Some questions from a doubtful buyer

[satanicoPlan]

Hi all!

I'm willing to enter the marvelous world of e-reading but of course, I'm plenty of doubts, questions and misunderstood concepts.

Here go some of them, about the Sony Reader PRS-505.

When reading a PDF:
- Is there any zoom button?
- Does the reader fit the page to the screen?
- If not, can I scroll the page?

I want to use the reader for reading technical books about programming such as this:

http://www.hibernate.org/elqNow/elqR..._reference.pdf

Could anybody tell me whether is it readable (in landscape)? A picture would be very helpful

I don't mind if it's necessary to convert the PDFs to another format. I'm only trying to find out if I'll be able to read them or not.

I have a Palm TX - which a smaller screen, about 4" - and I can read PDFs decently thanks to scrolling. Would be better with the 6" screen the Sony reader has?

These are the so simple questions that will decide if I buy it or not...

Thank you all!

[HarryT]

Generally speaking, you will not be able to read a PDF formatted for an A4/Letter page on any device with a 6" screen. This is the "fault" of the PDF format, not the Reader; PDF is the worst possible choice for an e-Book format - it was not intended to be used for this purpose, and it's not at all good at it.

There are tools available to reformat PDFs for the Reader; they work by, for example, removing margins and chopping pages in half, but the results are very mixed.

If reading PDFs is your main reason for getting a reader, the only sensible choice at present is the iRex iLiad. It has a larger screen and does a pretty reasonable job of displaying PDFs without reformatting. It is, however, double the price of the Sony Reader.

[JSWolf]

I have to agree that reading PDF without editing the PDF the iLiad is the best eink device currently available for this task.

But if you do not mind editing your PDF, you can get a 505 and use pdflrf to make your PDF more readable. Lots of people (myself included) have had very good success with pdflrf for reading PDF.

[jnash]

It's really hard to get an idea of what something looks like from the discussions here on the forum. I decided to try and give a concrete example. I downloaded the Hibernate documentation you linked to and converted the PDF to a Sony e-book LRF file using free software available elsewhere on this forum (PDFLRF). This gave me two files, the original PDF file and an LRF file.

The way PDFLRF works is to render each page of the PDF as an image, trim off white space such as margins, rotate the images 90 degrees so they display on the e-reader in landscape mode and give the widest possible page width and, finally, cut the images in as intelligent a way as possible so each image is the correct size for the e-reader. It then collects all those images into the LRF file. The LRF file created by PDFLRF is 510 pages long (the PDF was something like 229 pages).

I then copied both files to the e-reader and looked at them. The e-reader can rotate its display by 90 degrees at the push of a button so I looked at the PDF in portrait and landscape mode. The PDF in portrait was essentially unreadable. The font used is already quite thin and when it is scaled from 8.5x11 to 3.5x4.75 everything is just too small to read.

I rotated the display to landscape mode. This was much better. You can actually read the text though it is still quite thin "spidery". Attached is an image (pdf.jpg) of what it looks like.

I then took a look at the LRF version (lrf.jpg). This is very readable and I have no problem recommending the e-reader to read this particular document. Notice that it is automatically in landscape mode and it no longer has extraneous white space on the margins.

There are a couple of things that bare pointing out. First, If you are trying to use the document on the e-reader as a reference instead of "light reading" then you will be interested in the table of contents. In this case you might find the PDF easier to work with since the page numbering of the document actually matches with the TOC. On the other hand, the LRF file will display the printed page number when you view that section of the text so you could guess at the approximate LRF page and then scroll forward or backward at most one or two pages to see exactly where you are in the document.

Second, the e-reader has to work a bit to render each page of the PDF. I have found that sometimes page-flips in a PDF document are fraction of a second slower than when viewing an LRF.

Third, the code example blocks in this PDF have a non-white background. This makes the code blocks essentially impossible to read in the PDF mode because the black of the font and the gray of the background come out too similar when viewed on the reader.

All in all I wouldn't hesitate to use my e-reader to read this document as in an LRF format. I have read other scientific journal articles in the same way and it has not been a problem. My only complaint is that occasionally I find that I want to look back one or two paragraphs but I find that I have to page back. This isn't a big deal though and it is certainly a lot better than hauling around 229 pages of loose leaf as in this example!

-Jon

[astra]

I think the question should be how often would you need to convert pdfs. If it is an occasional requirement, such as 1 pdf per....2 weeks? Maybe it is OK. If it is the main type of your reading material, I am willing to bet that you will get tired of permanent task added to your daily life - converting pdfs to lrf. Moreover, I have encountered some pdfs that cannot be converted straight forward. Lately I have found the reason, however, it didn't make convertion any faster.
For example: I had a pdf file - 776 pages.
When I tried to convert it using PDFLRF, after a few seconds it would quit. Just quit, almost no traces left except lrf file 0 size. I thought maybe it is too long, so I tried to do it 1/2-1/2. Didn't help. After a long session of try and trial, I figured out the problem. The pdf file consisted of 3 parts + some sort of prologue 5-10 pages in the beginning. Every part started with a page with the name of the part followed by a completely blank page. If I am not mistaken, the blank page caused pdflrf quit (if I am mistaken, then it was a page with the name of the part). Since I didn't need the prologue, I had to make three lrf files - 1 lrf for every part and excluding the problematic page.
How many pdfs like that can you encounter if you are planning to use the reader mostly for pdfs? No one knows and I am quite sure it would be very frastrating if instead of 2 or 3 clicks with the mouse, then leaving your PC for....5-20 minutes, then come back and find out it has done nothing, then try to find the problem etc.....
IMHO - it is not the right solution. It is a good program for an occasional use, but I would not rely on this method if I needed to read pdfs daily.
iRex iLiad is the only solution for today.

[rtmichael]

I do not have a reader yet....It is ordered. I've been playing around with the numerous solutions for reading PDF's posted here. I have had, what I think, is good luck by reprinting a PDF to a 6"x4" format then using book designer to convert it to an lrf. The results look good in eBook Library on my PC. Can anyone comment on the results of this method on the actual reader?

Thanks

This forum is GREAT!

[JSWolf]

If it looks good in Ebook Library, then it should look good in the 505. Ebook Library does a very good job displaying just what the reader will display.