PRS-500 PDFrasterFarian - makes A4/Letter PDFs usable

[Dave Qua]

This sounds like just what I have been waiting for. However I have installed as per the instructions but don't see and reference to PDFrasterFarian win the context menu when I right click on a pdf file in Windows Explorer.

I have Acrobat installed and am using Vista Ultimate

Any help would be gratefully appreciated

[_darius]

Hi, i also had a lot of problems running PDFrasterFarian, it always gave me an error. - Here is what i did:

- i installed AutoImager3.03 into c:\programme\AutoImager
=> you can get it here:
http://www.internet-magazin.de/downl...r3.03.exe.html
- i installed AutoImager3.03 again (repair)
=> the second time i did this, i had to restart my computer (weird...)
- then i extracted the PDFrasterFarian folder into: c:\programme
- run the install.cmd from the PDFrasterFarian folder
=> the adobe reader has to be the standard reader for pdf
- right click on any PDF you want to convert and choose: PDFrasterfarian
- follow the instructions

this way it worked for me...

hope it helps!

_darius

[kokujiin]

Alex, it has been mentioned before in this and other threads about the difficulty some are having trying to install the software. I have been looking and the few bits of advice that people gave have not so far helped me. Do you know what is in conflict when I get the "Error: Access denied." message. I have all of the required additional programs (I think) but I am frustrated by this message. The software tells me that the installation has been completed but the right click access is not there. Any ideas?

[alex_d]

ugh... i'm sorry about going awol for two weeks. I was hoping 2.1.6 would work well, but apparently it doesn't (at least for some people). on top of that, autoimager disappearing also caught me by surprise.

AutoImager can be downloaded here. The link is also on the front page.

The "Access denied" error message may be because you do not have administrative priviledges and cannot install applications or modify the windows registry. Do not run 'install' as a limited user.

Regarding Windows Vista... I have no idea how well it would work, but I've heard that the new security policies prevent the executing of scripts (PDFrasterFarian is a script) and may also be the reason you get "access denied" when the installer tries to modify the registry. I'll install Vista soon, but for now perhaps others can offer advice on how to make it work.

Anyway, I've been learning .net and I'll rewrite pdfrasterfarian to get rid of its ridiculous text-mode ui, make it compatible with Vista, and usable without an explorer right-click menu. I'll also put in some long-promised features (esp. enhancing and collating a folder of images instead of pdfs). However, regarding dejavu... i tried looking for a simple, command-line renderer (eg, djvu->png) and the only thing i found was for linux/cygwin. Also, i've tried looking for another program that can do image dilation besides AutoImager and have not been able to find anything. The algorithm is pretty simple, though, so i may be able to program it in directly (but it might be slower).

[JRAWKER]

I always get this message whenever I open the lrf file in Connect Reader:

"Operation failed due to error."

wtf?

[geekraver]

Originally Posted by alex_d

Anyway, I've been learning .net and I'll rewrite pdfrasterfarian to get rid of its ridiculous text-mode ui, make it compatible with Vista, and usable without an explorer right-click menu. I'll also put in some long-promised features (esp. enhancing and collating a folder of images instead of pdfs).

BTW I'm writing a web2book plugin to do this too (folder of images). Not that you should stop...

[Bob A]

I am trying to understand just what AutoImager is for as a standalone. I installed it and PDFrasterFarian per the first post to this thread. I do see in PDFrasterFarian where it says that the bolding requires AutoImager. Is that all I need the autoimager for? Is it accomodating PDFrasterFarian automatically? I would like to improve two column PDF files from journals so they read still better on my reader than what I am getting on PDFrasterFarian. I wish I could scroll around a page with the reader.

[Bob Russell]

Originally Posted by alex_d

Anyway, I've been learning .net and I'll rewrite pdfrasterfarian to get rid of its ridiculous text-mode ui, make it compatible with Vista, and usable without an explorer right-click menu. I'll also put in some long-promised features (esp. enhancing and collating a folder of images instead of pdfs). However, regarding dejavu... i tried looking for a simple, command-line renderer (eg, djvu->png) and the only thing i found was for linux/cygwin. Also, i've tried looking for another program that can do image dilation besides AutoImager and have not been able to find anything. The algorithm is pretty simple, though, so i may be able to program it in directly (but it might be slower).

This would be wonderful!!! I haven't been able to get the current version to work, but that's okay as I now really look forward to the next version even more. I would be ecstatic if I can actually read "regular" PDFs on the Reader, and half page mode in landscape is perfectly fine for almost all the documents I would want to read. Also, I'm not concerned about conversion times (the parts which happen while I'm not babysitting the process), so it would be a plus to eliminate AutoImager in my opinion.

[Stingo]

First of all, this last version finally works on my system. I can see why people are so excited about this program. What a great piece of software.

No for the problem. I tried converting The Foxfire Book Vol. 1. THis book has a lot of inline graphics some full page. The conversion is loosing pages adjoining the graphics. I'll go from page 22 to a full page image on page 23 to page 25. Any ideas.

[eldel]

Is there a way to invoke the script with all the parameters straight from the command line? I have 'lots' of pdfs that I want to convert and I'd rather just create a script with all the data and leave it to run over a (long) weekend.

[alex_d]

"I would like to improve two column PDF files from journals so they read still better on my reader than what I am getting on PDFrasterFarian. I wish I could scroll around a page with the reader."

Scrolling is completely impossible unless you start loading custom firmware onto the Reader. No one has done anything like that yet, although I think people have figured out ways how it could be programmed in theory. What I'd really like to see is firmware that lets you use the reader as an auxiliary display for the PC. With the processing done on the computer, ink-speed page flips and scrolling would be a piece of cake. Anyway, do you have any other ideas to improve PDFfrasterFarian's output besides scrolling? Have you tried quarters-of-a-page mode? It's very good for two-column documents.

Anyway, I'm done rewriting the dilate filter from scratch using c++ and c# so that autoimager is no longer needed. It even works faster. I'll bundle it up and release as the next 2.1.x. I also plan to rewrite the 8bit->2bit dithering step so that it outputs precise values (0, 85, 170, 255). imageMagick (the other graphics exe) doesn't do this right, often affecting contrast and image quality. While I'm at it, i'll also redo the resize step to see if using another algorithm can produce clearer, cleaner output than the resize+unsharp imageMagick combo I use now.


Stingo... nope, not a clue. Please post the pdf.

eldel... technically, "promptless mode" is very easy to implement. All the pieces are in place for passing defaults via the commandline, except the part where it shuts up and doesn't ask you any questions. No one has really requested this feature before so I didn't get around to implementing it, but I'll try putting this in the next 2.x release.

[Bob A]

Alex,

Thank you. I appreciate your contribution to making readers more useful! I did try quartering, but have not yet found it practical. Part of the reason is that a two column article also has images that are across the full page, so the landscape mode seems to keep those intact. It's only that the size of the fonts even in landscape are a little small for this pair of aging eyes. As time goes on I expect that readers will be bigger and thus more practical overall, but I am pleased to be learning how to work with it now.

As far as other ideas, I did buy a book from Connect and was delighted to see that the footnotes were highlighted so I could jump to them. (I haven't figured out how to jump back yet except using the history funtion.) So I suppose extracting images from PDFs and inserting a link like the footnote might then allow the text to quartered. I would wager I can do that with some of the programs I have seen referenced, but it may be beyond my abilities at this time. CHeers and thanks again!!

[marsonist]

After clicking on a footnote you can jump back to where you were by clicking left on the joystick

[alex_d]

Version 2.2.0 is now posted in the beta forum

As promised, AutoImager is now gone. Also, if the right-click menu doesn't work for you, you can now just double-click "PDFrasterFarian.cmd" (after unzipping everything) and it'll show a Windows dialog to select a file and also ask you where to save it (I know, I know, futuristic technology is amazing).

These new features were made possible with .NET Framework 2.0, so you need to have that installed. However, chances are it's already installed on your PC (e.g., if you have ATI display drivers). If not, you can download it here. If you don't know what it is, it's a lot like Java but much less crappy.


Also, image quality has been improved by tweaking the processing algorithm and writing my own downsampling filter. It's now a good bit sharper with higher contrast, but perhaps the older filter looked more "natural" and antialiased by virtue of fuzziness. (comment on which one you like more... i might put the old one back as an option under advanced mode)

Anyway, it's in the beta thread because it hasn't been tested much yet, so if you'd like you can wait a bit to see if any bugs are found.

[RSaunders]

Originally Posted by alex_d

Version 2.2.0 is now posted in the beta forum
{snip}
Anyway, it's in the beta thread because it hasn't been tested much yet, so if you'd like you can wait a bit to see if any bugs are found.

OK, I've decided to give this tool a try. It runs, without errors. However, it takes my 100kb PDF and over-writes it with a 2kb PDF. This wasn't exactly what I had in mind, since all the words are missing from the new PDF, so what did I do wrong? should I have expected it to over-write the input file?