Best dedicated ebook device for cbrs?

[nrapallo]

Originally Posted by GavinK151

Hi!

PDFread is very promising for reading CBRs on the Cybook, one thing I find odd however is that selecting the prc-mobi profile results in the pages having a huge white border round them.

I have tried defining the width and height manually but I get some odd results when I do this, namely I get the pages chopped up oddly.

I was wondering, are the profiles stored anywhere in editable form? I had a look but could not see them as I was hoping I could manually tweak the profile settings directly rather than via the gui...

cheers!

I saw that too! While you can change the source and re-compile the thing, it is easier to use the dos command or GUI to test your various sizes out.

BTW, in the source dir, in common.py, the 'mobi-prc' Profile is defined as:

  'prc-mobi'  : {'hres': 520, 'vres':640, 'mode': 'landscape', 'rotate':'right', 'colors': 4,   'colorspace': 'gray', 'format': 'prc' },

At the command prompt, if you type "pdfread --list-profiles", it produces this output (only mobi-prc specific parts shown):

[prc-mobi]
  rotate   = right
  hres     = 520
  format   = prc
  vres     = 640
  colorspace = gray
  colors   = 4
  mode     = landscape
 
[prc-mobi-p]
  rotate   = none
  hres     = 520
  format   = prc
  vres     = 640
  colorspace = gray
  colors   = 4
  mode     = portrait

Typing this code below, at the command-prompt, will print the fourth (4th) page of the comic book Piper.cbz using the default 'mobi-prc' profile:

"C:\Program Files\PDFRead\bin\pdfread" -p prc-mobi -i cbz --first-page 4 --last-page 4 -t "#504 Pied Piper" -a "Classics Illustrated Junior" -f prc -m landscape-half -r right --colorspace gray --colors 4 --hres 520 --vres 640 "C:\Program Files\PDFRead\bin\Piper.cbz"

Changing the hres and vres values to match your device's aspect ratio will maximize the image size and minimize that white space around. While I couldn't get tompe's 'opf2html' to produce larger images than 480x640 (some internal maximum for the Gen3), I produced 600x800 images using PDRFread and Mobipocket Creator. You can use the PDFRead GUI and input into 'Size H:' and 'V:' the 600 and 800 respectively!

To this test larger size, I used Mobipocket Creator on the resulting .opf left behind, by placing an empty file called 'debug' (created with any text editor) in the 'PDFRead/bin' directory. See attached 600x800 sample which may not display properly on the Cybook Gen 3.

Does this help?

p.s. to avoid small bits of a page from being produced, select the 'landscape-half' mode instead of the 'landscape' mode. The difference is that the former will produce just two page flips for each page whereas that latter will produce as many page flips as necessary to get the full width displayed sideways. (enough with math theory!)


EDIT: Added source file of 600x800 .prc in .zip format.

[sealbeater]

Originally Posted by Gideon

I love my cbr's but I found it next to impossible to comfortably read comics on the 505 - even with the 8 shades it can be hard to track a busy scene and can be very hard to read text.

If it's a big deal I'd get one of the bigger suggestions (especially the iLiad) or a tablet pc.

I love my 505 for comics. Are you viewing black/white comics or color? I tested a Green Lantern pdf and it was all washed out and ugly. The pdfs I've made out of pre-existing cbrs look really good and I made sure I get all my black and whites. Battle Royale, Hikaru, Walking Dead, Bleach, all of them are very readable and look awesome. Just my two cents.