Apparently Amazon has rolled out a new firmware update for the kindle 2 that includes native pdf support. From what I have heard, the text in pdf documents still appears too small on the kindle screen for it to really be useful, but there are numerous pdf editing tools online that can eliminate white space in these documents.
That being said, I do not own an ereader device, but am seriously considering buying one so I can read mises.org books without eyestrain. I was wondering if anyone here owns a kindle 2 or other ereader with native pdf support, and whether or not they would be willing to test a cropped pdf for readability for me. I cropped the white margins out of a copy of Hulsmann’s Last Knight, and would like to know what the results are.
I know that many ereaders offer pdf reflow, but at this point, I am not willing to sacrifice the original formatting on books with footnotes.
Any help would be appreciated! I can email you a copy of the pdf if you are willing to help out a fellow Austrian.
of the PDFs you have downloaded (not only from mises.org), what percent of them do you think have this whitespace and text sizing issue; and is it only unique to Kindle players? do you think it is it just a problem with the size of the screen?
I would say all of the pdf’s available here would have that problem. The problem lies in that pdf is a great document format, but not a great ebook format. Almost all of these pdf’s have large white margins.
I went through turmoil getting the update from Amazon. Had to manually install it etc. Long story short, it did nothing special that I can tell except the landscape view thingy. I could already put PDF files on there with the email function through Kindle. Either way, email or “native”, it’s the same. You can’t read it. Way too small and no way to enlarge the text (or darken it). Since Altas Shrugged isn’t available on Kindle I downloaded the popular “bootleg” off the net and put it on the Kindle. What a waste of time. Might as well be written on the inside of a matchbook.
It is possible to crop pdf files to eliminate white margins, and therefore enlarge the text. I cropped the margins completely from a copy of Last Knight of Liberalism. Troy Ounce, would you be willing to test this cropped pdf on your kindle for me?
Sure but I’m on a dialup connection so it would take a while to download the email. But now that my Kindle had the up-to-date firmware I won’t have to re-email it as I can just put it over on there with the USB cable. Send me the file at completeparts (at) yahoo.com and I’ll see what it looks like on the Kindle. If this works maybe I can fix the text size of Atlas Shrugged. [:)]
Well, got it over onto my Kindle and it looks real good. The text is still way too small with no way to enlarge it, but the footnotes are where they belong and the page breaks are natural. It’s like a real book layout-wise. Unfortunately there’s just no way to read it without getting a smashing headache. It is however, slightly larger text than my bootleg copy of Atlas Shrugged so we’re headed in the right direction.