E-book conversion

[Seanette]

My current "drive myself crazy" fixation is with getting a collection of PDF files into ePub format for use with my iPod Touch (e-book readers for iOS only seem to like ePub for the most part). Especially with files that are formatted with two-column pages, I'm having a miserable time getting the text to extract straight. Manual cut-and-paste into a file to be run through Calibre is an option, but not a desirable one, for obvious reasons .

Suggestions? Obtaining copies of these files in other formats ranges from "not happening" to "same problem in a different variety".

 

[BenBurch]

Have you tried this? http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pdf-reader-pro/id300298606?mt=8

 

[Seanette]

Hadn't tried that one. Have tried and liked GoodReader for PDF files, but really want to be able to put everything in one app, so I really want something that can handle both PDF and ePub or a decent conversion method (Mobipocket Creator is shaping up to be OKish, but calls for manual tweaking of HTML, which is crowding the edges of my comfort level).

 

[chulbert]

I'm not sure why you need to convert the; the iPad reads PDF files natively (iOS 4.2 comes out today).

If you want to convert books, the best software I've found and use is Calibre: http://calibre-ebook.com/

 

[Seanette]

I don't have an iPad . It's an iPod Touch. This results in page images being too tiny to read, which is why I have the conversion problem to begin with .

As previously stated, Calibre tries hard on PDFs, but the results are, to put it mildly, sub-optimal, especially when the original has two columns to a page. I'm getting somewhere with Mobipocket Creator at this point, but I'm not terribly comfortable editing HTML manually (which I've had to do on a couple of these to get formatting sorted out). In fairness to Calibre (which I otherwise greatly like), not much does cope well with PDFs without a good deal of manual tweaking of the file.