PDF support in Kindle Paperwhite

[Phoenix87103]

Originally Posted by Yamada

Why do people keep insisting trying to read PDFs on these things?

May be because not all books are available in the required format and even those that are in the correct format doesn't display the books well.
Yamada there's more to books than just novels

[JensW]

Originally Posted by Yamada

Why do people keep insisting trying to read PDFs on these things?

I like to read scientific papers on my Kindle. I know full well that it's not a good format for the e-reader but together with k2pdfopt I works very well and saves a ton of paper.

[anton79ru]

Originally Posted by hawhill

we integrated it into KoReader

I needed an e-reader for academic articles which are plenty of scanned PDF's that I need to digest for my dissertation. I chose PW2 for the size (i read in subway and buses), screen contrast, and backlight quality. But as soon as I got one yesterday, I realized the stock rendering of scanned PDF files was just unbelieveably disgusting.

I jailbroke the device, installed the KoReader, and now, reading PDF's in landscape mode is nothing but pleasure. The scanned characters are so well processed that even the portrait mode is fine. Even footnotes in portrait mode are decently readable (if you have good eyes). The problem is gone. I am amazed at what the devs have achieved and I'm happy as a child.

(oh, and I'm not talking about reflown text, I mean PDF's as they are!)

[EbokJunkie]

Kindle PW leaves very big margins in PDF viewing. I suggest alternative way of preparing pdf with standard A4/Letter pages for successful viewing on PW. Suggested workflow prepares a sequence of graphic images of half-pages stretched to PW screen in landscape. Prepared images get wrapped into single mobi, that's it. This approach allows to use entire screen with almost zero margins.

1. Download pdflrfwin-0.99.exe from http://projects.mobileread.com/reade...rfwin-0.99.zip
2. Run pdflrfwin-0.99.exe, browse for your pdf (djvu is ok as well) and set output file extension to zip (do it by hand in corresponding output file box, just substitute zip for lrf)
3. In preview you can visually control and set margin crop. However, pdflrfwin automatically crops white space around text, this is preferable for this workflow. Set Overlap to something around 0.05, this may improve reading experience.
4. Run pdflrfwin. It creates zip file with png images representing snapshots of half-pages rotated in landscape orientation.
5. Open zip file and place all png images in separate folder.
6. Install Python 2.7.6
7. Download KindleComicParser 0.2.1.zip from here , post #36 by Dc5e. Extract KindleComicParser.exe from zip.
8. Download last version of kindlegen.exe
9. Download kindlestrip.py 1.35 zip from here and extract Python script kindlescript.py.
10. Create batch file and name it, say, pdflrf2mobi.bat:

set comicname=%1
set comicname=%comicname:"=%
KindleComicParser.exe "%comicname%"
kindlegen -c0 "%comicname%.opf" -o out.mobi
python "%~dp0kindlestrip.py" out.mobi "%comicname%.mobi"
del out.mobi
:: If uncommented last Calibre command automatically set mobi title and author name (author name must be second parameter in batch call)
::ebook-meta "%comicname%" -t "%comicname%.mobi" -a %2
.

10. Create any folder, place path to this folder into environment variable PATH.
11. Place files KindleComicParser.exe, kindlegen.exe, kindlestrip.py, and batch pdflrf2mobi.bat to created folder.
12. Make folder with png files (see paragraph 5 above) current.
13. Run

pdflrf2mobi "name_of_output_document" "optional author name"

Second parameter is optional, it works if last line in the batch file is uncommented.
File name_of_output_document.mobi will appear in the folder with png files.
Note that pdflrfwin tries to cut pages between lines of text. However, in rare occasions it cuts big formulas and illustration lengthwise, that may be cause of certain inconveniences.
Sample (PW cscreenshot):