A few questions before I buy the new DX - Page 2

eboyhan · 07-10-2010, 03:32 PM

KDX and PDF for reading are quite good if doc is created as a PDF targeted at a KDX.

As mentioned above highlighting, dictionary, annotations, etc are not up to snuff.

Zooming and panning is also not the same as zooming on the adobe reader. If the font on a PDF is too small to read on the KDX you can zoom it by 150, 200, 300%, or you can switch to landscape. Zooming does not reflow the larger text -- it just is pushed outside the viewable window -- so reading zoomed text requires frequent panning. On the DX 150% is often too much zoom -- would have been better on DX if had a 125% zoom. Landscape mode reading doesn't give you much on the page, but at least it's readable. On my KDX US reading in landscape mode is also noticeably slower.

For textbook/technical books I would say the PDF capabilities are not there yet.

Hope this helps

Sheikspeare · 07-10-2010, 06:04 PM

The DX needs an optional reflow feature to be used in conjunction with a user-determined zoom settings. That is you can set zoom from anywhere between 100% to 200%.

harryE123 · 07-11-2010, 10:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by eboyhan

KDX and PDF for reading are quite good if doc is created as a PDF targeted at a KDX.

As mentioned above highlighting, dictionary, annotations, etc are not up to snuff.

Zooming and panning is also not the same as zooming on the adobe reader. If the font on a PDF is too small to read on the KDX you can zoom it by 150, 200, 300%, or you can switch to landscape. Zooming does not reflow the larger text -- it just is pushed outside the viewable window -- so reading zoomed text requires frequent panning. On the DX 150% is often too much zoom -- would have been better on DX if had a 125% zoom. Landscape mode reading doesn't give you much on the page, but at least it's readable. On my KDX US reading in landscape mode is also noticeably slower.

For textbook/technical books I would say the PDF capabilities are not there yet.

Hope this helps

So is there any software to reformat PDFs, crop margins etc., specifically for the dx? That's the important question.

eboyhan · 07-11-2010, 11:08 AM

Targeted specifically at the DX? No, not to my knowledge. However, if you have control of the sources to be turned into a PDF, then there are things you can do. You could perhaps adjust font sizes before conversion. The most important thing I have found is to avoid page headers and footers which tend to be outdented in ways that use up valuable left/right space, If you must have headers/footers, try to get them centered on the page.

Most pdf-creating tools are little more than printer drivers with limited control over the creation process. The best of these that I have found is one that comes with the Nitro PDF reader. This reader is in many ways superior to Adobe's.

If you want to deal with store bought PDFs, then you are going to need a pdf editing package. The gold standard here is Adobe Acrobat which they sell for $300. Nitro also sells a pdf editor for considerably less. PDF is an incredibly complex format designed originally for prepress operations; so mastering the editing of store-bought PDFs is not for the faint of heart.

Calibre is a package which (among its many functions) offers many format conversion options including to/from pdf. Some have elected to convert pdf into mobi or other eBook formats. These conversions are not universally successful, and for store-bought PDFs can be really unpleasant.

For relatively simple docs, there is a lot that can be done to make the DX reading experience better. All of this takes time and effort (and more of it the more complex the document) -- for most this is probably not what they bargained for -- better if Amazon improves their reader.

harryE123 · 07-11-2010, 12:00 PM

Ed thanks a lot for the eloquent and detailed reply.

I have tried calibre but I am sorry to say it's crap, ESP. Converting PDFs to other formats, virtually useless.

I was thinking more along the lines of some simple program to crop margins of the dx, can't believe it's that hard to come upon.

But as you say amazon is the one to blame we shouldn't have to spent hours post processing our PDFs simply because they are pushing their store and sabotaging other reading on their devices...

TallMomof2 · 07-11-2010, 12:53 PM

Don't blame Calibre for poor PDF conversions. You need something as powerful as Adobe Acrobat, almost all of the cheap or free PDF converters are simply PDF printers. What I do is open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat and convert to rtf (you can also convert to html if that works better for you). Then I open the rtf in Word and clean it up. Novels aren't too bad and usually clean up fast. Right now I'm cleaning up a history book with a lot of inset paragraphs and pictures and it's taking a bit longer. The finished rtf will be loaded into Calibre and converted to whatever format I need. I do this so I can view the file on devices that don't handle pdf.

This workflow is for text based pdfs, image based pdfs require OCR and much more clean up. A good OCR program is essential.

harryE123 · 07-11-2010, 01:48 PM

I have OCR and acrobat but I ve not used it in a good while, to much hassle to be honest.

guiyoforward · 07-11-2010, 10:28 PM

Dear all, I usually have control over my source documents (or can edit pdfs with acrobat, adjusting margins and page sizes) - I'm trying to find out in another thread what "Targeted specifically at the DX" means for a pdf. What is the exact page size of the viewable area in a Kindle dx? Defaulting pdf creation (through the printer dirver) and creating pdfs from a word template set at this size would make life much easier! Anyone knows these figures for sure?

Thanks

g.

eboyhan · 07-11-2010, 11:23 PM

in my experience it is best to fit the text you want to read into the left/right viewable are of the DX which is a little less than 5.5". Kindles will automatically try to scale a pdf into the viewable left/right area, but if things are outdented (like some header/footers) or other formatted outdents, then you may end up with unwanted left/right blank margins (and font sizes squeezed down to accommodate same). If you have complete control, then set font size to something you are comfortable reading and then ensure that everything is laid out in 5.5" width with as close to 0" you can get for the left margin. Vertical page size matters less as kindle will attempt to flow/fill pages continuously.

guiyoforward · 07-11-2010, 11:43 PM

thanks ed! if I'm not wrong though, the kindle will not try to flow or fill pdf pages, right?

eboyhan · 07-12-2010, 12:57 AM

If you have not engaged the new pdf zoom facility, the kindle examines the maximum left right extents of the whole document, and then compresses or expands the left right extent of the whole document so it is "fitted" to the width of the kindle. Then starting at the top of the doc it flows from top to bottom breaking the doc up into page "images" that will fill the kindle screen.

You can control the left right stuff a bit, but you have no control over where the kindle decides to place the page/screen breaks -- at least that's what it does with pdf's I create.

For professionally created store-bought pdfs, it appears that it will fit the whole printed page as laid out in the pdf onto the kindle screen -- this will often lead to lots of extraneous left/right whitespace (and a corresponding shrinking of the font size to make it all fit), but at least every printed book page will correspond to a single kindle screen -- no matter how small that page ends up being on the kindle. You could try to edit these with Acrobat (or other tools), but these mostly have drm -- so your ability to edit them is restricted.

If you then invoke the kindle zoom facility, the kindle created page "images" are blown up by whatever % you chose (150, 200, 300) and you have to use panning left/right and up/down to see whole page. Hitting the "next page" button will take you to the next kindle created page "image" which continues to be blown up by the zoom %, and you will have to use panning to see all of that page ... and so on.

I'm not sure whether the kindle actually creates real "images" for each page, or whether it just adjusts the pdf to give the impression of an image -- I suspect the latter.

the kindle does some flowing of the doc when it is opened for the first time (as described above), but it will not reflow the doc once opened in response to a zoom request

I haven't looked at the source or anything, so what I'm describing here is my mental model which has worked well for me in dealing with the pdf's (many) that I have created for my KDX. I describe the kindle as examining the whole pdf at doc open, but it could be doing some of it on the fly as well -- save that once it has decided on a left/right layout, it maintains that throughout the doc.

Mr. Coconut · 07-12-2010, 01:11 AM

What I can tell you is this. I am an academic (I teach Latin American History at our largest local university), and I read a lot of academic articles on my DX. Books, too, but you asked about articles. I read tons of them. The DX is absolutely perfect for this. The size is just right that you can read them without adjusting size and all that. What the kindle does not do (DX or otherwise) is allow you to log on to your university library and read these articles directly. You have to log on, download what you need, and transfer them via USB or email. It's a fairly minor issue. But in terms of readability, it is completely perfect. I do almost all of my reading on my kindle these days. I also keep my lecture notes there, as well as papers I give at conferences.

If we could get amazon to engineer its browser so that it could access university libraries and the main academic journal databases (for me that would be stuff like JSTOR) directly, my life would be perfect. It's really the only ability I truly wish it had and does not. I owned a sony before, but the screen size was too small for what I needed (academic books and articles). The DX fixed this for me and has been worth every penny.

Hope that helps.

outismetis · 07-13-2010, 09:02 AM

Thanks everyone. I bought the DX and have had it for a few days now, and it works perfectly for my purposes. I have caught up with many weeks worth of academic reading in only a few evenings. I'm now working on converting some Ancient Greek texts to mobi for reading purposes. It's not a fast process, but it's coming along.

The DX works better than I expected, and I love the Calibre function for news subscriptions.

07-11-2010, 11:08 AM	#19
eboyhan PandaMuse Posts: 104 Karma: 104 Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Florida Device: kindle dx, kindle touch SO, kindle fire, kindle fire hd8.9	Targeted specifically at the DX? No, not to my knowledge. However, if you have control of the sources to be turned into a PDF, then there are things you can do. You could perhaps adjust font sizes before conversion. The most important thing I have found is to avoid page headers and footers which tend to be outdented in ways that use up valuable left/right space, If you must have headers/footers, try to get them centered on the page. Most pdf-creating tools are little more than printer drivers with limited control over the creation process. The best of these that I have found is one that comes with the Nitro PDF reader. This reader is in many ways superior to Adobe's. If you want to deal with store bought PDFs, then you are going to need a pdf editing package. The gold standard here is Adobe Acrobat which they sell for $300. Nitro also sells a pdf editor for considerably less. PDF is an incredibly complex format designed originally for prepress operations; so mastering the editing of store-bought PDFs is not for the faint of heart. Calibre is a package which (among its many functions) offers many format conversion options including to/from pdf. Some have elected to convert pdf into mobi or other eBook formats. These conversions are not universally successful, and for store-bought PDFs can be really unpleasant. For relatively simple docs, there is a lot that can be done to make the DX reading experience better. All of this takes time and effort (and more of it the more complex the document) -- for most this is probably not what they bargained for -- better if Amazon improves their reader. Last edited by eboyhan; 07-11-2010 at 11:12 AM.

07-12-2010, 12:57 AM	#26
eboyhan PandaMuse Posts: 104 Karma: 104 Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Florida Device: kindle dx, kindle touch SO, kindle fire, kindle fire hd8.9	If you have not engaged the new pdf zoom facility, the kindle examines the maximum left right extents of the whole document, and then compresses or expands the left right extent of the whole document so it is "fitted" to the width of the kindle. Then starting at the top of the doc it flows from top to bottom breaking the doc up into page "images" that will fill the kindle screen. You can control the left right stuff a bit, but you have no control over where the kindle decides to place the page/screen breaks -- at least that's what it does with pdf's I create. For professionally created store-bought pdfs, it appears that it will fit the whole printed page as laid out in the pdf onto the kindle screen -- this will often lead to lots of extraneous left/right whitespace (and a corresponding shrinking of the font size to make it all fit), but at least every printed book page will correspond to a single kindle screen -- no matter how small that page ends up being on the kindle. You could try to edit these with Acrobat (or other tools), but these mostly have drm -- so your ability to edit them is restricted. If you then invoke the kindle zoom facility, the kindle created page "images" are blown up by whatever % you chose (150, 200, 300) and you have to use panning left/right and up/down to see whole page. Hitting the "next page" button will take you to the next kindle created page "image" which continues to be blown up by the zoom %, and you will have to use panning to see all of that page ... and so on. I'm not sure whether the kindle actually creates real "images" for each page, or whether it just adjusts the pdf to give the impression of an image -- I suspect the latter. the kindle does some flowing of the doc when it is opened for the first time (as described above), but it will not reflow the doc once opened in response to a zoom request I haven't looked at the source or anything, so what I'm describing here is my mental model which has worked well for me in dealing with the pdf's (many) that I have created for my KDX. I describe the kindle as examining the whole pdf at doc open, but it could be doing some of it on the fly as well -- save that once it has decided on a left/right layout, it maintains that throughout the doc. Last edited by eboyhan; 07-12-2010 at 01:19 AM.

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07-10-2010, 03:32 PM	#16
eboyhan PandaMuse Posts: 104 Karma: 104 Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Florida Device: kindle dx, kindle touch SO, kindle fire, kindle fire hd8.9	KDX and PDF for reading are quite good if doc is created as a PDF targeted at a KDX. As mentioned above highlighting, dictionary, annotations, etc are not up to snuff. Zooming and panning is also not the same as zooming on the adobe reader. If the font on a PDF is too small to read on the KDX you can zoom it by 150, 200, 300%, or you can switch to landscape. Zooming does not reflow the larger text -- it just is pushed outside the viewable window -- so reading zoomed text requires frequent panning. On the DX 150% is often too much zoom -- would have been better on DX if had a 125% zoom. Landscape mode reading doesn't give you much on the page, but at least it's readable. On my KDX US reading in landscape mode is also noticeably slower. For textbook/technical books I would say the PDF capabilities are not there yet. Hope this helps

07-10-2010, 06:04 PM	#17
Sheikspeare Groupie Posts: 181 Karma: 290 Join Date: Jul 2009 Device: PR-505 / Kindle DX	The DX needs an optional reflow feature to be used in conjunction with a user-determined zoom settings. That is you can set zoom from anywhere between 100% to 200%.

07-11-2010, 12:00 PM	#20
harryE123 Banned Posts: 272 Karma: 70 Join Date: Dec 2008 Device: irex reader	Ed thanks a lot for the eloquent and detailed reply. I have tried calibre but I am sorry to say it's crap, ESP. Converting PDFs to other formats, virtually useless. I was thinking more along the lines of some simple program to crop margins of the dx, can't believe it's that hard to come upon. But as you say amazon is the one to blame we shouldn't have to spent hours post processing our PDFs simply because they are pushing their store and sabotaging other reading on their devices...

07-11-2010, 12:53 PM	#21
TallMomof2 Kindlephilia Posts: 2,017 Karma: 1139255 Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Snowpacolypse 2010 Device: Too many to count	Don't blame Calibre for poor PDF conversions. You need something as powerful as Adobe Acrobat, almost all of the cheap or free PDF converters are simply PDF printers. What I do is open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat and convert to rtf (you can also convert to html if that works better for you). Then I open the rtf in Word and clean it up. Novels aren't too bad and usually clean up fast. Right now I'm cleaning up a history book with a lot of inset paragraphs and pictures and it's taking a bit longer. The finished rtf will be loaded into Calibre and converted to whatever format I need. I do this so I can view the file on devices that don't handle pdf. This workflow is for text based pdfs, image based pdfs require OCR and much more clean up. A good OCR program is essential.

07-11-2010, 01:48 PM	#22
harryE123 Banned Posts: 272 Karma: 70 Join Date: Dec 2008 Device: irex reader	I have OCR and acrobat but I ve not used it in a good while, to much hassle to be honest.

07-11-2010, 10:28 PM	#23
guiyoforward Zealot Posts: 101 Karma: 7104 Join Date: Jul 2010 Device: Kindle DX Graphite	Dear all, I usually have control over my source documents (or can edit pdfs with acrobat, adjusting margins and page sizes) - I'm trying to find out in another thread what "Targeted specifically at the DX" means for a pdf. What is the exact page size of the viewable area in a Kindle dx? Defaulting pdf creation (through the printer dirver) and creating pdfs from a word template set at this size would make life much easier! Anyone knows these figures for sure? Thanks g.

07-11-2010, 11:23 PM	#24
eboyhan PandaMuse Posts: 104 Karma: 104 Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Florida Device: kindle dx, kindle touch SO, kindle fire, kindle fire hd8.9	in my experience it is best to fit the text you want to read into the left/right viewable are of the DX which is a little less than 5.5". Kindles will automatically try to scale a pdf into the viewable left/right area, but if things are outdented (like some header/footers) or other formatted outdents, then you may end up with unwanted left/right blank margins (and font sizes squeezed down to accommodate same). If you have complete control, then set font size to something you are comfortable reading and then ensure that everything is laid out in 5.5" width with as close to 0" you can get for the left margin. Vertical page size matters less as kindle will attempt to flow/fill pages continuously.

07-11-2010, 11:43 PM	#25
guiyoforward Zealot Posts: 101 Karma: 7104 Join Date: Jul 2010 Device: Kindle DX Graphite	thanks ed! if I'm not wrong though, the kindle will not try to flow or fill pdf pages, right?

07-12-2010, 01:11 AM	#27
Mr. Coconut Junior Member Posts: 4 Karma: 10 Join Date: Oct 2009 Device: PRS505	What I can tell you is this. I am an academic (I teach Latin American History at our largest local university), and I read a lot of academic articles on my DX. Books, too, but you asked about articles. I read tons of them. The DX is absolutely perfect for this. The size is just right that you can read them without adjusting size and all that. What the kindle does not do (DX or otherwise) is allow you to log on to your university library and read these articles directly. You have to log on, download what you need, and transfer them via USB or email. It's a fairly minor issue. But in terms of readability, it is completely perfect. I do almost all of my reading on my kindle these days. I also keep my lecture notes there, as well as papers I give at conferences. If we could get amazon to engineer its browser so that it could access university libraries and the main academic journal databases (for me that would be stuff like JSTOR) directly, my life would be perfect. It's really the only ability I truly wish it had and does not. I owned a sony before, but the screen size was too small for what I needed (academic books and articles). The DX fixed this for me and has been worth every penny. Hope that helps.

07-13-2010, 09:02 AM	#28
outismetis Member Posts: 17 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jul 2010 Device: Kindle DX	Thanks everyone. I bought the DX and have had it for a few days now, and it works perfectly for my purposes. I have caught up with many weeks worth of academic reading in only a few evenings. I'm now working on converting some Ancient Greek texts to mobi for reading purposes. It's not a fast process, but it's coming along. The DX works better than I expected, and I love the Calibre function for news subscriptions.

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