Remove white margins from the PDF (Sony DPT-RP1)

[Kule]

Hello,

I am reading a lot of PDF's (scanned books) on my Sony DPT-Rp1 which has 13" screen (A4 page size).

The problem is that many PDFs have white margins and are not filling the entire screen like here:

A) http://i66.tinypic.com/ziollw.jpg

The very same book, another page renders correctly (screen is filled properly)

B) http://i68.tinypic.com/v485z8.jpg


Majority of these scanned PDF books are either A5 or B5 format (smaller then A4), so I dont understand why do I have the white margins?

How can can I make the page A to render like page B (which tool/method should be used)?

I tried cropping but that wont do the trick.

Here are the original PDF files attached (2 pages):

https://www23.zippyshare.com/v/rNgvsPb5/file.html



Thank for help and have a beautiful day,
Pavel

[Marinolino]

I don't have 13" Sony, but white margins are there IMO because you've been using fit-to-page mode or fit-to-page-height mode in your reader, wherein the shorter page is shown without the margins (both shorter 3.99/5.47 and the longer page 3.99/6.75 are at the same 3.99 inch width).

You should simply choose another reading mode if available, e.g. on Kindle DX (using koreader app) it would be fit-to-page-width or fit-to-content-width, but in that case it would also take two screens per pdf page for the longer 3.99/6.75 page(s).

If you want the page B (shown without margins) to be rendered as with margins, like the longer page A, you can use Adobe Reader's crop function i.e. the change-page-size function therein, or any other pdf editor with a similar page-size function, just quickly changing page size to 4 inch and 6.75 inch height for all pages, also choosing centered page.

It should take less than a minute for the whole pdf.

The shorter page(s) would look like in an attachement.

[willus]

Originally Posted by Kule

Hello,

I am reading a lot of PDF's (scanned books) on my Sony DPT-Rp1 which has 13" screen (A4 page size).

Majority of these scanned PDF books are either A5 or B5 format (smaller then A4), so I dont understand why do I have the white margins?

How can can I make the page B to render like page A (which tool/method should be used)?

The issue with this particular PDF is that it is only 4 inches wide and you are reading it on a reader with an 8.25-inch wide screen. You can use k2pdfopt to create a new PDF where the source PDF is magnified to fit the width of an 8.25-inch page using the settings in the attached screen shot, or the command below.

k2pdfopt -w 8.25in -h 11in -odpi 200 -ds 2.5 -fc- -mode fw -ls- pages.pdf

The -ds 2.5 increases the size of the source document by 2.5x so that it effectively becomes 10-inches wide. The "-mode fw" then fits that text to the specified reader screen width of 8.25 inches. I've attached the result.

[Kule]

@ Marinolino

Thanks for helping.

Unfortunately, Sony OS is designed on their own version of Android, so I am unable in install any external apps (no Google Play either).

Once the device is jailbroken (if that ever happens), that might be possible.

Right know PDFs have to be modified in advance, and nothing can be done within the device itself.

@willus

Hello,
k2pdfopt is a great piece of software! I followed your instructions, and got the same result as you provided. I didn't know about the -ds option, but it is very useful!

The only issue I have is altered page structure (text brakes are not like original, footnotes are in the middle of the page etc.). If I select option ”Brake after each source page", I get almost double size of pages as there is a lot of white space after text.

For example, If I put -ds 1.7, ”Brake after each source page" and “Auto-crop” I get 966p, while original book has only 536p.

Is it possible to preserve original page structure, keep similar number of pages and just maximize reading space (with smaller margins like on the example B above)? Technically, that would be just zooming in the whole page.

Thanks a lot

[willus]

Originally Posted by Kule

Is it possible to preserve original page structure, keep similar number of pages and just maximize reading space (with smaller margins like on the example B above)? Technically, that would be just zooming in the whole page.

Yes--just change "mode fw" to "mode fp" (select fitpage in mode conversion). Also, the output dpi doesn't really matter since you are doing native PDF output, so you can set it much lower (e.g. 50 instead of 200) and the conversion will go much faster.

[Kule]

It's working great!

Thanks a lot, very powerful tool

[NNN]

The DPT-RP1 fits pages to its screen using each page's height. Your page A has roughly the dimensions of the DPT-RP1's screen, so it renders A's margins correctly. Your page B is taller, so the DPT-RP1 adds width to render it with the DPT-RP1's dimensions. This might not be a problem except that the DPT-RP1 does not remember page crop settings (and many features are not available in cropped-page mode).

It's a major, software flaw with, apparently, no workaround within Sony's software. You might post this to Sony's moderated, community webpage to see when this flaw will be fixed.

[Kule]

@NNN

I hope we will have Android support one day, it would really expand the functionality of the device.

Even then, I think that proper conversion is required, because it increases the readability of the documents. I wouldn’t count on any Sony software solution in this area.

@willus

While I managed to convert almost all my PDFs (with great results), there is still one that is giving me headache. I have attached the source document (5 pages) and my result after using Fit to page option (also 5 pages).

Apparently, I only got desired result with pages 1 and 5, while other are still with margins. I am trying to achieve uniformed look where all pages are filling the entire screen.

Thanks a lot for help

[willus]

Originally Posted by Kule

... there is still one that is giving me headache. I have attached the source document (5 pages) and my result after using Fit to page option (also 5 pages).

Apparently, I only got desired result with pages 1 and 5, while other are still with margins. I am trying to achieve uniformed look where all pages are filling the entire screen.

Sorry for the late answer.

Pages 1 and 5 of the source PDF, after being cropped, have a width-to-height ratio that nearly exactly matches or is slightly larger than your Sony display. That is why there are no margins on the sides of those pages in the output PDF. The other pages, by contrast, have a width-to-height ratio slightly less than your Sony display, so when they are fit to your screen (height-wise), they are a little narrower (width-wise) and therefore don't fill the whole width. This is unavoidable when you select the fit-page option, which tells k2pdfopt to fit each source page into the destination page, regardless of the aspect ratio.

You can either select fit-page and have this issue, or you can select fit-width. But with fit-width, you are not certain to have each input page correspond to exactly one output page.