcerer Posts: 6,933 Karma: 27060151 Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: USA Device: iPhone 15PM, Kindle Scribe, iPad mini 6, PocketBook InkPad Color 3	I'd suggest is to make sure you have the latest update (3.0.3). It seems to do better with large PDFs than the earlier versions. I'm actually reading quite a few PDFs on K3. Works okay when the layout is simple. Wish they'd copy some PDF features from Sony, in particular the zoom mode that displays page quadrants for two-column formats, and reflow would be nice to have in the toolkit. But they could do all sorts of PDF feature enhancements, and still not really be good enough for some things.

11-08-2010, 07:11 PM	#8
bpugliese Enthusiast Posts: 47 Karma: 10 Join Date: Nov 2010 Device: Kindle 3	Hmm ill try updating to the latest firmware (when I find out exactly how I do it )

11-09-2010, 02:02 PM	#11
Barty doofus Posts: 2,546 Karma: 13089041 Join Date: Sep 2010 Device: Kobo Libra 2, Kindle Voyage	For PDF, I recommend the old paper and printer technology. If your PDFs are reflow able, that is, they contain text and aren't just scanned images, you can try the duokan firmware which I hear does a better job. There's a big thread in the developer sub forum.

11-10-2010, 07:56 AM	#12
Starko Zealot Posts: 123 Karma: 998177 Join Date: Aug 2010 Device: Kindle 3	I use Nitro PDF Pro to crop white space in PDFs. It actually has an option to "Remove Margins" automatically although better results can be achieved with manual cropping. Manual cropping is a little more involved but still quite manageable - You can apply your cropping setting to all, odd/even or selected pages. I found that after removing pretty much all of white space most (book) PDFs are really well readable in landscape orientation. And even portrait can be quite OK. @barty What is duokan firmware? and where one can get it?

11-10-2010, 01:06 PM	#15
tomsem Grand Sorcerer Posts: 6,933 Karma: 27060151 Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: USA Device: iPhone 15PM, Kindle Scribe, iPad mini 6, PocketBook InkPad Color 3	I tried PDF Scissors yesterday. It's somewhat promising and the UI looks nice, but in its current form calling it a 'beta' is generous. I could not save a cropped PDF on my mac, for example - it brought up an Open dialog instead of a Save dialog, and the only thing I could do was quit the app without saving anything. I'm also not fond of the fact that it is a web app: Java code loads from the internet and runs locally in the JVM. It's too slow to load up, can't be used when offline, and raises issues of trust/security (the code is also not signed). I would also be reluctant to install Java on Windows just to run this one app (Yet Another thing to update...). It also needs to have at least ability to crop even/odd pages separately. Too many PDFs have wide margins on the 'binding edge', and are not suitable for one size fits all cropping. Ability to crop page ranges (in combination with even/odd filter) would be good also. But there are a lot of other tools out there for cropping (and I agree with Starko that cropping is a key to a better PDF viewing experience on a 6" Kindle screen).

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