Reading PDF's - what's the point :(

[Arek_W]

I bought Sony Reader to not only read books, but also to use it with with abundant reports I get for my job. They all are in PDF format & they have to stay in the format they were published, can not crop them/half them, etc. After 3 days of trying to adjust different spex, using Rast, exporting from Acrobat to Word, RTF, Txt, etc, my conclusion is PDF is useless . What a disappointment. So the rethorical question, why Sony ever bothered? if it would be lrf only, my level of expectation would not be there, but its multiformat.....

So for those who have time, what about converting pdf's to jpeg? anyone tried? I will do some conversions today & see the outcome.

cheers

[JSWolf]

Why can't you edit a copy of the PDF files to fit on the Sony? In fact, why can't you generate a seperate copy that's formatted for the Sony's screen size?

[Arek_W]

well, good Q, but what soft & how would you set it up. I have all the Adobe soft, been playing with file optimization, quality, tried to improve fonts size....
So bottom line, u mean conversion from A4 and its size to Sony size?

[JSWolf]

The Sony Reader's screen size is 90mm by 120mm or 3.54330 inches by 4.72440 inches.

Just setup your page size to be that and when you print,m you'll get a PDF formatted for the Sony's screen.

[Arek_W]

will try & revert, but for now is the BBQ time & good beer so later

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Arek_W

will try & revert, but for now is the BBQ time & good beer so later

Have fun. And please let us know how your PDFs work out.

[Arek_W]

well, the BBQ was short (was too curious to see the result . So ther result is zero, quality got a bit better, but its the font size, its sharpness and it greyscale color which still makes it useless. It did use ScanSoft Professional4 soft and driver, changed paper size to 90x120, used highest quality output specs, no downsampling, etc,etc. Print it to file and "denada" still need magnifying glasses to see it :/. I am running the file now with changed page size through RasterFarian and will see the end result.
It really boils down to quality & sharpness of the pdf font .

[Arek_W]

ok, so the result after RastaFarian is somehow satisfactory, except the fonts got somehow, what's the expression?, eaten up. U know like when u enlarge the font they are not solid any more . Does ony one know how to:
1. enlarge fonts in pdf's & make them bold in original document (what soft should be used?)
and than If I apply paper size reduction + RastaFarian I think the result will be satisfactory.

[Arek_W]

and if this is not possible, what other format (jpeg?) would retain structure & layout to view those files?

[JSWolf]

Can you make the font larger in order to see it better?

Another thing to try is making each page again smaller so when the reader fills the screen it will be larger.

[Arek_W]

u mean on the reader? the moment I go from standard size to larger fonts, fonts become fuzzy, u know like they are chipped.

I am attaching 2 reports as a sample (they are interesting ones for those who deal with oil/energy market as I do -> call it added value for being a ebook user . U can see a difference immidiately. I followed paper size reduction + Rastafarian process.


I was wondering if there is a soft which could increase fonts within original PDF.

[RWood]

The PDF you posted made from MS Word is listed as 8.26" x 11.69" -- way to large to be read on the Reader. The LRF was, as you said, almost unreadable. It looked like a report that had been copied too many times on the office copier or something from a bad fax.

What I have done in the past is (as JSWolf has pointed out) made special PDFs for the Reader. It is a bit more than just setting the Acrobat output, you need to change the page size in Word for the entire document to 90mm x 120mm. Then you can reset your base font to 9 pt (as most like it) or 10 pt (as I like.)

You may also want to checkout libprs500. If you save the Word file as HTML and use the html2lrf command line program it may generate what you are looking for.

Good luck.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by RWood

The PDF you posted made from MS Word is listed as 8.26" x 11.69"

Which is called "A4" by everyone in the world outside the USA .

[Arek_W]

RWOOD - well i am at loss here. The report is an original one sent to me as PDF, than as per previous post, I have shrunk the page from A4 to 90/120, and did Rastafarian. That's all.
I did try to work from PDF to Word, but the output is, i mean text is in the boxes therefore when I select all, and than rework the font the document gets very messy indeed. If I go box by box would take me hours & dont feel like doing it.

So for now, I gave up on PDF's and back to cellulose base . I just hope someone with the wits & knowledge will be able to come up with another PDF's solution or maybe SONY will improve :?

Regarding libprs500, I get problems with coexistance together with Sony's Connect soft. Make long story short, I am back to Connect.

So for now, converting all my *.lit books to *.lrf's and quite happy with the result. & most of all enjoying books & quality of print
Thx for the help anyway.

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by Arek_W

...I have shrunk the page from A4 to 90/120, and did Rastafarian.

I think I may see the problem here, try running a file through Rasterfarian without shrinking it.

Rasterfarian takes Letter/A4 pages and converts them to two chunks, top and bottom of each original page. Then you can see the original file at something approaching the right size, just in two pieces, and it should be a lot more readable ....