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Old 02-27-2019, 08:44 PM   #1
ilikebison
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Keep PDF look, just convert to MOBI

Hi there,

So, I'm a total newb. Part of the reason I got my Fire HD 8 was so I could save some professional documents to my Kindle for easy viewing. Some of my PDF's have saved to MOBI format beautifully. Others, not so much.

I'm looking to keep the look of each PDF as I have it now. I'd like to import it to my Kindle library as I've found they load much faster that way. However, some of my PDFs actually convert to an ebook format and the text is spread across several pages and it separates ideas in ways I do not want it to be separated. I literally just want it to save like it would as the PDF. I imagine that if I printed out each document and then scanned it as a PDF again this issue would disappear, as the text would have been saved as a scanned image. However, we're talking 200 some odd page documents and I have no desire to print these out and scan them again. Surely there has to be a way to avoid this!

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
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Old 02-27-2019, 09:00 PM   #2
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Mobi is a old, limited capability format.
Why not stay with PDF if that is the look you want.
IIRC Kindle Previewer (a PC app), accepts PDF, and can output a Kindle version
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Old 02-28-2019, 08:00 PM   #3
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Is this app free?
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Old 02-28-2019, 08:29 PM   #4
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Is this app free?
Yes https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk
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Old 02-28-2019, 09:35 PM   #5
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Must be a canada dog, probably need a drover's dog down here.
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Old 03-13-2019, 10:02 AM   #6
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Also PDF is just a container. It can contain a sort of postscript, OCR text for searching and a scanned image for reading. It's not meant to reflow, but preview printing. So conversion to ANY ebook format will often be poor to rubbish, depending on what is in a PDF.
You need to view PDFs as PDFs, on something large enough to read fine print on Letter or A4 source without panning or zooming. Older 1200 line LCDs were better than newer 1080 so called "full HD" laptops. Tablets need to be decent DPI and used in Portrait and at LEAST 10", larger may be needed if the screen is longer aspect ratio
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Old 03-13-2019, 12:32 PM   #7
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Old 03-13-2019, 03:01 PM   #8
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Kindle Previewer
There are plenty of better free programs just to read PDFs. That Mac/Windows program is primarily to test ebooks.

Disable PDF viewing in Web browser and install one.

PDFs are not really ebooks, but an electronic WYSIWYG proofing/distribution format to mimic EXACTLY what a paper output would be.
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Old 03-27-2019, 02:53 PM   #9
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You could think of a PDF containing a bunch of individual characters, including the spaces and punctuation, that have been individually placed so that they form words. In effect their placement is arbitrary, and when you look inside a PDF it's not always clear what are the words and sentences. Whereas an ebook in MOBI or Kindle format the characters and words are in a continuous stream with a known order. In a PDF the order and placement isn't always as well known. So when a PDF is translated to MOBI the placement isn't likely to be the same as it was in the PDF. Also, in a MOBI and Kindle file there isn't the specific placement like there is in a PDF.
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Old 03-28-2019, 07:48 AM   #10
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You could think of a PDF containing a bunch of individual characters .... In effect their placement is arbitrary , ... ebook in MOBI or Kindle format the characters and words are in a continuous stream with a known order. In a PDF the order and placement isn't always as well known.
This is nonsense. It's not how PDFs and eBooks work.
A PDF is a container. It might not have text at all, just a scanned image.
It's specifically designed for printing on paper, the same anywhere and to give an exact WYSIWYG preview on a screen. Thus unless your screen has similar resolution to a physical printer and large enough to support the "paper size", the results are rubbish on a eReader. A5 sized manuals are about usable on better ereaders. PDFs are page based, layout is for a particular paper size. The text (if there even is any) is deliberately intended NEVER to reflow.

Mobi and epub are based on the idea of HTML (the content is very like a webpage content). Thus the content has normally NO definition of pages. Both are also containers. The text need not be sequential at all. So like a webpage, the text flows. Unlike most web browsers the viewing software paginates the text based on document font size, device resolution and user's chosen margins, line spacing and text zoom level.

Conversion success depends on what is IN a PDF. If it's text, then it's best exported to a wordprocessor and global format styles used to make it ebook compatible. Some PDFs are scanned images with OCR text layer to allow search. Some considerable human proof reading / edit in the WP with the PDF in a viewer beside is needed to fix such documents.
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Old 03-28-2019, 08:28 AM   #11
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This is nonsense. It's not how PDFs and eBooks work.
If you mean the text you bolded in your quotation, you are incorrect.

The location in the file of the characters on a page in PDF is arbitrary. In the file, the first character on a page might come first in the file, and then one from the middle of the page, and then one from the last line on the page. So long as all the characters needed on the page are placed by the end of the page description, their order in the PDF file is completely arbitrary. Also, spaces between words need not be given as actual characters.

Converting an arbitrary PDF to flowing text (even ignoring those PDFs that just contain scanned images) is not trivial.
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Old 03-28-2019, 10:07 AM   #12
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I side with Paul
PDF is a markup language. It takes a piece (block) and puts it down at a specific anchor location.
The ORDER is not required. This is why un-PDF ing can look crazy. A applied correction will be at the end of the placement instructions. Images, will be WHEN (in the instructions) they were placed.

I have seen the bits of Orto NEGATIVE film used for Offset plate making. They are attached to the master (I have forgotten the name after 60 years) matrix, the the plate is exposed from the completed matrix) the alternate was a 'Paste up" with strips from a Varityper and other sources, and the final negative was made from the paste up.

Adobe, just computerized this way back in the dark ages
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Old 03-29-2019, 06:08 AM   #13
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[1]If you mean the text you bolded in your quotation, you are incorrect.

[2] The location in the file of the characters on a page in PDF is arbitrary.
...
[3] Converting an arbitrary PDF to flowing text (even ignoring those PDFs that just contain scanned images) is not trivial.
I may have been unclear. I agree with [2] and [3]. What I meant is that "real" ebooks are also containers with multiple "logical files" and content of those read by a human doesn't tell you how the page will look unless you are an expert at HTML, and often CSS.

PDFs were invented to help proofing content for printing on paper. Terrible format for ebook readers unless the PDF uses a small paper size or the ereader is 13" diagonal or similar. More resolution than 167 dpi (such as 300dpi) only helps a very little even on a 7" display. My Eyes!
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Old 08-25-2021, 07:36 AM   #14
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1) The OP was asking for PDF to Mobi.

2) Converting PDF to anything is fraught. PDF is an envelope that can contain many things. It's not meant to be editable or convertible, but purely for view or print.

3) Online document convertors are potentially evil. Issues of copyright, privacy, security and even malware. People should download proper tools from known safe sources.

4) Converting TO pdf from anything is trivial.

Three posts and this reads like spam.
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Old 08-25-2021, 10:27 AM   #15
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Then of course there is the question of what that online converter uses to do the conversion. I mean, if all it is doing is running calibre, it's pretty pointless to use it.
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