Clara Best pdf format for output from Latex (A6, B6, A5 ?) for the Kobo Clara HD ?

[jlemonde]

Hello !

I am wanting to re-read some of my academic reports that I wrote in Latex, on the Kobo. The output format of those latex reports is pdf and this being not easy to change, I'll most probably have to conform to using pdfs.

Originally, I am used to A4 paper, but due to the tiny screen of the Kobo and the poor zooming abilities, I am wanting to recompile my latex files to smaller pdfs. But I am unsure about the best formats (I have tried a dozen of choices, but perhaps one of you knows a better solution than mine !)

What is your favourite paper size ? B6 seems to be the more similar to the actual size of the e-reader, but I feel like there could be more on one page than that. I have also tried to just use the official dimensions of the screen (159,6 x 110 mm) but the biggest issue in that case is that all the figures are moved to the very end of the document, and furthermore, some lines are too long and don't seem to want to be cut. I also tried to reduce the size of the text to 8pt but this does not help for the very bad placement of figures... A5 with reduced margins works better, but still not optimal.

Hopefully some of you found some optimal solutions. What I haven't tried was to use an intermediary size as for instance a multiple of the size of the Kobo.

Thanks for your consideration !!

[patrik]

pdf on the tiny Clara screen? I wouldn't.... I would very much prefer to read on my tablet or laptop.

Or buy ABBYY Finereader and convert to epub. (That's what I do with pdf.)

(BTW, google gives several hits on "latex epub" but I guess you know about the options.)

If you really must, you may want to install Koreader and use for pdf.

[DNSB]

Not sure if this is going be be any help to you but at one point in time, I seem to remember one latex guru using width=\textwidth or \linewidth (or something close to that) to scale images when supporting multiple page sizes. It's been a few years so that may not be close to correct.

Edit: I did a quick Google search and came up with the following page: Perfectly scale an image to the rest of a page with LaTeX which sounds as if it may work for you even if nearly a decade old.

[Barbara1955]

I converted my Scooter manual to MOBI it reads fine on the clara. PDF was crappy.

[Quoth]

Import them to something that understands them, maybe LibreOffice Writer or some other program. Export in XML, HTML, RTF, ODT, MS-DOC or DOCX.
If not in Docx, import to Word or LibreOffice Writer (if some other format was possible), then save as in DOCX and use Calibre to convert to an ebook, ideally ePub2.

PDFs are for preview and interchange to print on paper. Ghastly for reading on eReaders even if page size is small. A5 PDFs do work on a Kobo Libra. Can be too slow and hard to read on original Kobo H2O.

[ps67]

Originally Posted by jlemonde

Hello !

I am wanting to re-read some of my academic reports that I wrote in Latex, on the Kobo. The output format of those latex reports is pdf and this being not easy to change, I'll most probably have to conform to using pdfs.

Originally, I am used to A4 paper, but due to the tiny screen of the Kobo and the poor zooming abilities, I am wanting to recompile my latex files to smaller pdfs. But I am unsure about the best formats (I have tried a dozen of choices, but perhaps one of you knows a better solution than mine !)

What is your favourite paper size ? B6 seems to be the more similar to the actual size of the e-reader, but I feel like there could be more on one page than that. I have also tried to just use the official dimensions of the screen (159,6 x 110 mm) but the biggest issue in that case is that all the figures are moved to the very end of the document, and furthermore, some lines are too long and don't seem to want to be cut. I also tried to reduce the size of the text to 8pt but this does not help for the very bad placement of figures... A5 with reduced margins works better, but still not optimal.

Hopefully some of you found some optimal solutions. What I haven't tried was to use an intermediary size as for instance a multiple of the size of the Kobo.

Thanks for your consideration !!

A 6" device is really small for pdf with figures (the main issue are figures, because the normal text should be easily adapted, having a latex file). You can only try and see, for example try A5 with large margins and install KOReader that is better for pdf.

If there are formulas You could also convert Your latex files in Epub3 using mathml and then in Kepub. I used it for curiosity, without knowing anything of Mathml but taking examples from internet and the result is not bad (install a math font as STIX Two Math). But again I don't know if and how will be rendered figures.

[frostschutz]

latex doesn't necessarily produce small paper output gracefully. well, it depends what's in it really, but too often you do things in latex that don't scale down well. after all normally you decide very early on a paper size and then stick with it, so anything that wouldn't work for other paper sizes you don't even notice.

you might consider giving k2pdfopt (and other optimize-pdf-for-ereader softwares) a whirl after all.

I also converted latex to html before (manually, script it yourself), works best if the latex document is consistently formatted so you only have to deal with very few special cases.

[famfam]

Originally Posted by patrik

pdf on the tiny Clara screen? I wouldn't.... I would very much prefer to read on my tablet or laptop.

Or buy ABBYY Finereader and convert to epub.

Im Prinzip hast Du ja recht. Aber: Wenn das Buch dick ist, also mehrer hundert Seiten, und zuviele Anmerkungen hat, dann wird die Konvertierung in epub zur Sisyphusarbeit. Laptop ist ok, aber nur, wenn er nicht zu schwer ist. Wäre schön wenn man es mit Kobo Clara HD lesen könnte. Aber dann muss es optionen geben wie Cropping der Ränder und gute Anpassung an das Display des Kobo Clara HD. Wäre schön, wenn es solche Möglichkeiten für Kobo Clara HD gäbe. Und wenn man die Schrift stufenlos vergrößern könnte wie bei epub. Aber gibt es leider nicht.
english:
In principle you are right. But: If the book is long, i.e. several hundred pages, and has too many annotations, then converting it to epub becomes a Sisyphean task. Laptop is ok, but only if it is not too heavy. Would be nice if you could read it with Kobo Clara HD. But then there must be options like cropping the edges and fitting well to the Kobo Clara HD's display. Would be nice if there were such possibilities for Kobo Clara HD. And if the font could be continuously enlarged like in epub. But unfortunately there isn't.

[famfam]

@patrik
What type of tablet is payable and good? What you think about chinese tablet as f.e. teclast p4 pro or plus? Is the pro version with fast graphi-prossor good for reading pdf? Or is the plus version better? pro version weight is 530 g. plus version has more weight up to 930 g. Pricedifference is small. tablet tablet

[elinkser]

You have some interesting suggestions listed here, but it's not clear if you actually tried KOReader's built-in k2pdfopt library.

When reading a pdf, you click on the lower part of the page, select the 'Aa' icon, switch 'Reflow' on, and choose a magnification level.
The k2pdfopt will then split and magnify your lines of text, with varying success.
Images and figures cannot be split, so you could try using KOReader gestures to quickly switch in and out of Reflow, say, if you need to zoom in to see details of an image that has been scaled down to fit on the page (Zooming images doesn't work well in Reflow mode).
That could admittedly get annoying if you have a lot of big images - in that case the preprocessing suggestions may do the trick.
Only then would I splurge on a) a big screen that you don't have to zoom, or b) a powerful device that zooms and pans very fast!