7 ms·

Does anyone know an open-source solution for this? What I read is no one's business and I would never used a web-hosted service for something like this.

by aw3c2 10y ago

anotheryou 10y ago
android closed-source payed app that does reflow: ezPDF Reader
hwh 10y ago
k2pdfopt: http://www.willus.com/k2pdfopt/ http://www.willus.com/k2pdfopt/ We use that engine in the OSS KoReader application.
- ericmo 10y ago
  How does it compare to PDFLower?
- tedunangst 10y ago
  The last time I tried to build k2pdfopt, the source zip was missing a bunch of files. You had to download another zip, which wasn't complete either, and combine the results. And then the build failed because cmake was having a bad hair day. I wanted to like it since the windows exe did seem very handy, but had to give up at that point. (Oh, wait, there was a bit more. I did get it building, but the source assumed fprintf(NULL, "log msg") was a perfectly fine thing to do. That's when I gave up.)
  - krzyk 10y ago
    I'm trying right now to build it from source, and I'm astonished that it doesn't come with automake tools. I'm pretty much used to all the sources to work with "./configure && make", and have a BUILDING.txt or INSTALL.txt. k2pdfopt doesn't have any of this.
ocharles 10y ago
https://www.cp.eng.chula.ac.th/~somchai/cut2col/ https://www.cp.eng.chula.ac.th/~somchai/cut2col/
a3n 10y ago
Agreed. Nothing against the described service or its users, but personally when I'm searching for something like this, "upload" comes right before Ctrl-W for me.
jasim 10y ago
k2pdfopt works ok for me. (bash function) tokindle () { ~/Software/k2pdfopt $* -dev kpw -mode fw -wrap -hy -ws 0.375 -ls- }
- nattaylor 10y ago
  There's also koreader, which just uses k2pdfopt on the fly.
  - jasim 10y ago
    koreader looks fabulous! Last time I checked, the Paperwhite could not be jailbroken. But it no longer seems true. Thanks for the link.
    - nattaylor 10y ago
      My Paperwhite was collecting dust until my recent discovery of KOReader. I'm now toying with my own instance of https://github.com/koreader/koreader-sync-server https://github.com/koreader/koreader-sync-server since KOReader also runs on my Android devices. I'm not 100% sure how(/if) I plan to sync PDFs, versus just downloading from source on each device. I intend to play with OPDS as well.
    - redwards510 10y ago
      Yes! All versions can now be easily jailbroken. The main features (to me) are installing KOReader to view epubs and pdf files, and hacking the screen saver display. The process only takes about an hour, mostly because you are reading, doublechecking, and downloading the right files. This guide[0] is a very good overview. I find mobileread's site to be too wordy and difficult to follow. [0] http://lifehacker.com/how-to-jailbreak-your-kindle-1783864074 http://lifehacker.com/how-to-jailbreak-your-kindle-178386407...
      - voltagex_ 10y ago
        Which version would you buy if you were buying a Kindle today? I only owned the one before the DX... managed to crack the screen in an unfortunate elbow-related incident.
rerx 10y ago
Here's a tool built on k2pdfopt to streamline pushing papers to an ebook reader: http://dontprint.net/ http://dontprint.net/
- joelthelion 10y ago
  Any reason they don't distribute the addon through Mozilla? Sorry but it sounds a bit suspicious...
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
bazzargh 10y ago
It's doable. The original work on reflow was done by Thomas Breuel back in 2003: http://cgi.csc.liv.ac.uk/~wda2003/Papers/Section_II/Paper_5.pdf http://cgi.csc.liv.ac.uk/~wda2003/Papers/Section_II/Paper_5.... One of the problems with doing this in pdf is that for most documents, you need to infer reading order. A decade ago I wrote the code in poppler to do that (yet again, based off papers by Breuel) in order to get multi column select working. At the time I wanted pdfs to be readable on my iRex Iliad... anyhoo, most of the pieces are there in poppler. It can figure out reading order, render piece by piece, and already differentiates between images and text under the hood. Still a lot of work.

Does anyone know an open-source solution for this? What I read is no one's business and I would never used a web-hosted service for something like this.

by aw3c2 10y ago

Does anyone know an open-source solution for this? What I read is no one's business and I would never used a web-hosted service for something like this.

anotheryou 10y ago

android closed-source payed app that does reflow: ezPDF Reader

hwh 10y ago

k2pdfopt: http://www.willus.com/k2pdfopt/ http://www.willus.com/k2pdfopt/ We use that engine in the OSS KoReader application.

ericmo 10y ago
How does it compare to PDFLower?
tedunangst 10y ago
The last time I tried to build k2pdfopt, the source zip was missing a bunch of files. You had to download another zip, which wasn't complete either, and combine the results. And then the build failed because cmake was having a bad hair day. I wanted to like it since the windows exe did seem very handy, but had to give up at that point. (Oh, wait, there was a bit more. I did get it building, but the source assumed fprintf(NULL, "log msg") was a perfectly fine thing to do. That's when I gave up.)
- krzyk 10y ago
  I'm trying right now to build it from source, and I'm astonished that it doesn't come with automake tools. I'm pretty much used to all the sources to work with "./configure && make", and have a BUILDING.txt or INSTALL.txt. k2pdfopt doesn't have any of this.

ocharles 10y ago

https://www.cp.eng.chula.ac.th/~somchai/cut2col/ https://www.cp.eng.chula.ac.th/~somchai/cut2col/

a3n 10y ago

Agreed. Nothing against the described service or its users, but personally when I'm searching for something like this, "upload" comes right before Ctrl-W for me.

jasim 10y ago

k2pdfopt works ok for me. (bash function) tokindle () { ~/Software/k2pdfopt $* -dev kpw -mode fw -wrap -hy -ws 0.375 -ls- }

nattaylor 10y ago
There's also koreader, which just uses k2pdfopt on the fly.
- jasim 10y ago
  koreader looks fabulous! Last time I checked, the Paperwhite could not be jailbroken. But it no longer seems true. Thanks for the link.
  - nattaylor 10y ago
    My Paperwhite was collecting dust until my recent discovery of KOReader. I'm now toying with my own instance of https://github.com/koreader/koreader-sync-server https://github.com/koreader/koreader-sync-server since KOReader also runs on my Android devices. I'm not 100% sure how(/if) I plan to sync PDFs, versus just downloading from source on each device. I intend to play with OPDS as well.
  - redwards510 10y ago
    Yes! All versions can now be easily jailbroken. The main features (to me) are installing KOReader to view epubs and pdf files, and hacking the screen saver display. The process only takes about an hour, mostly because you are reading, doublechecking, and downloading the right files. This guide[0] is a very good overview. I find mobileread's site to be too wordy and difficult to follow. [0] http://lifehacker.com/how-to-jailbreak-your-kindle-1783864074 http://lifehacker.com/how-to-jailbreak-your-kindle-178386407...
    - voltagex_ 10y ago
      Which version would you buy if you were buying a Kindle today? I only owned the one before the DX... managed to crack the screen in an unfortunate elbow-related incident.

rerx 10y ago

Here's a tool built on k2pdfopt to streamline pushing papers to an ebook reader: http://dontprint.net/ http://dontprint.net/

joelthelion 10y ago
Any reason they don't distribute the addon through Mozilla? Sorry but it sounds a bit suspicious...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

bazzargh 10y ago

It's doable. The original work on reflow was done by Thomas Breuel back in 2003: http://cgi.csc.liv.ac.uk/~wda2003/Papers/Section_II/Paper_5.pdf http://cgi.csc.liv.ac.uk/~wda2003/Papers/Section_II/Paper_5.... One of the problems with doing this in pdf is that for most documents, you need to infer reading order. A decade ago I wrote the code in poppler to do that (yet again, based off papers by Breuel) in order to get multi column select working. At the time I wanted pdfs to be readable on my iRex Iliad... anyhoo, most of the pieces are there in poppler. It can figure out reading order, render piece by piece, and already differentiates between images and text under the hood. Still a lot of work.