[PLUG-TALK] OS Portable PDF Reader

[Paul Mullen]

On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 01:36:33PM -0700, Rich Shepard wrote:
> Take a look at this Web page:
> <http://tips4linux.com/convert-ebooks-in-linux/>
> 
> It appears that calibre is the ImageMagick/convert equivalent for text
> documents.

Sort of.  Calibre is a collection of several eBook-related
applications, with a graphical front end that would make a Win95-era
GUI designer blush (so many widgets to click on...).  It's a lot more
than just a conversion utility.

I'm still skeptical that a clean conversion from PDF to a "real"
e-Book format (e.g., ePub) is possible, given that there are so many
ways a PDF can define its content.  There's a lot more than words
inside most of them, and converting their (potentially)
carefully-designed layouts to a format that is supposed to be as fluid
as possible can't be easy.  But I'd happy to be proven wrong.


-- 
Paul