Rotated PDFs?

[readmore]

Any thoughts as to how this device will be for PDFs? What about rotating them on their side and reading them with the device in a landscape format?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by readmore

Any thoughts as to how this device will be for PDFs? What about rotating them on their side and reading them with the device in a landscape format?

Unless the Gen3 can zoom in and pan around, reading US Letter sized PDF will be just as bad on the Gen3 as it is on the Sony due to the screen being too small to fit without being too small to read. And the problem is that the tools available for dealing with PDF may not be any good if they convert to LRF. So your best bet is to stay away from PDF if the Gen3 will not zoom and pan.

[delphidb96]

It also rotates to landscape mode. Part of the problem with any PDF is if it uses A4 or larger format with 10pt-12pt font, when the portrait-mode image is loaded, it just reduces the size of the font down to unacceptable levels.

Of course, there are plenty of editing tools for re-sizing PDF text. For example, Serif's PagePlus allows a document to be edited completely and it is a relatively cheap program.

Personally, I'd use Acrobat Professional to save out the text and images in HTML format and run the document through BookDesigner to create a Mobi-compatible ebook. I've found few non-DRM'd PDF files which cannot be treated this way.

Derek

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Unless the Gen3 can zoom in and pan around, reading US Letter sized PDF will be just as bad on the Gen3 as it is on the Sony due to the screen being too small to fit without being too small to read. And the problem is that the tools available for dealing with PDF may not be any good if they convert to LRF. So your best bet is to stay away from PDF if the Gen3 will not zoom and pan.

[mercury7]

I'm new to eBooks, so I don't quite understand all of the format issues...

But, wouldn't the Mobipocket Creator be able to make HTML-based eBooks out of unencrypted PDFs? That would solve the problem for the non-DRMed files, right?

[delphidb96]

Mercury7,

As I usually create eReader .pdbs (I use eReader on my PC, laptop, tablet and Dell PDA), I don't know. But if Mobipocket Creator can extract from the PDF, sure, why not? Give it a try. I prefer Acrobat Pro as I have it as part of my Adobe Creative Suite 2, that's all.

Derek

Originally Posted by mercury7

I'm just getting into eBooks, so I don't quite understand all the formats...

But,have you guys tried the Mobipocket Creator? It looks like it would be able to directly make a HTML-based eBook from a PDF as long as the source file was unencrypted. This would work on non-DRMed files for the Cybook, right?

I'm just getting into eBooks, so I don't know much about all the formats...

But, wouldn't the Mobipocket Creator be able to make a HTML-based eBook from an unencrypted PDF?

I'm new to eBooks, so I don't quite understand all of the format issues...

But, wouldn't the Mobipocket Creator be able to make HTML-based eBooks out of unencrypted PDFs? That would solve the problem for the non-DRMed files, right?

[nathany]

Bookeen's specs say "Portrait and landscape mode"
http://bookeen.com/specs/ebook-specs.aspx

The Linux Devices reviews says "Enhanced layout quality (header, footer, margin)"
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS4810239944.html

So I'm hoping that means rotated letter/A4-size PDFs will work, and work really well. I have a number of DRM-free PDFs, and I can see myself buy even lengthier books in this format if I was using an E Ink screen.

Some sort of conversion before hand is a nice backup measure. Though I'd want to know that it works before purchasing the device. Looking forward to the reviews!

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by nathany

So I'm hoping that means rotated letter/A4-size PDFs will work, and work really well. I have a number of DRM-free PDFs, and I can see myself buy even lengthier books in this format if I was using an E Ink screen.

There is no way that A4 size PDFs are going to work "really well" on a screen as small as the CyBook has.

Work out the maths for yourself: a A4 page is 297 x 210 mm; the CyBook's screen is 120 x 90 mm. That means that, in order to display an A4 page "landscape" mode on the CyBook you'll be trying to view a 210mm wide page on a 120mm wide screen. You'll either have to "pan" it, or reduce it to 57% of its original size. Neither will make good reading.

It's just an unavoidable fact that there's no good way to view an A4 page on a screen with 1/6th the area of an A4 page.

[Michael]

[Bookeen] Answer on PDF

Hello Mobilereaders,

Concerning PDF on the Cybook gen 3.

First of all, PDF support can be absent from the first software release. I don't say that it will not be available for sure, we even have some chances to get it on time, but I prefer to be as realistic as possible.

As Harry told us, the Cybook Gen 3 screen is much smaller than a A4 page and displaying a non reflowable page on a 6" screen even with a SVGA (800x600) resolution is not an easy task.

To solve this issue, we propose three displaying modes:
- full page in portrait mode: some PDF can be read in this mode, especially the PDFs generated for small screen, like the feedbooks ones (great solution provided by Hadrien and Loic in France).
- half page in landscape mode: two 6" screen in this mode are almost the size of a A5 page (half A4) and the resolution becomes 800x1200 which begins to be enough for most of the PDFs. But as the screen remains quite small, your font size will also remain small and you will need to have a good sight to read genuinely in this mode. You will be able to jump from half-page to half-page with a small overlap, not to loose context.
- Quarter page in portrait mode: four 6" screen in this mode are almost the size of a A4 page and the resolution becomes 1200x1600 which is perfect for PDF files. You will be able to jump from quarter-page to quarter-page with a small overlap, again not to loose context.

As the Eink screen is quite slow, in mode 2 and 3 you won't be able to pan the PDF as we were able to do on the prvious Cybook (which runs a LCD screen).

Our main concern on the PDF is processing speed. We had had quite good benchmarks on our previous Cybook (running only at 66MHz) with our PDF reader, we hope to do better with the 200MHz of the new Cybook.

Best regards to all of you,

Michael Dahan
Bookeen

[HarryT]

Thanks for the useful information, Michael.

Are you able to give us any more information about the expected release date - are you still hopeful that you'll be able to start shipping by the end of this month?

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by Michael

[Bookeen] To solve this issue, we propose three displaying modes:

An option for margin cropping would improve the effective resolution. This could be for fixed margin sizes, or autocropping.

[Sebastiano]

Originally Posted by Michael

[Bookeen] First of all, PDF support can be absent from the first software release. I don't say that it will not be available for sure, we even have some chances to get it on time, but I prefer to be as realistic as possible.

Oh, I thought PDF-support would definitly be absent. Now, the Cybook sounds even better.



Sebastiano

[nathany]

Hi Michael,

Thanks very much for explaining things. I tend to read mostly non-fiction, a lot of which are available as DRM-free e-books (Pragmatic Programmer, etc.), which are of course A4/legal sized.

I was hoping for some sort of margin cropping as wallcraft mentioned. Not sure how that'd work. On a touch screen like the iPhone it's a matter of panning/zooming manually (but it's an even smaller screen without the benefits of E Ink).

I could look into some sort of conversion tool on my Mac, or wait for Adobe Digital Editions to make it's way onto E Ink devices. But perhaps the Cybook isn't the best solution for me right now... it looks perfect for reading casual/fiction.

Nathan.

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by nathany

I could look into some sort of conversion tool on my Mac, or wait for Adobe Digital Editions to make it's way onto E Ink devices.

Digital Editions may not be any better on an e-ink display than the Cybook's PDF support. The Windows MobiPocket Reader imports PDFs and exports a MOBI file, but reflowing standard PDFs is difficult and so the results vary from document to document. The other option is to convert the PDF to images off-line (e.g. on a Mac or PC). The newest tool is pdflrf, but its only output option is LRF for the Sony. There are other tools, see Rasterfarian, pdfread and pdflrf. A comparison. It should be easy to extend these tools to support other e-ink readers. There is, however, a limit to what can be done on a 6" screen.

[nathany]

The HanLin v3 reportedly handles the whole crop/rotate an A4 PDF, as per:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...t=12836&page=3

[zdevil]

Originally Posted by nathany

The HanLin v3 reportedly handles the whole crop/rotate an A4 PDF, as per:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...t=12836&page=3

Yes, it does have *some* cropping, and it works pretty well for the well-behaved PDFs, such as standard online electronic journal papers.