Reading .pdf's with e-books?

[heychadwick]

Hi Everyone,

So, I just got a Sony PRS-300 Pocket Reader. It's a small Sony e-Reader and easily transportable. I like it and I want to use it. I don't want a Kindle or to switch to another product.

Getting that out of the way, the main thing I would love to put on this device is Warhammer .pdf's. I've gotten some second hand .pdf's of various books that I already own and have paid for. I just tried to move a bunch of them over to take a look at them, but they are really small! The product has a "zoom" in feature, but it isn't working with these .pdf's that I have. If I put it into vertical viewing, I can see more and it is more readable. I'm wondering how I can get one that is more viewable?

I don't know much about editing .pdf's or somehow making my own .pdf's from the books I already own. I don't know which is easier. Maybe there is a place that has already converted or easier on ebook versions?

I also found out that the Black Library was giving away free ebooks for a while, but I missed out.

Any advice? The main reason I got an ebook was to view Warhammer stuff and only carry around one book. Please don't tell me to get a different device, though. It's not practical advice.

[heychadwick]

After some research, I am finding the main problem to be that the scans were not done as OCR (text reader), but each page was a graphic. So, I am having problems with getting the graphic enlarged. Someone is trying to recall how to do that, but I am waiting.

I might have to rescan my books as OCR text. I've got 2 rule books as one the cover was bad. I had the cover removed and bound only the rule parts by a local copy shop with a spiral binding. So, I have a regular sized version of the Island of Blood rule book! I guess I can always try to scan it myself in a format that is good for an e-book. I understand it's labor intensive, though.

[Tom McClure]

Cool! I never thought to use optical character recognition to scan rules.

[spiritofgrungni]

Ok, so maybe you guys can give a step by step (if it's not too much to attempt to do) for those of us who are a bit technically challenged but would like to do the same with our pdfs and e-readers.
Also, if someone DID have a kindle, would they follow these same steps? If you don't know that's cool. I'm just asking.

[heychadwick]

Well.....I haven't had success yet. I've tried a number of things and a lot of different software. Nothing has done what I want it to for all my .pdf's so far.

I'm thinking Adobe Professional might be the ticket. My neighbor is a graphic artist and I might ask him to try it on one of mine. It might have the ability to use layers (back ground, text, and pictures are examples of layers) to isolate the text. I'll have to see when he has free time.

I have been asking advice on a mobile reader forum here:
www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=113473

Tessaract is a great program (I hear), but it is command line driven. I'm not a command line guy. I want a GUI (Graphic User Interface - or pretty buttons to push to make stuff happen). I found a GUI interface for the above program that is suppose to make it easy. I used gimagereader, but the program crashed every time I tried to use it.

It was suggested I try to convert things into HTML web pages and then I could grab the text from it. I used Some PDF to HTML Converter 1.5 and had limited success. Some pages worked fine, but they were obscure ones like the .pdf for the Cursed Company. Others did display, but all of it as a graphic. I couldn't copy/paste the text. Others didn't display anything at all!

There is another good program (I hear) called Cuneiform that is suppose to be the best OCR program. It would scan the .pdf and dump the text into a .txt file. OK...not the best if I want to preserve pictures/diagrams, but I'm going after anything at this point. It's a Russian program. There is one page in English. I downloaded it. The install is in Russian. I ran through the only buttons I could push during install (in Russian)....and nothing happened. It didn't seem to install. No idea why.

So, I don't know what to do at this point than to check with my neighbor and Adobe Profesional.

[retroalias]

on my galaxy tab I just use the adobe app to read the pdfs. I would assume any smartphone would be able to do that.
unfortuntely I'm no help for your sony e reader.

[walkstheweb]

I can import .pdf files into iTunes and from there into iBooks on my iPhone. (iThink thats too man iI's o.O) I am not sure about anything other than that. Once all these eReaders start supporting .CBR files then I will get one. I have a absurd amount of comic books on file and it would be nice to see them in a more portable fashion that on my MacBook.

[heychadwick]

I did find a way to do it, but it requires Acrobat and Photoshop. I can cut/paste from one into the other to resize it all. I haven't done it too much yet, but plan on it.