Getting my PDF books onto my iPad in a usable form
in [UK Mac]
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From: Ian Piper on 10 May 2010 09:40 I thought it was going to be easy... either a decent reader program, or convert my PDF books to ePub and then read them using iBooks. Wrong on both counts, it seems. I haven't seen a decent reader for PDF-formatted books (I know that's not what PDF is meant for, but that's the format my books are in). Can anyone recommend a product? As for converting, that has proven totally unsatisfactory: neither the layout nor the images survived. I tried Stanza Desktop and the Epub2Go web service. The latter claims to handle non-vector images but didn't on the test document I tried. Clealy ePub is capable of displaying both proper layout and images: so can anyone guide me on how to make it work for my PDF books? The books in question are mostly IT books and the images are essential. Ian. -- Ian Piper Author of "Learn Xcode Tools for Mac OS X and iPhone Development", Apress, December 2009 Learn more here: http://learnxcodebook.com/� --�
From: Chris Ridd on 10 May 2010 09:49 On 2010-05-10 14:40:20 +0100, Ian Piper said: > I thought it was going to be easy... either a decent reader program, or > convert my PDF books to ePub and then read them using iBooks. > > Wrong on both counts, it seems. I haven't seen a decent reader for > PDF-formatted books (I know that's not what PDF is meant for, but > that's the format my books are in). Can anyone recommend a product? As > for converting, GoodReader seems to be favoured. There's a "Lite" version, though the full one's only 59p :-) > that has proven totally unsatisfactory: neither the layout nor the > images survived. I tried Stanza Desktop and the Epub2Go web service. > The latter claims to handle non-vector images but didn't on the test > document I tried. > > Clealy ePub is capable of displaying both proper layout and images: so > can anyone guide me on how to make it work for my PDF books? The books > in question are mostly IT books and the images are essential. ePub is internally like HTML, and so really wants to reflow stuff. So I'm not sure that is really what you'd call "proper layout". -- Chris
From: Woody on 10 May 2010 09:52 Ian Piper <ianpiper(a)mac.com> wrote: > I thought it was going to be easy... either a decent reader program, or > convert my PDF books to ePub and then read them using iBooks. > > Wrong on both counts, it seems. I haven't seen a decent reader for > PDF-formatted books (I know that's not what PDF is meant for, but > that's the format my books are in). Can anyone recommend a product? As > for converting, that has proven totally unsatisfactory: neither the > layout nor the images survived. I tried Stanza Desktop and the Epub2Go > web service. The latter claims to handle non-vector images but didn't > on the test document I tried. > > Clealy ePub is capable of displaying both proper layout and images: so > can anyone guide me on how to make it work for my PDF books? The books > in question are mostly IT books and the images are essential. Unfotunately they tend to mess up when they go to epub. or at least they do on the sony reader. Calibre can convert from PDF to epub, but it generally makes a bit of a mess for it, unless you are really lucky with your input source or very good with regular expressions. Certainly wasn't that much use converting my open university documents to epub. although once the book is in epub there is a epub editing program on the mac that is quite good - can't remember what it is offhand, although you can just unzip it, edit the html and zip it back together again. I got one book ok that way, although it was too much of a faff to do that many times. Welcome to the world of the future ! -- Woody
From: Woody on 10 May 2010 10:10 Chris Ridd <chrisridd(a)mac.com> wrote: > On 2010-05-10 14:40:20 +0100, Ian Piper said: > > > I thought it was going to be easy... either a decent reader program, or > > convert my PDF books to ePub and then read them using iBooks. > > > > Wrong on both counts, it seems. I haven't seen a decent reader for > > PDF-formatted books (I know that's not what PDF is meant for, but > > that's the format my books are in). Can anyone recommend a product? As > > for converting, > > GoodReader seems to be favoured. There's a "Lite" version, though the > full one's only 59p :-) Yes, forgot to mention that. It is very good at rendering PDFs, and considering the size of screen on an iPhone, it is very good at navigation. Possibly the best non desktop experience with PDFs I have had -- Woody
From: Jochem Huhmann on 10 May 2010 11:00
usenet(a)alienrat.co.uk (Woody) writes: > Calibre can convert from PDF to epub, but it generally makes a bit of a > mess for it, unless you are really lucky with your input source or very > good with regular expressions. Certainly wasn't that much use converting > my open university documents to epub. Calibre works fine for novels (or anything else with no tables and other tricky layout). You might get page numbers and similar things inmidst the text, though. > Welcome to the world of the future ! It's ugly, unless you have lots of money to buy pretty things, yes... Jochem -- "A designer knows he has arrived at perfection not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery |