Converting pdf to mobi question

[highstream]

calibre did a very effective job of converting a pdf to mobi, to read on a Kindle. A question: is there any way to edit out the text and image(?) between pages, as seen in the screenshot (the "Yuan Ban..." comes from using the translation option)? The number on the upper left - Di 2 - is the page number, but it's not important. Thanks,

[eschwartz]

It will require a bit of work:

Sticky: Read this before Posting PDF Questions

There are page numbers, headers, or footers in my output

You need to use Calibre's Search and Replace feature when converting from pdf in order to remove any text you don't want. These require the use of a search syntax called regular expressions. If you are intimidated by regular expressions, many Windows users have reported that Mobipocket creator is a good alternative to use to do the initial pdf conversion. Use Mobipocket Creator to convert the pdf to the .mobi format, and then use Calibre to convert from mobi to your final desired format.

I cropped the headers/footers from my pdf with another tool, but Calibre still converts them

Most pdf cropping utilities only change the visible page boundaries of the pdf, they don't actually eliminate the text data.

You need to find a utility which both crops AND deletes hidden text. Very few tools do this - Adobe Acrobat has an option to 'remove hidden text' while optimizing pdfs which can facilitate this. The alternative is to use Calibre's search and replace function to delete the headers, or use Sigil after conversion to epub.

[highstream]

Thanks. My oversight. I had looked at the Search and Replace tab under Convert Books, but misunderstood the phrase "Regular Expressions," as it's a technical term for what in plain language means repeating expressions. That faq on PDFs helped, to a point.

I tried Mobipocket Creator, but it doesn't appear to recognize pdf's.

Ok, one of the new screenshots below shows how far I've come from the one in the OP; the other shows the underlying code in the PDF. The larger number is the chapter, which stays. The two pieces I've yet to figure out how to code as regular expressions are the small Chinese character and the number that follows (page), and the large graphic (below in the coding). For the first, getting rid of the Chinese character is no problem, but my attempts to get rid of the page numbers with brackets e.g., [0-9], have failed - and I'm afraid of that messing with the Chapter numbers. For the graphic, img src="index-1_1.jpg gets rid of one, but I'm not sure how to code an expression for all of them. Suggestions welcome. Thanks,

[eschwartz]

Perhaps a regex tutorial can help you get more of an idea how to code them. I've always found this site to be extremely helpful. http://www.regular-expressions.info/

img src="index-\d+_\d+.jpg

will catch all the numbers.

\d represents a set of [0-9], or any number. The plus repeats it one or more times. \d+ represents any non-decimal number of arbitrary length.

[eschwartz]

If you copy-paste the whole header-footer code here, in [CODE][/CODE] tags, I can help you arrive at a suitable regex. I am not sure where the page numbers with brackets are, I don't see any in the screenshot.

[BetterRed]

@highstream - FWIW - With Mobicreator don't use the File menu, start the program and drag drop the PDF onto the first screen, or click Import From Existing File->Adobe PDF.

BR

[highstream]

Thanks for the examples! The brackets are used in examples on both the regular expression faqs, before getting to more general expressions using \d and such.

Your image coding got rid of all those except the one on the cover page - no big deal. For the page numbers, following your example I tried "第 \d+" and that worked!

It'd be nice to get chapters coded so that they are recognized by the forward and back buttons on the Kindle, but I imagine that's asking too much given the current state of pdf to mobi conversion. Many thanks,

[highstream]

BetterRed, Thanks, I missed that. Gave Mobicreator Adobe PDF conversion a try. Unless I'm missing something, in this case the result left a lot to be desired compared to a direct conversion with calibre.

[eschwartz]

You can manually build a ToC with the ToC editor. Once you have a ToC, the back/forth buttons will work.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by highstream

BetterRed, Thanks, I missed that. Gave Mobicreator Adobe PDF conversion a try. Unless I'm missing something, in this case the result left a lot to be desired compared to a direct conversion with calibre.

@highstream - there's not much you can miss in MobiCreator, there are no tweaks or adjustments that I can think of - its a WYGIATI tool

I suspect Kovid has done quite a lot of work on the PDF-Input PI since that PDF Read This First sticky was written,

BR

WYGIATI - what you get is all there is

[LadyKate]

I have found mobipocket creator to be fairly good at conversion and removal of headers and footers.

Due to the variety of ways pdf files are created, it is very likely that any pdf conversion will need to be "tweaked". The conversion program used is limited by the quality of the pdf that it is trying to convert.