understanding pdf formatting for kindle paperwhite

[sindhus]

hello!

I have a Kindle PaperWhite 3 2015 Wifi (PW3).
I have k2pdfopt installed on my OS X machine. I tried it and played around options of column, justification, wrapping etc but am not super happy with the results.

I have uploaded a few of my PDFs here. They all have a common pattern to them: page numbers on the left, a large block of text that is either right or left, a small text (unit name or citation) to either right or left depending on the position of the large chunk of text and so on.

I was wondering what is the first step for me in understanding PDF internals? this is because I want to remove certain parts of text that occur in the PDFs ...for example the name of the unit occurs either to right or left and this affects the way I format the PDF should I make it all align to a single column.

Let me know if I should be clearer in describing my problem, I will draw a visual markup and ask again.

[Dr. Drib]

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These three attachments violate the "Fair Use" doctrine, and have been deleted from Mobileread due to copyright issues.

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[sindhus]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

These three attachments violate the "Fair Use" doctrine, and have been deleted from Mobileread due to copyright issues.

Do NOT upload copyrighted material, unless there is explicit written permission from the copyright holder.

They aren't copyrighted in any way. They are freely available. They are texts of a course in an open university!

[Dr. Drib]

Click the REPORT button. A Moderator's decision will not be discussed in open forum.

Don
(Moderator)

[BetterRed]

@sindus - A PDF file implements a "Fixed Layout" model, in essence it emulates sheets of paper, your Kindle is designed to display "Flowable Layout" - like a web page. Converting PDF files to something more suited to your Kindle can be done.

But rather than converting the PDF direct to a Kindle format I would convert to EPUB, and get that 'right' using various tools and one of the EPUB editors. And then I would convert the EPUB into whichever Amazon format best suits your particular Kindle.

Have you read this ==>> Read this before Posting PDF Questions

Looking at your sample pages I would think your PDFs will be relatively easy to convert to EPUB. I convert up to a dozen PDF's a day, but I have neither the time nor the inclination to seek an optimal solution for each PDF. I've found the following process suits me best...

I drop PDF's into MobiCreator, if the resultant PRC is in good shape I convert it to EPUB and fix with an EPUB editor (Sigil or calibre's book editor), if the PRC is in poor shape I convert it to RTF and bash that into shape in Word, using the eBook Tools Add-in for Word (thread in Workshop forum) and my 20+ years-worth of macros. I save as DOCX and convert that to EPUB. Either way I end up with an adequate EPUB.

An adequate EPUB is, amongst other things, one that can be readily converted into Kindle formats - MOBI, AZW3 etc.

BR

[sindhus]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

@sindus - A PDF file implements a "Fixed Layout" model, in essence it emulates sheets of paper, your Kindle is designed to display "Flowable Layout" - like a web page. Converting PDF files to something more suited to your Kindle can be done.

But rather than converting the PDF direct to a Kindle format I would convert to EPUB, and get that 'right' using various tools and one of the EPUB editors. And then I would convert the EPUB into whichever Amazon format best suits your particular Kindle.

Looking at your sample pages I would think your PDFs will be relatively easy to convert to EPUB. I convert up to a dozen PDF's a day, but I have neither the time nor the inclination to seek an optimal solution for each PDF. I've found the following process suits me best...

I drop PDF's into MobiCreator, if the resultant PRC is in good shape I convert it to EPUB and fix with an EPUB editor (Sigil or calibre's book editor), if the PRC is in poor shape I convert it to RTF and bash that into shape in Word, using the eBook Tools Add-in for Word (thread in Workshop forum) and my 20+ years-worth of macros. I save as DOCX and convert that to EPUB. Either way I end up with an adequate EPUB.

BR

Thanks! I have a starting point now!