Need help on PRS-505

[prastiwari]

Hi All,

Just today I have purchased new Silver PRS-505 reader. I have seven days to test it & if I like it I will keep it with me else I will return it back to Sony.
I tried to transfer some PDF's to reader, but formating of PDF was not so good in reader. Formatting was like below:-
eg:-

"Feedbooks is probably the first platform who fully supported ePub, and all
of our
files (books, RSS feeds) are available in this format."

That is the line continuation is not proper. Also the firmaware version in my reader is "1.1.00.18040".

So just wanted to know what can I do so that above formatting will be proper in my reader? The 1.1.00.18041 is latest stable version of firmware or I should upgrade it to latest version?

Also what is difference between "PRS-505" (Silver) & "PRS-505R"(Red) version of this e-book reader from sony? Which one is better?

many thanks in advance for your valuable reply.

--Pras

[Indigo Ink]

Hi Pras

welcome to the forum.

I don't have a PRS so can't help you with some of the questions specifically, but can tell you that there is only one difference between the red and the silver PRS505 that is - the color so as to which one is better depends on which one goes with your decor

[Seabound]

Originally Posted by prastiwari

Hi All,

Just today I have purchased new Silver PRS-505 reader. I have seven days to test it & if I like it I will keep it with me else I will return it back to Sony.
I tried to transfer some PDF's to reader, but formating of PDF was not so good in reader. Formatting was like below:-
eg:-

"Feedbooks is probably the first platform who fully supported ePub, and all
of our
files (books, RSS feeds) are available in this format."

I've had the same experience with ePub and PDF formats. In one case, dialogues which were supposed to be on separate lines showed up in the same paragraph when I increased the font size. So I really try to avoid ePub and PDF.

What I do, and you can try, is I use calibre to change other formats (like mobi or prc) into the LRF format which I then transfer to my Sony Reader.

That is the line continuation is not proper. Also the firmaware version in my reader is "1.1.00.18040".

So just wanted to know what can I do so that above formatting will be proper in my reader? The 1.1.00.18041 is latest stable version of firmware or I should upgrade it to latest version?

Yes, this is the latest version.

Also what is difference between "PRS-505" (Silver) & "PRS-505R"(Red) version of this e-book reader from sony? Which one is better?

The only difference is the color.

many thanks in advance for your valuable reply.

--Pras

You're welcome.

[TetraKM]

I have had this problem - and it is always PDF's.

I use Calibre to convert to LRF - then see if the results are good - sadly due to how the PDF was constructed in the first place this often gives me the same result.

So I usually convert to a rich text format document then use calibre to convert to lrf.

This works for me in about 90 % of all wrongly formatted text.

TetraKM

[jaffab]

For me, PDFs are never very good for the same reason. The problem comes down to who created the PDF. I find it annoying when the original PDF page numbers and file URL (path) appears in the text of the book. Also, the PRS-505 does only a so-so job of working out the text flow.

I ended up creating my own Word template with an embeded VBA script which sorts it out for me. It has intelligent logic for word flow. I then change the font (Time Roman 15pt is the best for me), and saving into an RFT. All my books are now in RTF format. The books are then a joy to read. Fast to load, fast to page turn, easy on the eye at both small and medium size, and the text flow works.

With PDFs, the problem is that whilst a viewed PDF seems to have blocks of text, there can be a carrage return at the end of every line. So, taking a Richard Laymon book I have just finished converting (took 10 minutes), a paragraph which should read...

"Barney is the first to make the shocking discovery that the mummy's coffin has been broken open. But he doesn't have a chance to do anything about it. Amara is once again freed from the cramped confines of her coffin, free to walk the earth, free to stalk her prey. Free to kill. Nothing can satisfy her bloodlust. And no one can stop her. You cannot kill what is already dead."

Has extra CR's in the PDF, so actually appears as follows:

Barney is the first to make the shocking discovery that the mummy's
coffin has been broken open. But he doesn't have a chance to do anything
about it. Amara is once again freed from the cramped confines of her
coffin, free to walk the earth, free to stalk her prey. Free to kill.
Nothing can satisfy her bloodlust. And no one can stop her. You cannot
kill what is already dead.

The line breaks at the end of each sentence sometimes does not wrap to the next line when resized, or the 505 adds extra CRs where they are not required. this then makes for messy text which is hard to read. My word template macro looks for these extra CR's and removes them as required, which means that the text flows correctly.

[Slite]

Originally Posted by jaffab

For me, PDFs are never very good for the same reason. The problem comes down to who created the PDF. I find it annoying when the original PDF page numbers and file URL (path) appears in the text of the book. Also, the PRS-505 does only a so-so job of working out the text flow.

I ended up creating my own Word template with an embeded VBA script which sorts it out for me. It has intelligent logic for word flow. I then change the font (Time Roman 15pt is the best for me), and saving into an RFT. All my books are now in RTF format. The books are then a joy to read. Fast to load, fast to page turn, easy on the eye at both small and medium size, and the text flow works.

With PDFs, the problem is that whilst a viewed PDF seems to have blocks of text, there can be a carrage return at the end of every line. So, taking a Richard Laymon book I have just finished converting (took 10 minutes), a paragraph which should read...

"Barney is the first to make the shocking discovery that the mummy's coffin has been broken open. But he doesn't have a chance to do anything about it. Amara is once again freed from the cramped confines of her coffin, free to walk the earth, free to stalk her prey. Free to kill. Nothing can satisfy her bloodlust. And no one can stop her. You cannot kill what is already dead."

Has extra CR's in the PDF, so actually appears as follows:

Barney is the first to make the shocking discovery that the mummy's
coffin has been broken open. But he doesn't have a chance to do anything
about it. Amara is once again freed from the cramped confines of her
coffin, free to walk the earth, free to stalk her prey. Free to kill.
Nothing can satisfy her bloodlust. And no one can stop her. You cannot
kill what is already dead.

The line breaks at the end of each sentence sometimes does not wrap to the next line when resized, or the 505 adds extra CRs where they are not required. this then makes for messy text which is hard to read. My word template macro looks for these extra CR's and removes them as required, which means that the text flows correctly.

How do you open a PDF document with Word? Did I miss something?

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by prastiwari

Hi All,

Just today I have purchased new Silver PRS-505 reader. I have seven days to test it & if I like it I will keep it with me else I will return it back to Sony.
I tried to transfer some PDF's to reader, but formating of PDF was not so good in reader. Formatting was like below:-
eg:-

"Feedbooks is probably the first platform who fully supported ePub, and all
of our
files (books, RSS feeds) are available in this format."

That is the line continuation is not proper. Also the firmaware version in my reader is "1.1.00.18040".

So just wanted to know what can I do so that above formatting will be proper in my reader? The 1.1.00.18041 is latest stable version of firmware or I should upgrade it to latest version?

Also what is difference between "PRS-505" (Silver) & "PRS-505R"(Red) version of this e-book reader from sony? Which one is better?

many thanks in advance for your valuable reply.

--Pras

That's a problem if you try to reflow a PDF file: avoid using PDF files if you'd like to change the size of the font directly from the device. In this case, use LRF or ePub instead.

[jaffab]

Originally Posted by Slite

How do you open a PDF document with Word? Did I miss something?

I have a copy of PDF2Word (http://www.verypdf.com/pdf2word/index.html). It costs about $39, which is cheap if it means free books.

[Slite]

Originally Posted by jaffab

I have a copy of PDF2Word (http://www.verypdf.com/pdf2word/index.html). It costs about $39, which is cheap if it means free books.

Ah, ok, you convert first from PDF to DOC/RTF, and THEN run it through your "thingy" I see Any chance of getting a looksee on your Word template?

Have a few PDF's myself I would like to transform into something "usefull"

[jaffab]

Originally Posted by Slite

Ah, ok, you convert first from PDF to DOC/RTF, and THEN run it through your "thingy" I see Any chance of getting a looksee on your Word template?

Have a few PDF's myself I would like to transform into something "usefull"

Not a problem. The template is available at

http://www.touchstone-systems.co.uk/eBookCreator.dot

The steps I go through to get the books just as I want them is as follows:

1) Get hold of your dodgy PDF book
2) Run PDF2Word, and save as an RTF
3) Open the RTF, and open the DOT (you now have two word screens open)
4) Go to the RTF, CTRL+A to select all text (it ignores the headers and footers), CTRL+C to copy
5) Go to the eBookCreater.DOT screen and paste in the text
6) Now, if the text has page numbers in it, Goto the menu Tools > Macro> Visual Basic Edit, and change the code there (procedure A_One_Off_Quick_Fix, it should be the one that opens up) to change the format of the Page number - Some books just have the page number, some have "Page xx", some have "Page xx of yy" - just change the Page string in the .Text line to the correct format. xx is the selected page number (1 to 600), and run the amended script by pressing the green triangle to remove the page numbers. (As an example, if the book has "Page 5 of 160" in it, change the line to ".Text = "^pPage " & xx & "of 160^p^p^p"). Now close the code editor screen to return to the book.
7) To sort out all the formating, word wraps, press the last menu icon (Format Book). Depending on the size of the book, this will take between 1 and 6 minutes
8) What I then do, depending on the layout of the book, is do a find and replace, change "^p^p^p^p^p^p" to "^p^p" - do this as many times as there are replacements - this gets rid of big gaps between chapters
9) For my eyes, I then select all the text and change the font to Time Roman, 15pt (good size for small and medium reading).
10) Next, press the AutoChapter - this makes chapter headings big and bold
11) Goto the top, hightlight the Book title, Author etc, and as each is highlighted, press the corrisponding buttons on the menu (Title, Author, etc).
12) Goto File > properties, and if you want, change the file Title and Author - this is what the Sony 505 uses to index the book for reading
13) Save the file as a new RFT
14) Load onto the Sony, and enjoy.

[TetraKM]

I assume because the file is a .dot not a .dotx that this only works in word 2003/xp.

I also use PDF2Word which is a very good litle program - I just change the settings in the background to give me the text they way I like to see it.

making sure I save the end result as an RTF. After that I then move onto calibre and use the usual bumpf of adding covers, and converting to LRF.

Overall I get a good result.

Tried you template on Word 2003 and found that it was very useful on occasion - so nice work - but it can on occasion change the formatting of speech which means I have to scan the book before reading it. I personally find this a bit off putting as you can sometimes see things ahead of time that you don't want to know - books for me are all about the surprise and the flow

[BlackVoid]

Use PDF Cropper to remove page numbering from the PDF, then convert with BookDesigner to LRF format.
The results are very nice.

[TetraKM]

I have not tried the book designer yet - need time to study it - although I bet there is a forum which gives me a step by step guide

[lannp]

Originally Posted by jaffab

Not a problem. The template is available at

http://www.touchstone-systems.co.uk/eBookCreator.dot

The steps I go through to get the books just as I want them is as follows:

1) Get hold of your dodgy PDF book
2) Run PDF2Word, and save as an RTF
3) Open the RTF, and open the DOT (you now have two word screens open)
4) Go to the RTF, CTRL+A to select all text (it ignores the headers and footers), CTRL+C to copy
5) Go to the eBookCreater.DOT screen and paste in the text
6) Now, if the text has page numbers in it, Goto the menu Tools > Macro> Visual Basic Edit, and change the code there (procedure A_One_Off_Quick_Fix, it should be the one that opens up) to change the format of the Page number - Some books just have the page number, some have "Page xx", some have "Page xx of yy" - just change the Page string in the .Text line to the correct format. xx is the selected page number (1 to 600), and run the amended script by pressing the green triangle to remove the page numbers. (As an example, if the book has "Page 5 of 160" in it, change the line to ".Text = "^pPage " & xx & "of 160^p^p^p"). Now close the code editor screen to return to the book.
7) To sort out all the formating, word wraps, press the last menu icon (Format Book). Depending on the size of the book, this will take between 1 and 6 minutes
8) What I then do, depending on the layout of the book, is do a find and replace, change "^p^p^p^p^p^p" to "^p^p" - do this as many times as there are replacements - this gets rid of big gaps between chapters
9) For my eyes, I then select all the text and change the font to Time Roman, 15pt (good size for small and medium reading).
10) Next, press the AutoChapter - this makes chapter headings big and bold
11) Goto the top, hightlight the Book title, Author etc, and as each is highlighted, press the corrisponding buttons on the menu (Title, Author, etc).
12) Goto File > properties, and if you want, change the file Title and Author - this is what the Sony 505 uses to index the book for reading
13) Save the file as a new RFT
14) Load onto the Sony, and enjoy.

Hi. I tried your eBookCreator.dot following your notes above but the macro always hangs my Word 2003. It did a lot of processing and then just hangs: "Not responding" Word app. I tried this on one Dell laptop and one Dell desktop. Both XP Pro. I just load the RTF and click on "Format Book." What did I do wrong? I am experienced VB programmer, but rarely use VBA.

[lannp]

Originally Posted by lannp

Hi. I tried your eBookCrfeator.dot following your notes above but the macro always hangs my Word. It did a lot of processing and then just hangs: "Not responding" Wrod appl. I tried this on one Dell laptop and one Dell desktop. Both XP Pro. I just load the RTF and click on "Format Book." What did I do wrong? I am experienced VB programmer, but rarely use VBA.

Forgot to say I use Word 2003. I have VB6 on both PCs. I just got a PRS-505. I played with an Iliad for about 6 months couple years back, same problem with PDFs.