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DS Misc > Viewing PDF (not exactly what u think)

#157096 - modchamp - Mon May 19, 2008 6:19 am

Anyways it's pretty late here and I need to sleep but I've been looking at a way to view pdf files on the ds, yes yes I know there's no pdf viewer and probably won't be. So what I've been trying to do is convert pdf to xhtml for dslibris which is my ds reader of choice. Anyways I've found this which can convert pdf to rtf http://www.hellopdf.com/index.php and i've found several programs which can convert pdf to xhtml but none of them are free, so just wondering what you all do for viewing pdf files, besides converting to txt which just sucks (and all the txt viewers i've seen have had some sort of fairly major problems (bookmarks not saving, ?'s replacing characters, etc)

Anyways, so if someone could help me find a free way to convert rtf to xhtml that'd be awesome. Sorry if this is the wrong place, but wasn't sure exactly where this fit anywhere.

-modchamp
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Red GBA SP, Gold Triforce DS Lite, GBAMP V2, GnM, 512 MB CF card, 2 GB CF card, 128 MB microSD card, 1 GB microSD card

#157137 - Sweater Fish Deluxe - Mon May 19, 2008 7:15 pm

Probably the better option is PDF>JPG then JPG>CBDS for use with Comic Book DS. Google turns up a number of freeware PDF-to-JPEG converters, though I've never used any of them, so I don't know how they perform.


...word is bondage...

#157138 - modchamp - Mon May 19, 2008 7:27 pm

That really gonna work all that well to convert a full 700+ page book?
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Red GBA SP, Gold Triforce DS Lite, GBAMP V2, GnM, 512 MB CF card, 2 GB CF card, 128 MB microSD card, 1 GB microSD card

#157147 - Sweater Fish Deluxe - Mon May 19, 2008 8:02 pm

modchamp wrote:
That really gonna work all that well to convert a full 700+ page book?

I don't know. Try it and see, I guess.


...word is bondage...

#157175 - Lord Graga - Tue May 20, 2008 12:13 am

Maybe you would be better off with some OCR if it is a text-only book.

#157181 - modchamp - Tue May 20, 2008 1:31 am

OCR?
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Red GBA SP, Gold Triforce DS Lite, GBAMP V2, GnM, 512 MB CF card, 2 GB CF card, 128 MB microSD card, 1 GB microSD card

#157185 - tepples - Tue May 20, 2008 2:43 am

Optical character recognition, not OverClocked ReMix.
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-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.

#157188 - modchamp - Tue May 20, 2008 3:04 am

Well I can just save it as a txt file from adobe reader. Only problem is I haven't found a good text viewer that saves bookmarks, uses the ds sideways and opens txt files.
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Red GBA SP, Gold Triforce DS Lite, GBAMP V2, GnM, 512 MB CF card, 2 GB CF card, 128 MB microSD card, 1 GB microSD card

#157192 - tepples - Tue May 20, 2008 3:59 am

You might be able to convert text to html and html to xhtml.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.

#157217 - Lynx - Tue May 20, 2008 4:22 pm

It better be a damn good book to go through all that work! ;)
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NDS Homebrew Roms & Reviews

#157240 - nsm333 - Tue May 20, 2008 11:40 pm

yah, what are you reading? (a good text reader that supports bookmarks? moonshell.)
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^banned! (even though the topic is killed...)

#157244 - modchamp - Wed May 21, 2008 12:34 am

With moonshell every few words there'll be a couple characters replaced with ?'s
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Red GBA SP, Gold Triforce DS Lite, GBAMP V2, GnM, 512 MB CF card, 2 GB CF card, 128 MB microSD card, 1 GB microSD card

#157248 - tepples - Wed May 21, 2008 1:50 am

In what language was the book you're reading written?
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.

#157251 - modchamp - Wed May 21, 2008 3:12 am

English, and it's not just this book it's all books. I've tried opening them as all the different formats moonshell has.
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Red GBA SP, Gold Triforce DS Lite, GBAMP V2, GnM, 512 MB CF card, 2 GB CF card, 128 MB microSD card, 1 GB microSD card

#157283 - nsm333 - Wed May 21, 2008 6:46 pm

i never noticed moonshell having "?" after some words... it works fine for me. what was that other text reader on wikipedia... oh yeah! what about this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nintendo_DS_Homebrew#Text_readers
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^banned! (even though the topic is killed...)

#157285 - Tockit - Wed May 21, 2008 7:17 pm

I, also, am extremely interested in this idea.

I'm in the position where I have a 250 page e-book in PDF format. it has lots of illustrations and I'd like to keep the visual format of the book intact.

my first thought was PDF to JPEG then CBDS, but every single freeware converter I found would leave a watermark across the page in some way along the lines of "freeware version - purchase full copy to remove watermark"

oi vae...

so here I am. I have, actually, 3 or so other books I'd love to convert as well. mostly strategy guides for games on 360 or ps2 that I'd like to be able to view on my DS as I play.

any ideas / guidance anyone?
_________________
-01011101001010101010 (frank)

#157319 - takieda - Wed May 21, 2008 11:52 pm

I just did a quick search through some Open Source places I frequent and came across this program. It's called ImageMagick, and is run from the command line or can be run through any of the numerous GUI's that are available for it, for converting TONS of different file formats to other file formats, etc... As it is a command line tool, even if it can't do more than one page at a time, a .bat file can be created to do the job in a batch. I'll try to test it out more throughly tonight, but I've got a few things on my plate if anyone else wants to give it a go and give their report as to how well it works?
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#157329 - modchamp - Thu May 22, 2008 1:13 am

I haven't tried the comic book reader but it's true hard to find a free pdf to jpg converter and can't imagine how good comic book reader could be with several hundred pages of a book. I think I'd much prefer to keep it in a text based format and read it using a book reading program.

http://www.sautinsoft.com/products/rtf-to-html/index.php
I found that which is a dll that can be used to convert rtf to html or xhtml but I cannot figure out quite how to use it :P Yes I'm a nub, got Visual C# open but getting errors and can't get it to work.
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Red GBA SP, Gold Triforce DS Lite, GBAMP V2, GnM, 512 MB CF card, 2 GB CF card, 128 MB microSD card, 1 GB microSD card

#157335 - takieda - Thu May 22, 2008 5:36 am

modchamp wrote:
I haven't tried the comic book reader but it's true hard to find a free pdf to jpg converter and can't imagine how good comic book reader could be with several hundred pages of a book. I think I'd much prefer to keep it in a text based format and read it using a book reading program.


umm... look at my previous post please? free one that's supposed to be very good, but I haven't tested it.. As far as using the Comic book reader? it's EXCELLENT for what it does, but if all you want to read is the text, then yes, CBDS is a bit much (esp. the file size).

http://www.sautinsoft.com/products/rtf-to-html/index.php
I found that which is a dll that can be used to convert rtf to html or xhtml but I cannot figure out quite how to use it :P Yes I'm a nub, got Visual C# open but getting errors and can't get it to work.[/quote]

Is there any reason you're stuck to using .xhtml? Granted it's the format of DSLibris, but there are a few other readers available. DSReader is an EXCELLENT txt reader, that only lacks rotated reading support. ReadMore Alpha is an excellent alternative to DSLibris that just views txt files (unless you're one of the rare few that has the unfortunate topscreen off bug).

In the case you can use any of the many .txt viewers, there is at least one good .pdf to .txt programs out there. PDF to Text. (don't go to the publisher's website, as their link is faulty and sends you the Free PDF to Word Doc converter - also a good tool, but not for this purpose).

Wonderfully, PDF to Text Converter converts .pdf files into .txt files very quickly and can do any number of pdf files you have in a folder. It unfortunately, however, creates a .txt document for every page. It also only loads and saves from a single folder, so it has some limitations, and the quantity of files IN that folder can become somewhat daunting. This is easily fixed, however, with a pretty basic Command Prompt .bat file.

Create a Combine.bat file and copy and paste this code into it and save it.
Code:
FOR %%1 in (NameOfFile.txtNameOfFile_PG_????.txt) do type %%1 >> NameOfFile.txt

Change all instances of "NameOfFile" to the name of the ebook file you wish to combine (without the .txt extension).

Now, given a bit more time and impetus, I can create a few .bat files to automate this process so much more nicely. I'm already hashing out some code for the PDF to .JPG converter as I have some ebooks with a LOT of pictures in them I'd rather be able to see in their original style.
_________________
Est Sularis Oth Mithas - My Honor is My Life
(\_/)
(o.o)
(> <) This is The Bunny. Copy The Bunny into your signature to help him on his way to world domination.

#157336 - takieda - Thu May 22, 2008 5:57 am

takieda wrote:
umm... look at my previous post please?


hehe... maybe I should take my own advice! heh, I just read the rest of the comments in this thread, now I understand what's going on.

Have you tried ReadMore Alpha, though? an excellent reader with bookmarks assuming that it doesn't have that bug for you.
_________________
Est Sularis Oth Mithas - My Honor is My Life
(\_/)
(o.o)
(> <) This is The Bunny. Copy The Bunny into your signature to help him on his way to world domination.

#157362 - modchamp - Thu May 22, 2008 7:20 pm

Well unfortunately Readmore Alpha bookmarks don't work for me, don't really know why I'm using a GBAMPv2, will try it on my GnM later though and see if it works on that. As far as saving pdf as txt, u can just open it in adobe pdf viewer or w/e and save it as txt from there, I was able to just fine anyways. Any other text readers I've tried either don't have working bookmarks, convert a couple characters every few words to ?'s or just aren't all together very functional.
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Red GBA SP, Gold Triforce DS Lite, GBAMP V2, GnM, 512 MB CF card, 2 GB CF card, 128 MB microSD card, 1 GB microSD card

#157372 - josath - Thu May 22, 2008 9:18 pm

takieda wrote:
I just did a quick search through some Open Source places I frequent and came across this program. It's called ImageMagick, and is run from the command line or can be run through any of the numerous GUI's that are available for it, for converting TONS of different file formats to other file formats, etc... As it is a command line tool, even if it can't do more than one page at a time, a .bat file can be created to do the job in a batch. I'll try to test it out more throughly tonight, but I've got a few things on my plate if anyone else wants to give it a go and give their report as to how well it works?


it's pretty easy to do, just type "convert someFile.pdf someFile.jpg" and it'll spit out one JPG for every pdf page. you can also pass some options like "-resize 400x800" to set the size, and "-quality 70" to set the jpeg quality

#157375 - tepples - Thu May 22, 2008 11:44 pm

So it appears you want a reader for plain text files (.txt, .ini, README, etc) that
  • runs on DS
  • uses a proportional font
  • can save bookmarks
  • reads files larger than 2 MB
  • breaks long lines at word boundaries ("word wrap")
  • supports all characters of Windows code page 1252
  • (including US-ASCII and ISO 8859-1) without inserting garbage characters
  • reads files that use either DOS or UNIX newlines

I'd be willing to work on making one, as part of my "cwik" project. How strongly do you require rotated screen orientation? And by "bookmarks" do you mean one bookmark per .txt file, or something more general?
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.

#157376 - modchamp - Fri May 23, 2008 12:22 am

tepples wrote:
So it appears you want a reader for plain text files (.txt, .ini, README, etc) that
  • runs on DS
  • uses a proportional font
  • can save bookmarks
  • reads files larger than 2 MB
  • breaks long lines at word boundaries ("word wrap")
  • supports all characters of Windows code page 1252
  • (including US-ASCII and ISO 8859-1) without inserting garbage characters
  • reads files that use either DOS or UNIX newlines

I'd be willing to work on making one, as part of my "cwik" project. How strongly do you require rotated screen orientation? And by "bookmarks" do you mean one bookmark per .txt file, or something more general?


I don't absolutely need the rotated screen orientation, I just prefer it, much more comfortable for me to hold the ds in that position for long periods of time. Yeah by bookmark I mostly just mean continuing where I left off in the text file.

That would be really great if you could make something like that, I could probably even offer a little bit of money (not much, but better than nothing :P)

Edit: Oh also it should turn the backlight off like most everything else when the ds is closed. That's also something about Readmore Alpha didn't have.
_________________
Red GBA SP, Gold Triforce DS Lite, GBAMP V2, GnM, 512 MB CF card, 2 GB CF card, 128 MB microSD card, 1 GB microSD card

#157403 - Tockit - Fri May 23, 2008 6:04 pm

josath wrote:


it's pretty easy to do, just type "convert someFile.pdf someFile.jpg" and it'll spit out one JPG for every pdf page. you can also pass some options like "-resize 400x800" to set the size, and "-quality 70" to set the jpeg quality


couldn't get this program to work for me. I'm a total goof with command lines, I just kept getting "invalid parameter" or "invalid drive specification"

I typed exactly what you suggested, and even a few variances. any other help? sorry I'm tarded mit com prompts.

anything GUI oriented out there? I have like 3 or 4 books I've wanted to read in CBDS format forever now.
_________________
-01011101001010101010 (frank)

#157405 - modchamp - Fri May 23, 2008 6:24 pm

I'll see if I can whip up a program to do it, but don't count on it.
_________________
Red GBA SP, Gold Triforce DS Lite, GBAMP V2, GnM, 512 MB CF card, 2 GB CF card, 128 MB microSD card, 1 GB microSD card

#157423 - HyperHacker - Sat May 24, 2008 1:45 am

tepples wrote:
So it appears you want a reader for plain text files (.txt, .ini, README, etc) that
  • runs on DS
  • uses a proportional font
  • can save bookmarks
  • reads files larger than 2 MB
  • breaks long lines at word boundaries ("word wrap")
  • supports all characters of Windows code page 1252
  • (including US-ASCII and ISO 8859-1) without inserting garbage characters
  • reads files that use either DOS or UNIX newlines

I'd be willing to work on making one, as part of my "cwik" project. How strongly do you require rotated screen orientation? And by "bookmarks" do you mean one bookmark per .txt file, or something more general?
Moonshell.
_________________
I'm a PSP hacker now, but I still <3 DS.

#157426 - modchamp - Sat May 24, 2008 2:02 am

HyperHacker wrote:
tepples wrote:
So it appears you want a reader for plain text files (.txt, .ini, README, etc) that
  • runs on DS
  • uses a proportional font
  • can save bookmarks
  • reads files larger than 2 MB
  • breaks long lines at word boundaries ("word wrap")
  • supports all characters of Windows code page 1252
  • (including US-ASCII and ISO 8859-1) without inserting garbage characters
  • reads files that use either DOS or UNIX newlines

I'd be willing to work on making one, as part of my "cwik" project. How strongly do you require rotated screen orientation? And by "bookmarks" do you mean one bookmark per .txt file, or something more general?
Moonshell.


[*](including US-ASCII and ISO 8859-1) without inserting garbage characters Doesn't do that. And who couldn't use a nice smooth looking reader?
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Red GBA SP, Gold Triforce DS Lite, GBAMP V2, GnM, 512 MB CF card, 2 GB CF card, 128 MB microSD card, 1 GB microSD card

#157583 - dantheman - Mon May 26, 2008 11:21 pm

I personally use Paperless Printer for converting PDF to JPEG. Simply open the PDF file, do File - Print, choose Paperless Printer, and then choose JPEG from the screen that pops up. No watermark, and it works well. From there you can convert to ComicBookDS format.

I know the latest version of the PicToDS converter for ComicBookDS has a menu option to go straight from PDF to CBDS format, but I never understood exactly how to get it to work.

If you want just plain text, I got rid of the "?" characters in Moonshell and DSReader by opening the text file in Wordpad and saving under a different encoding. I believe I saved it as "Text Document - MS-DOS format" after which point it worked fine. Note that DSReader's bookmarks only work if the filename has no spaces.

#157610 - Tockit - Tue May 27, 2008 2:39 am

dantheman wrote:
I personally use Paperless Printer for converting PDF to JPEG. Simply open the PDF file, do File - Print, choose Paperless Printer, and then choose JPEG from the screen that pops up. No watermark, and it works well. From there you can convert to ComicBookDS format.


thankyou! that's exactly what I was looking for.

I found a similar printer-driver type converter that also left a watermark. this is exaclty what I was looking for. thanks mang!
_________________
-01011101001010101010 (frank)

#157743 - lord_hardware - Wed May 28, 2008 11:56 am

modchamp wrote:
Well I can just save it as a txt file from adobe reader. Only problem is I haven't found a good text viewer that saves bookmarks, uses the ds sideways and opens txt files.


The M3 real media center (which is also the G6 media center)
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#157761 - HyperHacker - Thu May 29, 2008 12:02 am

I've never had trouble with Moonshell with ASCII and 8859-1. O_o
_________________
I'm a PSP hacker now, but I still <3 DS.

#157763 - modchamp - Thu May 29, 2008 12:10 am

For some reason I didn't notice before but I just noticed, what it's doing is whenever there is an apostrophe it replaces it and a few near characters with a ?. Dunno why it does this, any ideas? lol

Oh and as for the M3 Real Media Center that just on the M3 or can I get that as an .nds? If so, where can I get it?
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Red GBA SP, Gold Triforce DS Lite, GBAMP V2, GnM, 512 MB CF card, 2 GB CF card, 128 MB microSD card, 1 GB microSD card

#157770 - HyperHacker - Thu May 29, 2008 1:33 am

Are these documents written in MS Word or similar, that might not be using ' as the apostrophe? I see similar on web pages, where the author's word processor has "intelligently" replaced punctuation with "proper" versions, that don't show up on the page.
_________________
I'm a PSP hacker now, but I still <3 DS.

#157776 - modchamp - Thu May 29, 2008 2:06 am

Yep that was the problem thanks, lol feel so stupid now. Though sideways viewing and ability to use a decent looking font and have a nice blank white background would make it a lot easier to read than using moonshell's reader.
_________________
Red GBA SP, Gold Triforce DS Lite, GBAMP V2, GnM, 512 MB CF card, 2 GB CF card, 128 MB microSD card, 1 GB microSD card

#157783 - HyperHacker - Thu May 29, 2008 4:55 am

You can have any background you want by replacing the bitmap. Pretty sure it can't be rotated though.
_________________
I'm a PSP hacker now, but I still <3 DS.

#157799 - Mohammad - Thu May 29, 2008 2:14 pm

I'm trying this out now, but zamzar.com has a pdf to html. Just heads up, but I'm viewing a 40 page magazine so, 300 might exceed the "free" limit.