omar - Feb 14, 2014, 8:14a
I'm pretty sure you can convert ebooks to PDF using calibre, fyi


nikhil - Feb 14, 2014, 8:39a
Thanks Omar, hadn't seen that one.

One potential issue is I'm not sure how ebooks handle figures and graphics. For example, textbooks have lots of inline figures and a lot of work is spent on pagination, and I think I checked one once in ebook format and it looked quite foolish.

I don't think the conversion is straightforward. For example, if a physical book has multiple columns per page, but the ebook does not, how will calibre know to put it back into columns? Seems simpler to just get the PDF, and you benefit from all the work spent laying out the physical pages.

And what if the eBook has DRM? Calibre says it can't do anything about it.

So I just downloaded Calibre and converted the ebook that comes with it to PDF, and it looks terrible. The fonts are huge, since ebook fonts are huge. Overall, it doesn't seem to do a smart conversion to PDF, but more of a pixel-wise conversion. The whole app just seems focused on ebooks, not PDFs, so I don't think it will quite work.


omar - Feb 15, 2014, 9:56a
i need notifications of when you comment (when i've commented). anyway, i see what you're saying. seems this person likes pdfs too:

http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/how-to-convert-kindle-to-pdf/

they recommend a tool other than calibre. maybe you want to try that out. the only reason i push this is because so much stuff is in ebook format now, and not pdf, so hopefully someone gets that conversion at least semi decent. also, doesn't repligo have a way to flow text.. i wonder if they flow and resize?

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