KOBO pdf thumbs-down

[J. Strnad]

I'm not at all surprised that efforts to take a format, PDF, that was designed to stay exactly the same from one computer to the next, and make it reflow and rearrange itself to fit different monitor sizes...well, it just seems like that's asking a whale to be a minnow, or a bird to be a pencil.

If someone can do it, fine. It just strikes me as an unrealistic expectation.

[corona]

Originally Posted by mfpreach

Try Calibre to convert, thats what I use.

I do this a lot, with PDF files that are mainly text. It doesn't always work perfectly, but it almost always results in documents that are easily readable.

[46jimbo]

I made a little search and found it on mobileread. Developer
left about a year ago, so no news on the sopdf.
Have you installed some added libraries to your computer?
Have a look at the very first post, I think the guy is "theguru".
He mentioned some running libs, part of visual studio.

I added nothing to my computer. It just worked. (Windows 7 Home Premium)

[zoran]

Originally Posted by J. Strnad

I'm not at all surprised that efforts to take a format, PDF, that was designed to stay exactly the same from one computer to the next, and make it reflow and rearrange itself to fit different monitor sizes...well, it just seems like that's asking a whale to be a minnow, or a bird to be a pencil.

If someone can do it, fine. It just strikes me as an unrealistic expectation.

The problem is that people use it for almost everything. If ascii makes it,
you will get pdf. Good is that emails are still not in pdf. I'm still away of it
on my reader, but will take a little experiment on win node as soon as I
have a chance to get it. The one in question is xp with sp2.

[alroy]

If you purchase ebooks in PDF forms, the best eReader is the Bookeen Opus. It does not use reflow and it allows you to enlarge the print by percentages. Turn the page sideways and you have perfect formating. You get an arrow at the bottom of the page every second page, but if you turn the page before the arrow, the page moves up 3/4 of the eReader. The next page is the bottom of the PDF page and you don't need to flip the page until you finish the last line.

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by alroy

If you purchase ebooks in PDF forms, the best eReader is the Bookeen Opus. It does not use reflow and it allows you to enlarge the print by percentages. Turn the page sideways and you have perfect formating. You get an arrow at the bottom of the page every second page, but if you turn the page before the arrow, the page moves up 3/4 of the eReader. The next page is the bottom of the PDF page and you don't need to flip the page until you finish the last line.

Crikey

This is your second post in the Kobo forum spruiking the Bookeen Opus which is not really a Kobocentric solution

[zoran]

Originally Posted by alroy

If you purchase ebooks in PDF forms, the best eReader is the Bookeen Opus. It does not use reflow and it allows you to enlarge the print by percentages. Turn the page sideways and you have perfect formating. You get an arrow at the bottom of the page every second page, but if you turn the page before the arrow, the page moves up 3/4 of the eReader. The next page is the bottom of the PDF page and you don't need to flip the page until you finish the last line.

Since epub is an open format, I'd like to use it. In contrary, pdf
is not open format, so I avoid it.
On the serious side, pdf is intended to stay as it is. Nobody had
any thoughts to have it scaled. Now, we have almost all of inter-
net in that format. It could be fine on the desktop monitor. On
6 inch screen, the trouble comes. The previously mentioned app
removes margins and makes it more readable, I assume. Persona-
lly I tried about zillion ways to go around and found none. I cannot
convert my hand into the wing, however I try. Maybe it's time to
let pdf stay where it is and use epub?

[zoran]

Ah, found bookeen site. It is 5 inch device!!! Specs say
is runs almost the same battery and memory amount.
Not a word of sd card adapter? Also, it runs linux 2.6.
It is fine and preferred. From firmwares for routers, I
learnt that small footprint deserved 2.4, since it was
not so bulky.
What makes me laugh is the way firmwares all around
the world treat us as a stupid children. Why we have
"loading" and circling wheel at the same time during
book load? The wheel has to be refreshed all the time.
Also, do we need smart words again and again, waiting
to load? Do we need free books, when we already could
have it free as download? Those frills are not needed,
I think.
To short, Kobo looks better than bookeen.

Edit: it has mini slot. And two column pdf. Even eagle
would not read that.

[HamsterRage]

Originally Posted by Vardd

You can always use Calibre, but my experience with it hasn't been satisfying at all.

I've converted a number of books from PDF via Calibre and my experience has been quite satisfying. All the books I've converted, though, have been pretty much pure text. If you're having troubles, check out the Calibre forum here on Mobileread - the author of Calibre is a regular participant.

There are some things that Calibre doesn't do quite right, and I find that Sigil can usually sort those out quickly. The regular expression find&replace in Sigil is pretty good to delete the embedded page numbers and page headers/footers from the entire book with just a couple of commands.

What takes the longest, and for a typical book it's 5 to 10 minutes is to set up the TOC and chapter breaks through the book. I'd like to see Sigil enhanced to optomize that.

[zoran]

Originally Posted by HamsterRage

There are some things that Calibre doesn't do quite right, and I find that Sigil can usually sort those out quickly. The regular expression find&replace in Sigil is pretty good to delete the embedded page numbers and page headers/footers from the entire book with just a couple of commands.

Exactly I was doing to embellish books. And I almost always has to
try again and again and finally found I could read it anyway.

What takes the longest, and for a typical book it's 5 to 10 minutes is to set up the TOC and chapter breaks through the book. I'd like to see Sigil enhanced to optomize that.

I could only second that. Even after toc making, I it is boring and tedious.
Lasts almost longer than book reading.

[jonnybraga]

The only issue I've been having with converting pdf's to epub files is the paragraphs.
Calibre ends a paragraph in the middle of a sentence and I have paragraphs that go on for pages without a break. HamsterRage, how do u get to fix this kind of problem? thanks in advance.

[mcnkldzyn]

Has anyone found that the 1.4 firmware upgraded "fixed" the PDF problem?

[taming]

No--but I have high hopes for it being included in the next update. Sameer mentioned that they had hoped to have it in 1.4 but ran into some testing glitches that prevented it from being included then.

[CazMar]

Perhaps as ereader devices become more popular someone will write an application that allows a PDF document to be changed to a different page size, then saved. There are PDF editors out there that will do this, but they are very expensive because they do everything. EPub is great for text (novels etc) but can be a pain for books with graphics, charts etc, like most textbooks.

[taming]

I think the ultimate goal is PDF reflow so that PDF files can be viewed equally well on devices of various sizes.