Document conversion challenge

AprilHare · 03-11-2009, 07:36 AM

Today, I was in a student office at university lining up to get the 2009 Honours Handbook being printed out for me. As it was printing out, I was reading something on my Sony Reader and it attracted the interest of a academic member. As I showed it off, I was interrupted by the document being handed to me. He layed down the challenge: "Hey, you should put that on your PDA!"

So.. the challenge: how can I convert this document so it views great on my Sony PRS-500, and subsequently for any Sony Reader? http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/pdfs/...s_handbook.pdf
I'm looking for the best conversion technique available.

gwynevans · 03-11-2009, 10:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AprilHare

I'm looking for the best conversion technique available.

The best way will be to start from the original source not the output PDF, then set it to use a page size of 88.184mm x 113.854 mm.

Also see here.

Steven Lyle Jordan · 03-11-2009, 11:16 AM

Calibre will take PDFs and output them to LRF, which can be read on the Sony reader--assuming the PDF is a tagged file (and not an image file). If it's not a tagged file, get the original document, which is most likely in Word. I have tried this, and it does work well, depending on the condition of the original document.

(Edit: Just glanced at the doc, and it should work fine in Calibre.)

nrapallo · 03-11-2009, 11:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AprilHare

Today, I was in a student office at university lining up to get the 2009 Honours Handbook being printed out for me. As it was printing out, I was reading something on my Sony Reader and it attracted the interest of a academic member. As I showed it off, I was interrupted by the document being handed to me. He layed down the challenge: "Hey, you should put that on your PDA!"

So.. the challenge: how can I convert this document so it views great on my Sony PRS-500, and subsequently for any Sony Reader? http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/pdfs/...s_handbook.pdf
I'm looking for the best conversion technique available.

Actually, if you import that .pdf into Mobipocket Creator, it will do a very decent job OCR'ing it into .html. From the resulting .prc ebook, just add it to Calibre and convert it to .lrf or .epub there.

However, it's not perfect and would need to be "cleaned up" or tweaked to fit on the Sony's screen better.

Here are some Q&D results of that conversion, done in less than five minutes.

gwynevans · 03-11-2009, 11:35 AM

Sure, it'll convert reasonably well, but it looked to me as if it's the output of an in-house process (my guess would be from some form of Tex input?) so, give the requirement of the best technique, it's got to be to start from the original source!

cerement · 03-11-2009, 12:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gwynevans

Sure, it'll convert reasonably well, but it looked to me as if it's the output of an in-house process (my guess would be from some form of Tex input?) so, give the requirement of the best technique, it's got to be to start from the original source!

Can't really tell what the master document was, but that PDF was definitely generated from TeX - the layout and the fonts especially are a dead giveaway (the fonts are all CMS).

kovidgoyal · 03-11-2009, 12:55 PM

For tex based documents a simple

\usepackage{geometry} and specifying the correct page size will work, provided the TeX file doesn't use any poorly implemented macros.

AprilHare · 03-12-2009, 10:31 PM

I'm afraid as far as getting the original document (LaTeX): I believe it would fall into the "Special Request" category.
I have looked at conversion options at hand and the best I have found so far was using Acrobat to convert the document to HTML then convert that using Calibre. It's not ideal though. Oversized tables get "squashed" and internal hyperlinks are lost. I've attached the results if anyone is interested.

frabjous · 03-12-2009, 11:34 PM

Well, part of the problem is that you didn't really say what about the original document it was most important to keep, and what was important to you and what wasn't. Is file size important? Is flexibility/zooming/reflowing important? Is preserving the exact look of tables, etc., important?

Attached you'll see what I probably would have done with it personally: I fed it through PDFLRF, which created an image-based LRF. It would be viewable on your reader if held sideways fairly well, and it looks almost identical to the original document. The characters are rather small, but I think still legible.

More downsides: these are images, so there's no zooming. The file size is enormous compared to the original document (more than 10x the size).

Obviously, getting your hands on the original .tex file and working with that would give the best results.

03-11-2009, 07:36 AM	#1
AprilHare Wizard Posts: 2,981 Karma: 11862367 Join Date: Apr 2008 Device: Sony Reader PRS-T2	Document conversion challenge Today, I was in a student office at university lining up to get the 2009 Honours Handbook being printed out for me. As it was printing out, I was reading something on my Sony Reader and it attracted the interest of a academic member. As I showed it off, I was interrupted by the document being handed to me. He layed down the challenge: "Hey, you should put that on your PDA!" So.. the challenge: how can I convert this document so it views great on my Sony PRS-500, and subsequently for any Sony Reader? http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/pdfs/...s_handbook.pdf I'm looking for the best conversion technique available.

03-11-2009, 11:16 AM	#3
Steven Lyle Jordan Grand Sorcerer Posts: 8,478 Karma: 5171130 Join Date: Jan 2006 Device: none	Calibre will take PDFs and output them to LRF, which can be read on the Sony reader--assuming the PDF is a tagged file (and not an image file). If it's not a tagged file, get the original document, which is most likely in Word. I have tried this, and it does work well, depending on the condition of the original document. (Edit: Just glanced at the doc, and it should work fine in Calibre.) Last edited by Steven Lyle Jordan; 03-11-2009 at 11:18 AM.

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03-11-2009, 11:35 AM	#5
gwynevans Wizzard Posts: 1,402 Karma: 2000000 Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: UK Device: iPad 2, iPhone 6s, Kindle Voyage & Kindle PaperWhite	Sure, it'll convert reasonably well, but it looked to me as if it's the output of an in-house process (my guess would be from some form of Tex input?) so, give the requirement of the best technique, it's got to be to start from the original source!

03-11-2009, 12:55 PM	#7
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,858 Karma: 22666666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	For tex based documents a simple \usepackage{geometry} and specifying the correct page size will work, provided the TeX file doesn't use any poorly implemented macros.