A real PDF to epub/djvu/rtf/html software?.

[DsOft]

Hiya

Ive tryed to convert my ebook collection (pdf , impossible to read on my iliad), anyone knows any software to do it?

Ive tryied some software, but i cant get any quality success. (pdf 2 djvu, pdf reaper and solid pdf converter)

Please help.

[eimert]

Originally Posted by DsOft

Hiya

Ive tryed to convert my ebook collection (pdf , impossible to read on my iliad), anyone knows any software to do it?

Ive tryied some software, but i cant get any quality success. (pdf 2 djvu, pdf reaper and solid pdf converter)

Please help.

Hi,

I tried many programs to convert pdf to doc/rtf. All freeware programs I tried were not satisfactory at all. ABBYY Finereader does the job (some times older versions on magazine disks) but needs a lot of proofing (for German text at least). The best results I've got with Scansoft PDF Converter Pro. It is now at version 5, I tried the vers. 4 demo for 14 days. It works beautifully most of the time.
Just my experience.
Hope that helps.

Cheers,
Klaus

[DsOft]

Thanks, ill try it.

Im still trying other ones...

Djvu support on iliad isnt official, and the viewers available dont make the job very well, and still too buggy.
.pdf : (Adobe Acrobat Pro 9 -> doc) -> (OFFICE 2007 + DJVU plug-in -> .djvu)
Pretty well job if the .pdf dont have so much frames and embebbed photos, but its too slow if you have 35k+ books, like me. (no queue support).

I´ve tryed some pdf(or doc,rtf) 2 epub but just waste of time.

Im taking my .lit to .hmtl thought LITConverter, pretty good job (if no images.

still working on it.

[FizzyWater]

Originally Posted by eimert

The best results I've got with Scansoft PDF Converter Pro. Cheers, Klaus

I've been generally happy with my Scansoft, although it's effectiveness is ... limited? ... by how the original PDF was made. Sometimes I still get paragraph returns for every line, forced page breaks - even between words - where the PDF page ended, etc.

Lately, I've been using Mobipocket Creator. You can import PDF files and build a Mobipocket file. For each new Mobipocket file created, it also creates a HTML file and "image" folder with the pics from the PDFs. So I take that HTML file and do whatever clean-up I want and use it to create books in whatever format I really want!

[peterbbb]

Which version of Mobipocket Creator imports PDF?

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by peterbbb

Which version of Mobipocket Creator imports PDF?

At least the current one does, if you get the Publisher Edition (which is also free, just like the Home).

Does a pretty good job on converting them, most of the time.

[eimert]

Originally Posted by FizzyWater

I've been generally happy with my Scansoft, although it's effectiveness is ... limited? ... by how the original PDF was made. Sometimes I still get paragraph returns for every line, forced page breaks - even between words - where the PDF page ended, etc.

Yes, that is true for me, too. While it works really nicely most of the time, I do get those line breaks sometimes. However, that is very easy to cure with Word or OpenOffice.

Originally Posted by FizzyWater

Lately, I've been using Mobipocket Creator. You can import PDF files and build a Mobipocket file. For each new Mobipocket file created, it also creates a HTML file and "image" folder with the pics from the PDFs. So I take that HTML file and do whatever clean-up I want and use it to create books in whatever format I really want!

Hm, can't comment on the Creator as I never got it running on my machine. The import function in the Mobipocket Reader works fine on some files and not at all on others. Might depend on the coding of the pdf?
... OK, forget what I just wrote. I just decided to give the Mobipocket Creator another try (I've got a new system). It installed without problem and started without any error messages(!) - that is a first for me :-)
It converts OK, but in my hands and for the document I tried, there are quite some more glitches in the formatting (like manual line breaks etc) than I got for the same document with Scansoft. But again, that probably depends on your pdf file. Anyway, if you can live with the manual cleanup, the Mobipocket Creator seems like an viable option to Scansoft, I think - especially since it is free!

Cheers,
Klaus

[peterbbb]

Thanks. Installed and used and it works to convert PDFs to .prc files

[Faenad]

I convert a lot of PDF to Html to read with µBook on my windows mobile device and I have experimented alot of softwares.

So far my best "recipe" is :

- I purchased Foxit Pdf Editor. Before converting a PDF I do a "cleanup" of all part that are usually messed up by the converter : Editor Logo, Big image (the first page which usually display the cover), index, etc. I remove the blank page and the pages non essential stuff like ISBN that are easily messed up.

- Then I convert with the Free Mobipocket Creator. Best converter I have found so far, and free.

- Finally if the images extracted by Mobipocket Creator are too big (Big image means long waiting time with my 200Mhz phone), I convert then all to a smaller resolution using the batch editor of Photoscape. It's also a freeware.

It takes me about 2-5 min for each PDF depending on the size and complexity.
The result are really good.

If the PDF have a lot of images (the most difficult thing to convert correctly) then I will convert it instead to Rgo. Haven't found yet other converter to a more popular format that works well with images heavy PDF.

[JSWolf]

There is no currently known solution to perfectly convert PDF to something else. Even Adobe Acrobat Pro messes up on just text based PDF.

[Timoleon]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

There is no currently known solution to perfectly convert PDF to something else. Even Adobe Acrobat Pro messes up on just text based PDF.

Say, JSWolf ---

When are you going to finish that Donaldson novel? Would you like me to give you the Cliff Notes version so you can have done with it?

Tim

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Timoleon

Say, JSWolf ---

When are you going to finish that Donaldson novel? Would you like me to give you the Cliff Notes version so you can have done with it?

Tim

I'm almost done with it. Then I have the second book as well. He's still to write three and four.

[DsOft]

Ok. Ill explain the way i use atm.


Simple texts PDFs:

Just Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro => .rtf or .html

Heavy Image PDFs:
Adobe acrobat: PDF => JPG Grayscale full quality.

Auto Photo Editor (Zeallsoft):
JPG => Max CROP (manually) & Turn Right (to a temp1 folder)
JPG => CROP (temp1 JPGs) 50% RIGHT (to temp2 folder) & Rename to *_1.jpg
JPG => CROP (temp1 JPGs) 50% LEFT (to final folder) & Rename to *_2.jpg & Move temp2 JPGs to final folder

So you´ll have:
book_Page1_1.jpg (first 50% of Page 1)
book_Page1_2.jpg (last 50% of Page 1)
book_Page2_1.jpg
book_Page2_2.jpg
etc...

Mobipocket Creator: JPGs (from final folder, so left and right sides of original PDF) => .opf + .prc




CONS:

iliad uncompress .prc files to a same named folder.
Really slow process. Only to really needed ebooks.




So, what do you think?, and, anyone knows any way to make a .mobi file from those .opf + .prc (that iliad dont touch? or only do a temporal uncompress).

Pd. Ive tryed all PDF 2 something that iliad reads, and them only work on plain text files, anything harder becomes to an unusable ebook.

[nrapallo]

I've had GREAT success using Mobipocket Creator to convert a .pdf directly into .prc using it's 'Import From Existing File - Adobe PDF'.

I was amazed at how nice the .prc ended up; a lot of the formatting was retained and all words were correctly "decoded"! The only problem was bold and italic words needed a space before and after the bold/italics tags. Nothing a quick search & replace on <b>, </b> or <i>,</i> couldn't fix. Much of the paragraph layout was retained as were headings with <h1> tags, etc.

Very powerful indeed! Try it out...

p.s. I had tried v7 Adobe Acrobat Pro's own 'Save as...' feature and was totally disappointed. Your mileage may vary...

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by nrapallo

I've had GREAT success using Mobipocket Creator to convert a .pdf directly into .prc using it's 'Import From Existing File - Adobe PDF'.

Under the hood, this is a two step process and sometimes you might want to edit the intermediate HTML. MobiPocket Creator should leave behind its intermediate OEB ebook files, but you can also just use the command line version pdf2xml, see Mobipocket convert in mass?.