Yet another PDF to LRF converter

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by megacoupe

Nate the Great: You can set the title, author, etc. Type "pdflrf -h" into the command prompt and you will see a list of the metadata available for this program.

I know this. I want this program to do it automatically.

[yota]

Originally Posted by phookoo

OK, clearly I'm a bigger dumbass than anyone here, but as I don't spend ANY time in DOS ever, using it is more than a little confusing.

No matter what I try, wherever I put the pdflrf exe, I try typing cd c:\pdflrf into the DOS prompt & hit return & it just returns the message -

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents>cd c:\pdflrf
The system cannot find the path specified

Bear in mind the 'C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents>' is already there & I can't overtype it. The exe is currently residing directly in the C drive, but I have also tried putting it in a new folder by itself & using that pathname with no more luck.

Maybe I can help you a little.

Your current directory or "folder" is
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents

The command you typed "cd c:\pdflrf" means that you want to "Change Directory" i.e. move to a folder inside your C drive named "pdflrf".

But you're getting an error that says that there is no such "folder".

Are you sure you have a folder named "pdflrf" inside your C drive?

Probably the easiest way is to move the "pdflrf.exe" file and the pdf file you want to convert into your "My Documents" since your are now there.
Then you can just type

pdflrf -i foo.pdf -o foo.lrf -s

at the prompt where foo is the name of your pdf file.

or try typing

pdflrf -h

to display the help message!

[mdhuang]

This thread should be made sticky!
The best PDF converter, period.
Only drawback now I see is the file size is huge compared to original. But it is not a real problem, since nowadays you can pick up a 1GB SD card for less than $10.
Thanks for the great work!

[cacapee]

megacoupe, thanks for the screenshots.

I have another request. Are you able to access the title, publisher, author, etc of the PDF? Can you set that data to be written into the LRF file by default (so it doesn't have to be done by hand)?

Will be included in the next release

- with -p and --nocrop options the pdf page is not filling the whole screen (looks like it has not been fit to cover whole screen). There is lots of free space at the right and at the bottom margins.

Be sure to use -rs. --nocrop will not crop whitespace on the sides

IDIOT-PROOF guide anyone?

A gui is in the works.

Also be sure to use --colors 16 or --colors 4 along with -rs to further reduce file size.

Source code is still not ready to be released. As you can see there are no external dependencies so it is a huge wad of code. A list of the libraries used are gd, jpeg, png, zlib, unrar, poppler, freetype, libdjvu

[cfishy]

Hi cacapee, Awesome job!

I just got done complaining about PDF support on Engadget and decided to come back and check things out. I tried PDFLRF and it's so awesome that I can't wait to convert all my pdf files. I cannot wait! so I rushed to create a little Windows utility to provide a drag and drop batch interface. Hope you don't mind I just whip up something quickly so we can all jump on it while waiting for your GUI to complete.

My GUI wrapper for PDFLRF is just called PDFLRF_GUI and it can be found here: http://www.carolchen.com/code/

(It's a rapid application so i will upload newer version whenever I get a chance to improve it. I know it's primitive but it gets some stuff done. comments welcome.)

[cfishy]

Originally Posted by cacapee

A gui is in the works.

(what happened to my previous post?)
Awesome job! If you forgive me I cannot wait to start converting so i wrote a little GUI wrapper. It's primitive but it lets you drag and drop files, hit "Run" and be done with it.

It can be found here: http://www.carolchen.com/code/

[thinredline]

Looks like this tool will become the No.1 choice of PDF converter.

I also have a request: could the batch processing function be built into the tool later? This will save user a lot of times. Thanks.

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by cfishy

(what happened to my previous post?)

Sorry about that, cfishy -- the "spam filter" caught it until one of us editors could look it over. We get a lot of posts selling cell phones and other dreck, and the filter catches them. Sometimes it gets a bit overzealous and grabs legitimate posts too. However, it should stop happening now that you've posted a few times, since one of its parameters (as I understand it) is the number of posts a user has made. Sorry for the mix-up.

[cacapee]

Uploaded version 0.3 which has a windows gui. --portrait has been removed and replaced by --rotation. Default is portrait now. Also metadata from pdf files are automatically read

[thinredline]

Could someone tell me what is the "erode" about? How should I choose this parameter?

[cacapee]

erode is similar to dilate in rasterfarian. It thickens the black regions proportional to the values specified. http://docs.gimp.org/2.2/en/plug-in-dilate.html

[cacapee]

Check out http://docs.gimp.org/2.2/en/plug-in-dilate.html

[Kilarney]

Okay... time for an ignorant newbie question.

Does this program actually help fit PDFs to the Reader screen?
I downloaded this file as a test:
http://www.targeting-the-kinome.org/images/Gasser2.pdf
I converted the first three pages.
What I saw was an exact replica of the PDF. So why convert in the first place? I was hoping that this program would extract the text and make it easier to read on the Reader screen. Am I missing something? Can you state the font size when converting?

Sorry to be such a newb, but can someone explain to me the benefits of this program? Is it just a matter of adjusting contrast?

Thanks.

[Gowry]

All I can say is wow!

Thank you for this great piece of software. Where's your paypal button?

I never thought I'd be able to read my programming books on this device after trying to convert some of them. If I converted to word then lrf, the formatting and graphics were all messed up or it was boxed, and any attempt to convert straight to lrf just made it unreadable...but after my first conversion with this, I can jump for joy!

Now if I could just find Terry Goodkind for sale as pdf...

Thanks again to both developers. Both the converter and GUI are wonderful!

Gowry

PS. I had a hard time figuring out if it was done at the end. The progress bar was full, but it wasn't finished...I could tell by my CPU meter. I think it'd be nice if the title bar maybe said PdfLrf - XX% and then changed to PdfLrf - Done! when finished. Just a suggestion

[cfishy]

Originally Posted by Kilarney

Okay... time for an ignorant newbie question.
Sorry to be such a newb, but can someone explain to me the benefits of this program? Is it just a matter of adjusting contrast?

you will see the difference once you load them into your reader.