Yet another PDF to LRF converter

[ambertape]

gimmmo,

The only thing I accomplished in using the GUI 0.99 is I finally got L-large font but it wasn't very good. Every setting showed me that my eyes will get worse trying to read any converted pdf using the GUI version of pdflrf program. I am ready to try just the dos version and will appreciate your assistance in trying to do it correctly. I am not sure I have the correct file to try it and await your reply whenever you can find some time.

Maybe you or someone will try and convert for me a pdf file readable on the PRS500. Please go to maximumpc.com and scroll down to the last line on the page, right side. There you will see DF Archive. Double-click on this link, download any monthly issue of Maximumpc magazine, convert it for me, see how it looks, and then please show me how it looks. Perhaps you could send me the converted file to look at it on my PRS500.

Thanks. I appreciate all who have help me so far.

I feel SONY has bungled their introduction of the Ereader because they should of done their homework in setting up appropiate software to automatically do conversions of standard pdf files into a lrf or pdf file format by making it simple, not telling one to use Acrobat Professional or PDFCreator. I tried many times with careful setups to follow the instructions of Sony and was unsuccessful. My 30-day trial is up and I WILL NOT BUY a $500.00 program to work on a 300.00 EReader. The time I spent in trying all these schemes to me is worthy of the best SONY computer system and maybe more to give to me as a present from Sony in appreciation.

I think that the time I spent trying to appreciate the pluses of the Ereader was that I and many others were and are Beta testers for a product that misrepresents the inovations and quality of other past Sony products. I own other Sony products and they work great but this product needs overhauling.I sincerely hope that the product manager of Sony reads my comments. I hope he passes my comments onto their superiors.

Perhaps it will wake up Sony to appreciate the comments of their customers and improve their products and do diligent homework before launching the second version of the EReader because the earlier version was unsuccessful. I give credit to Sony that they tried a second time but I cannot even think of recommending this product to any of my friends.

Maybe Sony will vindicate themselves and I and others will be able to appreciate this product in the future.

I look forward to trying the DOS version if and when I can get the right program. I am not sure where to download it or do I have the correct program.

I read that Sony might release a long awaited upgrade for the current PRS505. Everyone also hopes that there will be a substantial upgrade for the PRS500. Should there not be a upgrade for the PRS500 at the end of February (rumour) then it is time for me to sell my PRS500 and try and forget all the time I wasted on this product that has merit but isn't worthy of having the Sony name on this product.

I guess you can see my frustrations. I think I will spend my extra time on learning to use Linux.

Ambertape

[Deputy-Dawg]

ambertape,
I am sorry you are so bitter. But what you want to do probably cannot be achieved short of having a device that will display the pages of the magazine at least at 100% of the size that they were made, and perhaps larger.

Why? You ask. It is really quite simple the pdf files of the magazine are not reflowable text but are in essence photographs of the pages. In addition there is no consistent format to the pages so that programs like pdflrf haven't a prayer of working except on a page by page basis. That is to say you would have to extract each page individually and process each one of them somewhat differently. There just is no good way of fitting a static image of one size on a smaller screen other than making the image smaller, and as you have noted the human eyes are not built to deal with such a small image.

Bottom line is that the Sony Reader, and other such devices are intended to display text based information, not photographic though they struggle in trying do so.

[superduper]

Im new to this forum and just bought the prs500. Like many i was disapointed that it did not play PDF's out of the box. So far i really like The PDFLRF Converter. Its clear and simple but the magnification function does not work. Does anyone have a manual o the program as im expecting it to be a setting.

Thank you for any sugestions you might have.

Super

[Flameeyes]

Hi,

I've been told to look at your software to better convert some PDF files I have into lrf. Unfortunately it does crash here on my box (segmentation fault), and as the executable is stripped of debug information, I can't really debug it (I'm a developer myself, so I do know my way around these things).

I can't seem to be able to find the source of your program, but you says yourself you're using poppler for reading the PDF file; poppler is released under GNU General Public License version 2, which means that if you write an application using it, you need to release that under GNU General Public License version 2 license too, which requires providing the sources as well as binaries.

Please, as you were able to use Free Software to implement your program, don't ignore the license, and provide the same freedom to your users. Beside, I'm sure that if you do release your sources, you'll soon have more contributors, patches and fixes. I offer myself to help as soon as you do release the sources, I'll analyse the code, provide patches where necessary, and work toward including your software in at least one Linux distribution (Gentoo Linux, which I'm a developer of).

[RWood]

The Sony implements PDF just fine. The problem is that it is hard to read A4/letter sized PDF files on a 6" screen. For PDFs designed for the Reader it works like a charm -- I have a bunch and they are great.

For others, pdflrf has been a joy to use. (I have only used it in the GUI once and the rest in command line mode.) It is excellent for converting CBZ files.

[superduper]

My whole ebook collection is in A4 format. And pdflrf has been the best thing i have come across but im wondering if my settings are wrong.

Is it posible to make a pdf in A4 format into a size that the PRS500 can read and scale in size (by pressing the size button and geting the same resuls as the the books that come with the PRS500)?

If yes, How can i do this? Is pdflrf the right program to use?

Thank you

[lucabusi]

Really a great job!
I'd need help on avoiding horizontal page cutting: I have many djvu ebooks which size is a little bigger than the prs monitor. when I convert them every page is splitted in two (horizontally) so I have 2 resulting pages one with 90% of the original page and the second with 10%. I would like to force the creation of one single lrf page per djvu page. Hereafter you can find one of the command I tried.

pdflrf -ns --rotation=0 --overlap=0.005 -f 10 -l 11 -i enrico_fermi.djvu -o testpage.lrf -t "test1"
Processing page: 10, Progress: 50
Processing page: 10, Progress: 50
Processing page: 11, Progress: 100
Processing page: 11, Progress: 100
(see attached file)
as you can see every page is processed two times and I get two different pages. Is there something trivial I missed? I tried to play with the output sizes and the fit parameter, but I didn't get any different result.
thank you in advance,

[ambertape]

Originally Posted by Deputy-Dawg

ambertape,
I am sorry you are so bitter. But what you want to do probably cannot be achieved short of having a device that will display the pages of the magazine at least at 100% of the size that they were made, and perhaps larger.

Why? You ask. It is really quite simple the pdf files of the magazine are not reflowable text but are in essence photographs of the pages. In addition there is no consistent format to the pages so that programs like pdflrf haven't a prayer of working except on a page by page basis. That is to say you would have to extract each page individually and process each one of them somewhat differently. There just is no good way of fitting a static image of one size on a smaller screen other than making the image smaller, and as you have noted the human eyes are not built to deal with such a small image.

Bottom line is that the Sony Reader, and other such devices are intended to display text based information, not photographic though they struggle in trying do so.

Deputy-Dawg,

Thank you for investigating my problem. Aside from trying pdflrf in Gui form, I even tried Adobe Acrobat 8.0 Professional to see if there was a way to select text globally and make all the text 8 pt. but after going thru Sony instruction making a 3.5 X 4.5 size which I was able to do, I wasn't able to globally chnge the font size. If I was able to do that then I might be able to read the text of the magazine which I am really interested in. If the graphic isn't clear, I can live with it but it is the text I am concerned with.

I think Sony could ask Adobe to make a simple conversion program from Acrobat that would convert a 8.5 X 11.0" pdf into a 3.5 X 4.5" format and make the text legible. If text is legible then The PRS500 or 505 ereader is a desirable device to own. I bought it on this premise more than buying ebooks to read. Maybe I will get around to it sometime in the future.

If you could help me control the font size globally in Acrobat it will be greatly appreciated. Perhaps some other people might find this useful too.

I thank you for your time.

Ambertape

[Deputy-Dawg]

Ambertape,
It is not a problem that either Sony or Adobe can address. The problem arrises from the choice the publisher of the magazine made when he chose to publish the web edition in a format that is essentially a series of photographs, not text.

Consider, how would you put a paper copy of the magazine into the reader. Your choices would be rather limited. You could type in all the text, now that would surely be a labor of love. You might scan it in using OCR software which is rather expensive, and not 100% reliable. Well the choices you have for the web version of the magazine are pretty much limited to same choices. I would not, indeed could not type in the content. And I certainly am unprepared to hold my breath waiting for Sony, or any other reader maker to incorporate an OCR program into the software of the reader.

The only other suggestion that comes to mind would be a reader that has enough real estate to properly display the pages.

[ambertape]

Deputy-Dawg,

Thanks for your answers. Is there another reader that has enough real estate to properly display the pages ? I am waiting for Sony to give me my password that I forgot, then I will first download their eclassics and see how it works on the Sony Ereader.

I see that Sony posted a update for the PRS505 but not the PRS500.

I appreciate the time you took to investigate my problems. Have a nice day.

Ambertape

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Deputy-Dawg

Ambertape,
It is not a problem that either Sony or Adobe can address. The problem arrises from the choice the publisher of the magazine made when he chose to publish the web edition in a format that is essentially a series of photographs, not text.

Consider, how would you put a paper copy of the magazine into the reader. Your choices would be rather limited. You could type in all the text, now that would surely be a labor of love. You might scan it in using OCR software which is rather expensive, and not 100% reliable. Well the choices you have for the web version of the magazine are pretty much limited to same choices. I would not, indeed could not type in the content. And I certainly am unprepared to hold my breath waiting for Sony, or any other reader maker to incorporate an OCR program into the software of the reader.

The only other suggestion that comes to mind would be a reader that has enough real estate to properly display the pages.

Presumably the publisher has the source in electronic format, not just images. The text should be reflowable. Of course a magazine has lots of images so the images must be easily viewable and if advertising is included (likely) it is often an image. Color is particularly important for some magazines so for this there is no suitable reader currently available but in some magazines the iLiad would appropriate. A good cbr/cbz capability would be a way to go with zoom and pan for images within the magazine. If the magazine is really like the paper one then hyperlinks to continuing article with a return is very important but for best reader experience the continuation should just be inline.

A double page spread with pan and zoom should be provided for many magazines.

Dale

[Deputy-Dawg]

Ambertape,
On the question of hardware, I think that Dale has accurately summed up the question,

As for Sony's update. That update was not for the 505 it was for the library (connect) software so that it would work with the 505. There has been speculation about an update for the 505 being forthcoming but it has not, to my knowledge, been released yet.

[fredcatsmommy]

I must be dense but I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I was able to convert the pdf to a zip with all the pngs, but am apparently not running the png2pdf script properly. Can someone walk me through with very clear directions? thanks!

[hdtvman]

Thank you very much for this PDF to LRF converter. I was very disappointed when I loaded PDF files on my Sony only to find that I couldn't 'see' them.

A quick conversion using your tools solved my problems!

hdtvman,

Royal Oak, Mi

[ambertape]

HDTVMAN,

which program did you use for conversion that you were successful in ?