How to fix text wrapping from a pdf?

pitchforks · 04-29-2012, 04:13 AM

Hello everybody!

I just got my first Kindle a few days, and here is what I want help with.

I've got a huge PDF file with many books - around 200 megabytes. Since it's not very comfortable reading a PDF on Kindle, I want to have it in mobi format. Calibre and one other conversion program just hang up when I was trying to convert the file. So what I did was this - copied one of the books out as text and pasted it into a document, later to convert to mobi. But both the document and the mobi have wrapped the lines of text how right where they end in the actual pdf. So it looks quite messed up on Kindle screen - some lines with single words, many random breaks in text, etc.

So the best thing would be if I could convert the whole pdf, but I think it's the big size that is the problem. But if I could get the text wrapped correctly, it would also be alright.

Thank you!

DSpider · 04-29-2012, 05:38 AM

Multiple books merged in a single PDF file? What were they thinking??? It's difficult enough converting a single column, simple PDF (and sometimes with unexpected results), let alone a complex document with variable widths for pages. I would probably export the PDF as a bunch of images. The e-reader should have no problem displaying those. And if searching and highlighting is important, you can apply "good enough" OCR with ABBYY FineReader – and maybe save as it a PDF with your reader's screen dimensions because the Mobi format probably isn't very good at positional OCR (text under images).

pitchforks · 04-29-2012, 05:53 AM

Hi,

heh, yeah, I don't know what they were thinking. It is an old CD-ROM release of one author's books. That's how they put it together. Not very convenient.

If I use images on my Kindle, I don't think it will be able to zoom AND wrap text, like it can't do it with pdf's.

If I convert the PDF to images and then use OCR, won't the result be the same as when I just select & copy text from the PDF (the problem with layout and spacing)?

Oh, and the books have no images. Just a couple at the very beginning of the PDF.

Maybe there is some good way to convert PDF-DOC, having the layout intact?

04-29-2012, 04:13 AM	#1
pitchforks Junior Member Posts: 2 Karma: 10 Join Date: Apr 2012 Device: Kindle	How to fix text wrapping from a pdf? Hello everybody! I just got my first Kindle a few days, and here is what I want help with. I've got a huge PDF file with many books - around 200 megabytes. Since it's not very comfortable reading a PDF on Kindle, I want to have it in mobi format. Calibre and one other conversion program just hang up when I was trying to convert the file. So what I did was this - copied one of the books out as text and pasted it into a document, later to convert to mobi. But both the document and the mobi have wrapped the lines of text how right where they end in the actual pdf. So it looks quite messed up on Kindle screen - some lines with single words, many random breaks in text, etc. So the best thing would be if I could convert the whole pdf, but I think it's the big size that is the problem. But if I could get the text wrapped correctly, it would also be alright. Thank you!

04-29-2012, 05:53 AM	#3
pitchforks Junior Member Posts: 2 Karma: 10 Join Date: Apr 2012 Device: Kindle	Hi, heh, yeah, I don't know what they were thinking. It is an old CD-ROM release of one author's books. That's how they put it together. Not very convenient. If I use images on my Kindle, I don't think it will be able to zoom AND wrap text, like it can't do it with pdf's. If I convert the PDF to images and then use OCR, won't the result be the same as when I just select & copy text from the PDF (the problem with layout and spacing)? Oh, and the books have no images. Just a couple at the very beginning of the PDF. Maybe there is some good way to convert PDF-DOC, having the layout intact? Last edited by pitchforks; 04-29-2012 at 06:05 AM.

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04-29-2012, 05:38 AM	#2
DSpider Evangelist Posts: 450 Karma: 343115 Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Romania Device: PW2 2014	Multiple books merged in a single PDF file? What were they thinking??? It's difficult enough converting a single column, simple PDF (and sometimes with unexpected results), let alone a complex document with variable widths for pages. I would probably export the PDF as a bunch of images. The e-reader should have no problem displaying those. And if searching and highlighting is important, you can apply "good enough" OCR with ABBYY FineReader – and maybe save as it a PDF with your reader's screen dimensions because the Mobi format probably isn't very good at positional OCR (text under images).

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