soPdf - Better than Yet another PDF to LRF converter

[ambertape]

My Sony PRS-500 was modified by Sony to work with ePub and Adobe Acrobat formats. Will your program be able to do the following. Many pdf files I download are from a magazine called maximumpc and their articles are of the scanned type by this I mean, they take each page scan it and then save it as a pdf file. Will your program convert this pdf file into your version of the pdf file that will be read on the ereader of Sony, my Prs-500 reader. Will I be able to increase the font size in either your program or another pdf creating program ? What is the latest soPDF program should I use that has a GUI ?Thanks a lot.

Ambertape

[frabjous]

Ambertape,

It doesn't look like the author is still checking this thread. AFAIK, the version posted in the first post of the thread is the only version that exists. You can use either my or gdsense's GUI with it.

If the PDF started off as a scan, there'll be no way to change the font size. This program does not convert images to text. You'll need an OCR program to do that. Whether or not soPDF will work well enough to make it readable on your screen depends a lot on the dimensions and make-up of the magazine. Personally, I tend to have better luck with PDFLRF for scanned PDFs. If the magazine organizes things into columns, you might also try PaperCrop.

[tricos]

Hi, I just got a kindle and spent the whole day researching on best way to get my journal articles on this thing... Kinda disappointed with the options, but sopdf is about the best way to get screwed since you're going to be any way you go...

I don't even think he did anything else with it after first creating it... You can't download the exe or see his code on his google site...

Anyways, I just spent a couple hours at 2 am writing something to get all my journal articles from my folders converted so I could copy and paste them on the kindle so I figured I'd drop the code here so someone more motivated than me can maybe run with it, and make it worth a dang other than just a one time thing for myself late at night...


Imports System.IO
Imports System.Text

Public Class Form1

Private Prefix As String = "G:\KindleOut\"

Private Sub btnFolder_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles btnFolder.Click

Try

Dim objFolderDialog As New FolderBrowserDialog()
objFolderDialog.ShowDialog()

Me.txtFolder.Text = objFolderDialog.SelectedPath

Catch ex As Exception

End Try

End Sub

Private Sub btnExit_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles btnExit.Click

Me.Close()

End Sub

Private Sub btnRun_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles btnRun.Click

Try

Me.btnExit.Enabled = False
Dim Path As String = Me.txtFolder.Text

If Not String.IsNullOrEmpty(Path) Then

If Not Directory.Exists(Path.Replace("G:\", "G:\KindleOutput\")) Then
Directory.CreateDirectory(Path.Replace("G:\", "G:\KindleOutput\"))
End If

Dim objDirectory As New DirectoryInfo(Path)
Dim objDirectories As DirectoryInfo() = objDirectory.GetDirectories
If objDirectories.Count > 0 Then
For Each objDir As DirectoryInfo In objDirectories
ProcessDirectory(objDir)
Next
End If

ProcessFiles(objDirectory)

End If

Catch ex As Exception

Finally

Me.btnExit.Enabled = True

End Try

End Sub

Private Sub ProcessDirectory(ByVal objDir As DirectoryInfo)

If Not Directory.Exists(objDir.FullName.Replace("G:\", "G:\KindleOutput\")) Then
Directory.CreateDirectory(objDir.FullName.Replace( "G:\", "G:\KindleOutput\"))
End If

Dim objDirectories As DirectoryInfo() = objDir.GetDirectories()

If objDirectories.Count > 0 Then
For Each objDirectory As DirectoryInfo In objDirectories
ProcessDirectory(objDirectory)
Next
End If

ProcessFiles(objDir)

End Sub

Private Sub ProcessFiles(ByVal objDir As DirectoryInfo)

Dim objFiles As FileInfo() = objDir.GetFiles("*.pdf")

For Each objFile As FileInfo In objFiles

Dim objBoo As New StringBuilder()

With objBoo
.Append(" -i ")
.Append(Chr(34) & objFile.FullName & Chr(34))
.Append(" -o ")
.Append(Chr(34) & objFile.FullName.Replace("G:\", "G:\KindleOutput\") & Chr(34))
End With

If Not File.Exists(objFile.FullName.Replace("G:\", "G:\KindleOutput\")) Then
Process.Start("c:\sopdf.exe", objBoo.ToString())
System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(2000)
' if you don't have something in there to keep it from opening up
' 50 files at once to convert them, then it is going to take 100 times longer
' than if you just have it wait 2 seconds after each one...
End If

Next

End Sub

End Class

[Nathan Campos]

Thanks very much for this useful software.

I'm also making a GUI frontend of it, to make more easy for other users

[mypolar]

Finally I am able to read reports and journals that I had pretty much given up on reading with my Sony. I just set the soPdf to Fit 2x Height and it converts perfectly for my Sony 505. I can enlarge it to medium and still keep ALL of my graphs and diagrams intact. Yippee.

Special Thank You to theguru for developing this wonderful help & frabjous for making it easier to understand for a non techie-non cmd user like me!

[Nathan Campos]

Finally I've finished the GUI front-end for soPDF, take a look soPDF GUI Front-End

[MrKyle]

Thanks to you all, I was using pdflrfwin before. I see now that theres little point in coding a gui for it unless I merge tools.

[Nathan Campos]

Hmmm....
Good to know

[greenapple]

soPdf and the windows gui (by frabjous) are the MOST USEFUL tools in my chest of converters. Thanks very much to the creators.

By the way, is there a way to change the page size so that they are all the same? After conversion, some pages are larger than the others (when viewed with a regular PDF viewer, eg PDF X-Change). When I view them on my reader device, using auto full-screen resize (which is the only viable way to read the converted PDF on my jetBook), some pages 'jump' at me, because the font size is unexpected enlarged many times. This happens when some pages are of a smaller size (after processing), and are enlarged on the reader.

Edit: I forgot to mention that this happens only with landscape processing

[radamo]

Wow... Just found sopdf. "So" useful, "so" much better than every other converter. Many thanks to the author.
RA

[damag]

Hi, has anyone been able to compile the Linux version of sopdf? I can't seem to find a version of the mupdf library that works with it. The README contains some broken links and some vague instructions on updating the mupdf code to work with sopdf.

All I'm trying to do is compile a 64-bit version, since I can't run the 32-bit version provided in this thread. Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

[frabjous]

The linux version posted earlier in the thread is already compiled and works just fine for me on 64 bit Ubuntu. I don't know whether there are any compatibility libraries needed which I just happened to have anyway, but I'll investigate when I get a chance.

[damag]

Hi Frabjous, the GUI program seems to be 64-bit but the command line 'sopdf' tool (which I am trying to use) is only 32-bit. I verified this with the 'file' command:

$ file sopdf
sopdf: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.8, stripped

If the code can't be compiled, do you know what compatibility libraries I can installed to run 32-bit binaries?

Thanks

[frabjous]

No doubt the executable was compiled on 32 bit, but it runs for me on 64 bit.

Trust me. I know I helped compile the GUI, but I don't use it. (It's just a wrapper for the command-line version anyway.) I use the commandline, and I'm sure I've never compiled it.

When I get a chance, I'll fire up a liveCD to investigate what other than default stuff it needs, if anything.

[damag]

Thanks, I forgot to mention that I am using Fedora 12. When I try to run the 32-bit compiled executable from this thread, I get:

$ ./sopdf
bash: ./sopdf: /lib/ld-linux.so.2: bad ELF interpreter: No such file or directory

Which make sense since those libraries are all under /lib64 on my system, not /lib. I'd prefer to be able to compile the code myself, but if I need to install some legacy 32-bit libraries then so be it. =) I'm not even sure if Fedora provides a package for that in their repositories... everything in Fedora runs as native 64-bit.

Maybe when I get some time, I'll try to change the code so that it compiles against the standard mupdf library. Do you have any idea why it needed patching in the first place?