converting PDF to ePub tips

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by michaelbr

It seems Abby is only for Windows, I gave up Windows few years back.

You gave up the best OS for dealing with eBooks.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by michaelbr

Are you offering your service? Or is there a tool to do that?

You have to do it yourself and there is no tool other then your eyes.

[JSWolf]

No matter what OCR software is used or what word processor, there are still going to be errors and you'll still need to A/B compare. After the OCR, there will be a lot less errors.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

No matter what OCR software is used or what word processor, there are still going to be errors and you'll still need to A/B compare. After the OCR, there will be a lot less errors.

A/B Compare = Look at both with the mk1 eyeballs. No computer comparison is useful.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

A/B Compare = Look at both with the mk1 eyeballs. No computer comparison is useful.

That is correct! No regex or any other computer code can fix all errors that are due to converting.

[michaelbr]

Originally Posted by DNSB

The tool used to do that is your Mark 1 eyeball. I suspect that if you want someone else to use their eyeballs on your behalf, it will get expensive.

You will have to bring up both the ePub and PDF on your screen and check line by line for differences.

Thanks, that's what I suspected.

[michaelbr]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

You gave up the best OS for dealing with eBooks.

I know, but Windows gave me too much trouble, thinking in having a dual boot, will see.

[michaelbr]

Originally Posted by retiredbiker

If you use LibreOffice Writer to edit the text, do the links for footnotes, endnotes and so on there. They will convert nicely into epub using the Calibre conversion. I find it much easier to make the links in Writer rather than in the epub editor.

Thanks for this tip, will give it a try later, since there are some test I have to do with LibreOffice.

[michaelbr]

Originally Posted by retiredbiker

I use Ubuntu.

For OCR, try OCRFeeder as a front end to tesseract. Tesseract is very accurate given a good image. I do a page at a time, defining the text area manually. It can then handle multiple columns, advertisements, "continued on page 99" and so on. OCRFeeder is very good at connecting the lines into correct paragraphs, dealing with end-of-line hyphens, and so on.

Might seem slow, but this as actually the quick part of the process...you will have to proof read and correct no matter what.

Pdftopng will get images out of pdfs, that works better than OCRing the pdf itself.

ImageMagick can tame image files that are too large and slow down tesseract. Scan Taylor Advanced and Unpaper may be useful; I find them black magic, but I use them if needed.

If you want to try and use existing text, pdftohtml will sometimes fail while pdftotext will work. No idea why. If you use the pdftotext, try the --layout option and get ready for a lot of regex to tame the spacing.

Thanks for these tips, will try to install these tools and learn/try it.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

You gave up the best OS for dealing with eBooks.

For you.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

For you.

Not just me.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Not just me.

But not everybody.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

But not everybody.

More so then not.

[Turtle91]

Jon… didn’t you have a penguin as your image for years?!?! Lol

Regardless… doesn’t matter what OS you use. Find tools you like and learn to use them.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

Jon… didn’t you have a penguin as your image for years?!?! Lol

Regardless… doesn’t matter what OS you use. Find tools you like and learn to use them.

A number of tools are Windows only or easier to use on Windows.

Kovid has said that Linux is a small number of users of calibre yet more support issues then Windows.