PDFRead 1.8.2 released!

[pretenderep]

Hi!
I'm trying to convert some free pdf ebooks to lrf to make them more "readable" on the prs-505.
I've properly installed ebook publisher, I've selected the prs 505 profile, left all options unchecked and at the end of the process I get an error message :

"File "encodings\utf_8/pyc", line 16, in decode
Unicode Decoder Error : 'utf_8' can't decode bytes in position 5-7: invalid data"

the the program stops

I've already try different pdfs...

Any guess what I should do?

Thx

ps: I'm running vista ultimate x64

I try by reinstalling the program and it now works!

[nrapallo]

Originally Posted by pretenderep

Hi!
I'm trying to convert some free pdf ebooks to lrf to make them more "readable" on the prs-505.
I've properly installed ebook publisher, I've selected the prs 505 profile, left all options unchecked and at the end of the process I get an error message :

"File "encodings\utf_8/pyc", line 16, in decode
Unicode Decoder Error : 'utf_8' can't decode bytes in position 5-7: invalid data"

the the program stops

I've already try different pdfs...

Any guess what I should do?

Thx

ps: I'm running vista ultimate x64

I try by reinstalling the program and it now works!

Good to hear its working now.

I still have an issue with how PDFRead "stretches" images on the Sony PRS-500/505 that are smaller (height-wise) than the screen size. The only solution I have found is to resize smaller than maximum image sizes by padding with "white space". This will be in the next revision to PDFRead.

[ctsimpson]

Great Job with this. A few things that would make it as nice as pdf2lrf would be the manual adjustment of margins with preview.. and the reflow support. pdf2lrf solved all my pdf issues with the sony, and I think it would be great if pdfread could do the same on the kindle.

thx again... no complaints, just some suggestions...
Chris

[nrapallo]

Originally Posted by ctsimpson

Great Job with this.

Thanks!

A few things that would make it as nice as pdf2lrf would be the manual adjustment of margins with preview..

I try to eliminate the side margins so as to produce an image that can be scaled (up) to the hardware reader's dimensions either landscape or portrait. By manual adjustment of margins, do you mean while previewing it (interactively) or trying to offset/center the resulting page (image)?

I think a simple preview of the resulting ebook can be easily accomplished from within PDFRead by using your system's default software viewer.

and the reflow support.

I'm considering An algorithm to render PDF in small devices support, but only when a windows functioning program becomes available. It looks promising, but is not a "reflow" solution.

pdf2lrf solved all my pdf issues with the sony, and I think it would be great if pdfread could do the same on the kindle.

thx again... no complaints, just some suggestions...
Chris

The .prc ebook produced for the Kindle/Cybook and iLiad seem to work ok, though not actually having any of these devices or the Sony puts me at a disadvantage. Can't fix/improve what you can't "see" is broken (software viewer excluded)!

[kergoth]

Originally Posted by nrapallo

I still have an issue with how PDFRead "stretches" images on the Sony PRS-500/505 that are smaller (height-wise) than the screen size. The only solution I have found is to resize smaller than maximum image sizes by padding with "white space". This will be in the next revision to PDFRead.

Really looking forward to that fix. Also running into a slight oddity on the prs505. The pages are always substantially smaller than the screen size. So much so, that it's -almost- small enough to fit on the screen correctly when zoomed to medium, but not quite, parts are cut off. Anyone have any ideas on this? I'd like it to fill the screen when at small zoom. Thanks.

[kergoth]

Originally Posted by nrapallo

I still have an issue with how PDFRead "stretches" images on the Sony PRS-500/505 that are smaller (height-wise) than the screen size. The only solution I have found is to resize smaller than maximum image sizes by padding with "white space". This will be in the next revision to PDFRead.

Really looking forward to that fix. Also running into a slight oddity on the prs505. The pages are always substantially smaller than the screen size. So much so, that it's -almost- small enough to fit on the screen correctly when zoomed to medium, but not quite, parts are cut off. Anyone have any ideas on this? I'd like it to fill the screen when at small zoom. Thanks.

[nrapallo]

Originally Posted by kergoth

Really looking forward to that fix.

This "bug" only stretches vertically downward less than maximum height images and is caused by the pylrs code used within PDFRead's output.py module. I have tried different blockstyle & blockrule combinations, but to no avail. The only fix is to pad the bottom of less than maximum height images to the maximum height. Sloppy, but effective. I'd like to fix this along with your other issue below as they both need the maximum height determined.

Also running into a slight oddity on the prs505. The pages are always substantially smaller than the screen size. So much so, that it's -almost- small enough to fit on the screen correctly when zoomed to medium, but not quite, parts are cut off. Anyone have any ideas on this? I'd like it to fill the screen when at small zoom. Thanks.

The default width and height for the Sony PRS-500/505 are 583, 753 and can be changed using the Size H: and V: input areas, though the actual screen size I believe is being hampered by the "hard-coded" dimensions in the Output.py module in the LrfOuput routine i.e. 565, 754 and 768.

Try entering 600 800 into the Size H: and V: input areas and see if the results are different. If not, then we need to tweak those hard coded values and determine the best values to use. I can only rely on the software lrfviewer (not owning a Sony PRS-500/505) which may not be indicative of how the hardware ereader handles this. I will try to recompile soon the dos pdfread.exe to use different "hard-coded" values in an attempt to 'flush-out' the best values to use. I think 583, 753 and 800 may be better hard-coded values. We'll see...

EDIT: For Sony PRS-500/505 users only, added test .zip to replace current pdfread.exe and library.zip in bin directory of the PDFRead install. Please report if there is any improvement utilizing the max. screen area using the 583, 753 and 800 "hard-coded" values. Thanks.

[GeoffC]

Thank you for this, it's something I've looking for for a while, it does a very nice job of converting PDF files into .prc.
Great...
Just need to look at a way to edit the PDFs, or the output files to make the end product even better than it is.
Thanks..

[nrapallo]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

Thank you for this, it's something I've looking for for a while, it does a very nice job of converting PDF files into .prc.
Great...
Just need to look at a way to edit the PDFs, or the output files to make the end product even better than it is.
Thanks..

Thanks, .prc output was a recent addition, so as to increase the utility of the program.

I usually prefer to get my ebooks based on text so that they can be searched or used with the dictionary look-up feature of my ebook reader. When dealing with a .pdf there is no easy way to preserve the layout (without rendering it as an image). I usually give up converting .pdf to ebook format!

And then came along PDFRead! Using landscape mode seems the way to go to increase the legibility and the dilation helps a lot!

You know what they say, "If you can't beat them, join them!"

[physdude]

Please help, my first post here

I am having the following error when running pdfread (I have no experience programming python, only C, so not sure what is going on here) :

physdude@windbag 16:36:25 ~/ebooks $python ./pdfread.py -p prs500 -i pdf -f lrf -o Finance/Mathematical\ Economics\ and\ Finance.lrf Finance/Mathematical\ Economics\ and\ Finance.pdf
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "./pdfread.py", line 29, in <module>
from process import *
ImportError: No module named process

All the .py files are in that directory and all the packages mentioned in the installation have been installed (pngnq unpaper etc.)

physdude@windbag 16:37:08 ~/ebooks $ ls *.py
common.py input.py@ output.py@ pdfread.py@ setup.py@

in advance!

[ashkulz]

Originally Posted by physdude

Please help, my first post here

I am having the following error when running pdfread (I have no experience programming python, only C, so not sure what is going on here) :



All the .py files are in that directory and all the packages mentioned in the installation have been installed (pngnq unpaper etc.)



in advance!

Looks like you don't have the files named properly, as there's a trailing @ in the filenames.

[nrapallo]

Originally Posted by ashkulz

Looks like you don't have the files named properly, as there's a trailing @ in the filenames.

Ashish:

Thanks for answering this. I don't have much working knowledge on Ubuntu.

And welcome back to the PDFRead thread!

I noticed that you are interested in adapting the pi alogrithm into PDFRead (like I was thinking of doing, however, my windows installation does not support successful compilation of that program )) The pi program does work on Unix systems (hopefully so on Unbuntu). Since pi is currently front-ended by python code and generates images of ebook pages, it would appear the incorporating of it into PDFRead would be relatively simple and a perfect fit!!!

Have you done any testing of this?

Nice to see you back!

[browningj]

Hey folks,

I have a Sharp Mobilon Tripad that runs WinCE 2.11 and have mobipocket installed, because it has the best speed of all the ebook readers I have tried. When I try to convert a PDF with PDFRead the book converts, but the page is only about 1/4 of the size of the screen on the device. I can't use a PDF reader becuase the only available Ansyr Primer PDF is way too slow. Is there any way to adjust the output of PDF read for a 256 Color device at 640x480 resolution on a 9.4" display. I would use Mobipocket to convert, but the documents (training manuals) are too complex and never come out right. Size is not an issue, since I can use CF cards.

Thanks,

Justin

[nrapallo]

Originally Posted by browningj

Is there any way to adjust the output of PDF read for a 256 Color device at 640x480 resolution on a 9.4" display.

Sorry, but currently, no!

PDFRead is tailored towards devices that are taller than wider i.e 480x640. While it has no problem producing 256 color .prc ebooks, it will (internally) first ensure the cropped page is less than the max. width i.e. 640 in your case, then try to shrink it vertically to be within the max. height. i.e 480. and maintain the device's aspect ratio. So the output will always be on one page for your 640x480 screen since your aspect ratio is 1.33.

What you require is for PDFRead to split the pdf page in half vertically, then render each half in turn. However, PDFRead is biased towards 'portrait type' ebook readers and as such there is no easy way to convert for 'landscape type' ebook readers.

This may require a tweaking of the algorithim used and may be incorporated into the next release if this can easily be accomplished.

In the meantime, use the landscape 'prc-mobi' profile and 'landscape' layout mode.

[physdude]

Originally Posted by ashkulz

Looks like you don't have the files named properly, as there's a trailing @ in the filenames.

Unfortunately, that is not really the reason (the @ is there as they are symbolic links (aka shortcuts)) as I tried with the actual files in the same directory and had the same problem. Thanks for pointing that out though. Am I missing a file called process.py by any chance?