PDF -> What?

[Slite]

Have a bunch of books in PDF format and would like to convert them to a format that my BeBook (Hanlin V3 rebrand) handles better. Anyone have recomendations as to which format would be best since these devices don't handle Mobi yet, since that is the one I am most familiar with.

Have bought ABC Amber PDF converter for just this purpose and been converting some PDF's to .LIT, but seem to be unable to get it to correctly handle paragraphs and page breaks. Anyone who has been working with that software and know a way to avoid this issue?

[JSWolf]

The best way to avoid PDF conversion errors is to just not bother. I don't know of any software that can take your PDF files and covert them error free.

[ArgonZ]

When the PDF is text based I use the BookDesigner. At first it's not simple to use, but after a while you get use to it and it just works.
Best of all, it's free and creates the fb2.

[JSWolf]

Book Designer looses all the graphics and styles. That's not good.

[torbich]

I can propose JAP (Just Another Printer) http://the-ebook.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5366
to convert PDF files to WOL format. You can manually split every page by 2, remove white margins etc. And the result is one of the best possibles, at least for PDFs with complicated formatting.

[rjh]

Originally Posted by Slite

seem to be unable to get it to correctly handle paragraphs and page breaks. Anyone who has been working with that software and know a way to avoid this issue?

Sounds like a pretty basic shortcoming...

Hey, my BeBook displays Mobipocket just fine :-)

I've changed the firmware on my BB and now I use FBReader; it supports more formats than the original reader. I can now read Plucker (very important to me) but Mobipocket is also supported by FBReader. Table of contents and link navigation are supported.

.lit is one of the few formats that FBReader is not going to support, so I'd tend to avoid it also.

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by rjh

.lit is one of the few formats that FBReader is not going to support, so I'd tend to avoid it also.

If you explode a LIT with ConvertLIT, make a .zip of the contents and rename it .oebzip then FBReader works very well on LITs. On the iLiad, FBReader can handle (DRM-free) LIT directly by adding a pre-processing step that explodes the file to a subdirectory and then passes the .opf file to FBReader (there is no need to form a .oebzip, although this would be ok too). Instead of forming a .oebzip you could instead use oeb2epub to form a .epub (which is also a zip file) - the result may not be a legal ePub but FBReader will read it.

I am not a fan of treating FBReader as a backend single-ebook reader (I like FBReader's library capability), but it does make it very easy to add pre-processing steps like ConvertLIT to get round DMCA and licensing issues.

[jeczmien]

Originally Posted by Slite

Have a bunch of books in PDF format and would like to convert them to a format that my BeBook (Hanlin V3 rebrand) handles better. Anyone have recomendations as to which format would be best since these devices don't handle Mobi yet, since that is the one I am most familiar with.

In my opinion the best converter is Aaby PDF Transformer (http://www.pdftransformer.com) in OCR mode (it treats PDF as a graphics - so even if text inside PDF is messy conversion is almost perfect).

Second: there is one version of V3 firmware which supports mobi

[Slite]

Yah, I know there is a firmware version that supports mobi, but I'd rather wait until BeBook releases support for it. Since I don't really want to mess around with firmware stuff if I dont need to

[hlombard]

Originally Posted by Slite

Have a bunch of books in PDF format and would like to convert them to a format that my BeBook (Hanlin V3 rebrand) handles better. Anyone have recomendations as to which format would be best since these devices don't handle Mobi yet, since that is the one I am most familiar with.

Have bought ABC Amber PDF converter for just this purpose and been converting some PDF's to .LIT, but seem to be unable to get it to correctly handle paragraphs and page breaks. Anyone who has been working with that software and know a way to avoid this issue?

I've used PDFCropper and it works well. Good interface, although I didn't understand most of the options. Clicked a few options until it worked. http://www.pdfcropper.com/

1. Create a new project, and get your old pdf file in there
2. "File- Crop settings"to set the size of your screen
3. "File - Crop" to name the new pdf file ( I just selected most of the check boxes)

This will create a new pdf where the page orientation is sideways.

Good luck

[rafel2005j]

Hi !

There is another possible solution, but is necessary two conversions:

1) Convert the PDF to HTML with graphics with Mobipocket

2) Open the HTML (created before) with BookDesigner, and save it in fb2 format. It incorporates the graphics.

I'm from Spain Europe, apologize for my little english.

[Trono]

Originally Posted by rafel2005j

Hi !

There is another possible solution, but is necessary two conversions:

1) Convert the PDF to HTML with graphics with Mobipocket

Rafel,

Could you explain step 1) please...? Is it possible to do this in my desktop version of Mobipocket reader?

When I import a pdf-file, the program seems to automatically produce a PRC-file - which I still can't read on my V3. I can import the pdf directly into BookDesigner, but - as pointed out by others - the resulting (FB2-)file is often corrupted when the source is a PDF.

Grateful for any clarifying answer.
Trono

[Slite]

Originally Posted by Trono

Rafel,

Could you explain step 1) please...? Is it possible to do this in my desktop version of Mobipocket reader?

When I import a pdf-file, the program seems to automatically produce a PRC-file - which I still can't read on my V3. I can import the pdf directly into BookDesigner, but - as pointed out by others - the resulting (FB2-)file is often corrupted when the source is a PDF.

Grateful for any clarifying answer.
Trono

Hello!

Nope, you can't do that in the reader, you need to downaload MobiPocket Creator Professional from Mobipockets homepage. It's a free download, but you need the PRO version to be able to work with PDF's. Just install the software and run it, then Import your PDF into the creator.

[Trono]

Ok - thank you

Then I guess I'll await the new BeBook-/V3-firmware which is supposed to support PRC-files..

[Ulysses]

Originally Posted by torbich

I can propose JAP (Just Another Printer) http://the-ebook.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5366
to convert PDF files to WOL format. You can manually split every page by 2, remove white margins etc. And the result is one of the best possibles, at least for PDFs with complicated formatting.

Is there any documentation for this software in English?

Ok I got the basics to work.. great tool...

Is there a way to change font in PDF? As a lot of my PDFs were written on an old typewriter and there is very thin font and it looks too small to read it in enviroment where you can't fully concentrate on reading. I just need to make it bold or something.