Tech: Christ - Kindle!

Subject: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: MartinRyan
Date: 27 Dec 11 - 07:06 PM

Just aquired a Kindle at Christmas, thanks to a thoughful Santa! The grand plan is to construct a library of older songbooks, some of which I have in hard copy, with a view to easy access whereer I am. Many of these are available through the Internet Archive or Google Books.

Two problems show up on first trials:
1. many of the texts I'm interested in are only/mainly available in PDF format. While most of these seem to load and display correctly on the Kindle 4, others seem to load but display either nothing or a smudgy blank.

2. the Internet Archive provides "Kindle" files as an option but the device does not seem to recognise them. A digital rights issue?

Can any 'catters provide guidance and save me a little of the dogged determination needed to solve these? Any other advice or suggestions?

Regards

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Jack Campin
Date: 27 Dec 11 - 07:21 PM

I think you picked the worst digital reader on the market for use with your own or public domain documents. The whole point of the Kindle is to make you buy Amazon's products.

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: ClaireBear
Date: 27 Dec 11 - 07:23 PM

I haven't started playing with my Kindle Fire yet, but one of the main reasons I bought it was to be able to load songnbook PDFs into it, so as I learn to do that, I'll try to remember to check in and tell you what I know.

One quick first guess: these days, many PDFs are not made with Adobe Acrobat, but with other similar but not identical PDF makers. If you have the opportunity, you might try renaming and saving these PDF files using an Adobe product, as the Kindle app is an Adobe product. Not that I've tried it; it's just someplace to start.

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 27 Dec 11 - 07:24 PM

Ah, well, good start to that discussion. Not.

Don't despair. There are a lot of people out there learning to use their new devices. I suggest you look at some of the forums that have a kindle subject. Like this one.

I've read that the Kindle handles a lot of free and open source books - check out the discussions to see how other people have sorted out that challenge.

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: MartinRyan
Date: 27 Dec 11 - 07:29 PM

I'm well aware of the implications of the Amazon link. There are other factors involved and, on balance, I'm confident that it will serve my purposes along the way. Within an hour or two, I've set up a useful, portable resource of ten 19C. volumes for which I otherwise have to physically hunt in my study!

Regards

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: MartinRyan
Date: 27 Dec 11 - 07:34 PM

Thanks for comments so far - all grist welcome to the mill!

Regards

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: GUEST,martin ryan
Date: 27 Dec 11 - 08:00 PM

test from kindle!

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: GUEST,guest
Date: 27 Dec 11 - 08:34 PM

I got a kindle for christmas as well! I've found the large majority of my pdfs have been working find! Would anybody be able to recomend some good song books available for download?

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Zhenya
Date: 27 Dec 11 - 08:55 PM

Congrats on your new Kindle! I really enjoy mine. I haven't really done much with PDFs myself, so I can't help you directly with that. But I wanted to mention the site Kindleboards.com, which is a great site with a very active discussion board and a huge amount of helpful information. If you have any questions, that's a good place to post them.

http://www.kindleboards.com/

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Jack Campin
Date: 27 Dec 11 - 09:36 PM

Okay, a small test.

Bulgarian Music Fakebook (pdf)

Can you get that onto a Kindle so that the index works and each page is displayed so you could play off it, instantly paging forward for two-page tunes like Talima #3?

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 28 Dec 11 - 03:29 AM

wife nagged since october and threatened sulking well into new year..

So she now has Kindle 4 for xmas..

Test downloaded Pdf novel from a dodgy 'free'site,
can PDF text be enlarged without zooming losing most of a line off screen ?

Also, failed yet again to carefully align and position a clear film screen protector [Logic brand £2.99 from Currys]
without dust and air bubbles..

Is this actually impossible in any enviroment less than sterile clinicle vacuum science lab conditions..???

wasted over 2 hours.. should have given up afer the 3rd attempt..

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: DMcG
Date: 28 Dec 11 - 03:36 AM

I was also given a Kindle at Christams, which is slightly odd because I made the second post on this folkinfo thread a few hours before I opened the present.

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Silas
Date: 28 Dec 11 - 03:59 AM

I think you may be asking a little too much from your Kindle. I think Kindle is a great product for what it is, an eReader, as an eReader it performs brilliantly, I have had mine for 12 months now and it has become part of my life, however, if you ask it to to much more than this it is not so good. Obviously some people see it as a cynical way for Amazon to lock customers into them, but realistically, I tend to buy all my books from Amazon anyway so it really makes no difference, Also, there are thousands of free downloads via the wonderful Gutenburg project.

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: GUEST,punkfolrocker
Date: 28 Dec 11 - 04:20 AM

as a newbie kindle family....

I will steadfastly refuse to let the mrs set up an amazan one click account.

Their business model is rip off shit.

New downloads nearly as much if not more than the price of a real world killed off tree product book !!??

In my naive idealist world view,
I would be more appeased if she could buy a real paper book from amazon
and then be entitled to free .mobi download of same title.

or even a token priced loyalty customer retainer download of the same real world printed product ??

dont think thats too unreasonable.

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 28 Dec 11 - 04:20 AM

I've just been on a long train journey but with over 100 books to choose from on my Kindle.

In addition the entire oeuvre of my favourite author has recently been re-published in a uniform, re-edited edition of over 40 volumes. To get your hands on these you had to subscribe to the whole project (not cheap!). I've just discovered that Amazon has now made nearly all of these books available, at around £2:99 a volume, as e-books for Kindle - what's not to like?

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Silas
Date: 28 Dec 11 - 04:34 AM

Punkfolrocker - The Amazon business model is far from shit, it is one of the most sucessful in the world. I really don't know what there is not to like about Amazon, though I agree that the eBooks in some cases could be a little cheaper, if you join Amazon on Facebook (just wait for the predictable shit to start hitting the fan) they have loads of offers, just recently a daily 99p book offer of some pretty good titles. They also offer loads of free downloads of classic books. Why would you want a paper hard copy AND a digital copy?

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Will Fly
Date: 28 Dec 11 - 04:46 AM

There's absolutely no reason to purchase Amazon products with a Kindle if you don't want to. There are plenty of ebooks in various formats out there, and various simple bits of software which can convert non-Kindle formats to the Kindle format. Virtually all of the ebooks I've downloaded from Amazon - mainly classics - have been free.

As far as PDFs are concerned, I've experimented with loading chord sheets with some success. My particular Kindle is slightly too small to read some sheet music from easily, but a friend of mine uses the larger version as a sheet music reader for his concertina parts in sessions. It seems to work fine for him.

The Kindle is a useful adjunct in a house which is crammed with books from top to bottom in nearly every room (like mine), and I still buy regularly from AbeBooks and other online and high street booksellers. To be totally pro- or anti- a modern tool seems pointless to me. Use these devices with a bit of common sense, and take advantage of what they can do.

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: GUEST,Punkfolkrocker
Date: 28 Dec 11 - 05:01 AM

I could be persuaded to get one for myself to load up with all the PDF user guides
for all my music tech equipment.
But googling kindle forums forewarned me that Kindle has problems enlarging PDF text - cant resize readably to screen..

And so far test PDF downloads are either too small to read or when zoomed disapear almost completely off the screen..??

must add only started testing this earlier today

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: MartinRyan
Date: 28 Dec 11 - 05:45 AM

The enlargement/reflow problem with PDFs isn't too important for my usage which is essentially a lookup device rather than any extended reading.

I must look into the file-conversion options and experiment.

Regards

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: foggers
Date: 28 Dec 11 - 05:54 AM

Does anyone have any thoughts about whether the Sony e-reader would perform better with PDFs than the Kindle does?

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: theleveller
Date: 28 Dec 11 - 06:15 AM

This has been really useful. I haven't considered a Kindle because almost none of the books I've bought recently have been available as Kindle. I never realised that you could load pdf files on to it, so might reconsider now.

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Artful Codger
Date: 28 Dec 11 - 06:15 AM

I doubt that conversion of copyrighted ebooks will work due to DRM (Digital Rights Management) issues. It's how Amazon ensures you'll have to buy Kindles and only Kindles to read their books, and B&N does the same for Nooks and Sony, for Sony for Sony readers. They also want to ensure, of course, that once a book is downloaded, it can't be easily pirated.

For older books, conversion can probably be done, but you probably won't have success converting PDFs that are essentially image scans (as for most of the ebooks available from Google Books). That requires OCR (Optical Character Recognition), and the deficiencies of OCR are readily apparent when you read the EPUB (etc.) versions of Google Books titles. I do read a lot of EPUB books on my Nook, but the faulty OCR is quite annoying, and sometimes I have to double check bits against the original scanned images (NOT on my Nook) in order to decipher the gobbledygook.

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Artful Codger
Date: 28 Dec 11 - 06:28 AM

I should add, as I've mentioned in another thread (but who bothers to read what people have already said?), that your best bet for an ebook reader for non-proprietary (non-Kindle, non-Nook) books is probably an iPad. (Disclaimer: I don't have one and haven't used one.) The device has a much bigger reading screen and is designed to present web pages in a compact format, so all the zooming issues have been well-explored and accommodated. Ebook readers are popular apps for them, and they can do SO much more (including access online ebook converters and use web-based ebook browsers at online book repository sites). My Nook was a present last year--I would have preferred a Kindle--but nowadays something like an iPad strikes me as a better option, for public domain and user-generated PDFs and ePub documents. I refuse to buy anyone's proprietary books (buy now, use only on certain devices, unusable ten years hence, non-transferrable or donatable--you don't really OWN anything) as long as trusty paper is available.

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Silas
Date: 28 Dec 11 - 06:40 AM

Sorry AC I completely disagree. The battery in an iPad last a matter of hours, the battery in a Kindle lasts weeks, or months in my case. The Kindle is not backlit so you can read it anywhere you can read a book, even in direct sunlight. It is the nearest thing to reading a printed page that I have ever seen, with the text and background very 'book like'.

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Mick Pearce (MCP)
Date: 28 Dec 11 - 07:03 AM

archive.org - home of hundreds of 19th century and earlier song books, not to mention millions of other out of copyright books - has kindle format directly available these days.

Re pdf reading, on my new (small, christmas also) kindle a whole page displays in small print, but you can change the kindle orientation (settings menu) from portrait to landscape and the print is then quite an acceptable size.

I imagine very little content (if any) will come from Amazon, I'll mostly use free stuff and copy directly from my computer.

Based on my brief use so far it seems fine for reading - much more convenient than using a laptop for the purpose. (Tablets don't appeal to me much at the moment; I'd sooner use a laptop).

Mick

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: GUEST,punkfolfocker
Date: 28 Dec 11 - 07:12 AM

so anyone eles had any success applying a screen protector without air and dust bubbles...??

[and I am educated & trained in clean lab procedures]

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: MartinRyan
Date: 28 Dec 11 - 07:14 AM

Mick

yes - archive.org was/is my intended main source of material. I'd already been using it in connection with another project I'm involved in. BUT - my first attempts at downloading their Kindle versions failed miserably! Have you tried?

Regards

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Charley Noble
Date: 28 Dec 11 - 07:29 AM

Packing a Kindle or similar e-book reader for travel certainly beats packing books or buying them as you travel.

My current frustration is that Patrick O'Brian's books are evidently not available to download.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Silas
Date: 28 Dec 11 - 07:58 AM

Scren protector. Yes, you need to be a bit brave and a bit careful. you need a moist cloth to wet the screen first (bravery) and then apply the protector and use athe edge of a credit card as a squeegee to get out the bubbles (care) it works but be careful.

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Tootler
Date: 28 Dec 11 - 11:53 AM

[Rant]
All the popular ebook readers lock you into a particular supplier and are able to do so because of DRM legislation.

In the UK, apparently it is unlawful to convert a protected file from one ebook format to another so you can't legally download a book in epub format and convert it to kindle. Crazy or what? but that means the publishers have you by the short and curlies. I also read that the regular publishers, like the record companies before them instead of seeing electronic publication as an opportunity are seeing it as a threat and are trying to create more restrictions via copyright legislation.

Dinosaurs or Canute? Take your pick.
[/Rant]

I don't see what the objections to Kindle are, except for jealousy of a successful business. The Kindle is a device designed for a specific task and it does that extremely well. It has its faults but many of these seem to be the faults with ebooks generally. I find it works very well for novels and the like but is less successful for reference books. I have bought just three reference books on Kindle and the main problem is being able to jump about the book, so I generally avoid them.

I have downloaded some C19 song books from Archive.org and they open fine in kindle but they indexing is poorly done so actually navigating to particular songs is a nightmare. When you get there, the songs are in continuous text form so they are not always clearly distinguished from one another. I understand that ebook formats are based on HTML so it should be possible to create usable song books.

I sent some of my song books to Amazon for conversion and they came back a mess, so I am sticking with PDF for now. I create my PDF files directly from Open Office and they work fine in Kindle. The thing you need to do is to use a fairly large font. At least 16pt and preferably 20pt. That way they are readable. I don't know why PDF's can't be magnified effectively in Kindle as my Android phone manages to do it no problems. Turning from portrait to landscape orientation as someone suggested earlier works quite well and will make 12pt quite readable at the cost of using two pages per page of the original.

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Jack Campin
Date: 28 Dec 11 - 12:50 PM

I really don't know what there is not to like about Amazon

Brutally oppressive exploitation of their workforce.

Allentown

Dunfermline

I have never bought anything from Amazon and never will until the employees expropriate the company and run it under workers' councils.

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Silas
Date: 28 Dec 11 - 01:08 PM

Do you drink coffee Jack?

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Jack Campin
Date: 28 Dec 11 - 01:24 PM

There are readily available (and usually cheaper) alternative sources for everything Amazon sells. Except for the Kindle which is simply a marketing tool. I am a bit selective about the sources of the coffee I buy, but it's far easier to be selective about Amazon goods.

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: GUEST,Steamin' Willie
Date: 28 Dec 11 - 01:31 PM

I was a bit hit or miss with PDFs too at first.

Then Amazon gave me an email address to send documents to and they are automatically translated to a kindle format. I didn't ask for the email address, it just came up after an update to my iPad version of kindle viewer. Although of course it works fine on my actual kindle machine too.

Presumably if you have an Amazon account, you will be able in your settings to see your email address for sending docs to? They then appear as if you had bought them in your archive.

Works for me.

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Jack Campin
Date: 28 Dec 11 - 01:46 PM

Meanwhile, it looks like nobody's managed to use the small tunebook I linked to on a Kindle.

If an e-reader can't do that, forget it.

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Silas
Date: 28 Dec 11 - 01:50 PM

Well Jack, there are many, many employers worldwide who treat their employees abysmally and if you boycotted them all you would have precious little choice in your retailer. I like amazon, I like the way i can just 'one click' for a purchase, I like the way that next day delivery is almost guaranteed, and i like the way that they post reviewa on thier products. Kindle is fantastic, I know you seem to have a pathological hatred for it, but it is a truly wonderful thing, you ought to try it you know, you might surprise yourself.

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Silas
Date: 28 Dec 11 - 01:52 PM

"Meanwhile, it looks like nobody's managed to use the small tunebook I linked to on a Kindle.

If an e-reader can't do that, forget it."

Well, I don't know about anyone else, but I can't open the link. However, I bought my Kindle to read books on and it works superbly for that, I have't tried it for much else.

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Jack Campin
Date: 28 Dec 11 - 02:30 PM

It's a PDF download link. I tried it a few minutes ago and it still works using Firefox on MacOS (displays better with Preview than with Adobe Reader; QuickTime Player gives a good display if your screen is big enough, but a weird interface with no index).

The main thing I would want an e-reader for is as a tunebook/music stand. The Kindle seems to be a total failure in that department if it can't even download a PDF given a URL for it, let alone display it usefully.

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Silas
Date: 28 Dec 11 - 02:35 PM

Well Jack, with respect, you are looking at entirely the wrong product. It's not fair to blame Kindle because it doesent do a job it wasn't designed to do. You can buy a Kindle for about eighty quid and for what it does for the money it is remarkable value. If you want to use something for a musiic stand you may be better with an iPad as I find that places where I play the lighting is not great and you would need a supplementary light with a Kindle (or sheet music for that matter). Backlighting is probably better for the use you have in mind.

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Lester
Date: 28 Dec 11 - 02:40 PM

For the un-technical it should be noted that the Kindle screen is A5 so if you load A4 sized PDFs it will look sh1t. That is not necessarily the fault of the Kindle. If you printed the document on A5 paper that would not work either :)

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Zhenya
Date: 28 Dec 11 - 03:16 PM

Charley Noble - If you're still following this thread - Patrick O'Brian's books have very recently become available in Kindle format. Go check Amazon.

This site is useful for getting notifications about when books become available for the Kindle, and about price drops and free books:

eReader IQ

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Mick Pearce (MCP)
Date: 28 Dec 11 - 03:50 PM

Jack - I downloaded the pdf and loaded it onto my (basic) kindle. It displays fine. I can go to the page numbers from the index (you have to enter the page number - the index isn't linked) and display the tunes ok. On my small screen in portrait it's just about playable from the display (and I do need to change my glasses in the next few weeks, so my eyesight may be a contributing factor at the moment). On the two page tune you have to click the page turn button and the change takes less than a second - I would say it's quicker than doing a manual page turn on sheet music, but obviously not as simple as having two sheet music pages side by side.

If I was going to use it to play from I'd want a larger display for comfortable reading (mine has 6inch diagonal screen, it's a bit smaller than A6, so quite small). But playing from it wasn't my intention, though using it for reference might well be (I have a lot of lead sheets for popular songs and I might well load a collection of those) and this size is ok for that.



I have tried a file from archive.org (one of the copies of Chappell PMOT v2). The generated kindle version seems to be the OCRd text only, so not useful for the actual tunes. I downloaded the pdf instead and that worked fine - actually you need to download the black and white pdf not the colour one, that showed blank on the screen. (v2 page numbers continue from v1 and the GoTo page function recognises the continuous page numbering).

Later I'll try sending a copy of the pdf to amazon's convert site (it's explained in the documentation) and see how the conversion to azw works - is it any better than the pdf version. I'll report back on that


Mick

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: MartinRyan
Date: 28 Dec 11 - 04:55 PM

yeah - I found the Black/White solution also...

regards

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: GUEST,Strummin Steve
Date: 28 Dec 11 - 04:58 PM

Well I got one for Christmas & it seems a great piece of kit. I've already downloaded some song lyrics & chords via email for easy access plus I've downloaded some free books,what's not to like?

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Tootler
Date: 29 Dec 11 - 09:43 AM

Later I'll try sending a copy of the pdf to amazon's convert site

I sent a pdf of some of my own song books. They contained both words and music. The result was dreadful.

The images with the notation ended up as garbage and the words were just continuous text with no line or page breaks. You are better off just living with pdf's.

Jack,

I agree 100% with Silas. All eReaders will suffer similar problems as they use basically the same technology. Some of the others might be better at scaling pdf text than the Kindle but have their own shortcomimgs. In general they are designed to provide a device which you can use to read novels with. I like my Kindle, and I have song books on it which I created myself as well as ones I have downloaded, but I have them there as a handy reference not to put on a music stand and play from.

As Silas said, for that you need a larger screen - at least A4 I suggest. An ordinary laptop would be a better bet. I often play off my laptop screen at home - saves printing out copies.

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Roger the Skiffler
Date: 29 Dec 11 - 10:31 AM

I'll load some lyrics from my own database before I next go to Greece to save a pile of loose sheets blowing about or a heavy folder weighuing down the luggage. I've done a test & it works OK (I've already added a Greek dictionary).Being able to enlarge the text is a boon. The guitarists in the taverna where I "perform" hog the local song folder & the words are too small for me to read over their shoulders. I don't read music so I don't need notes (just a new voice!).

RtS.

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: EBarnacle
Date: 29 Dec 11 - 11:22 AM

For reading music and lyrics, consider getting a nini laptop. The hard drive is much larger and the tool is more flexible, even if it does not have a gravity sensor and other bells and whistles out of the box.

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: MartinRyan
Date: 29 Dec 11 - 01:28 PM

I find that if I download free texts from a library or wherever, rename the file with the title as closely as possible and import into the kindle, it usually picks up the author details from somewhere - but not always. I can't see a way of editing those details on the kindle... Anyone come across this?

Regards

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Mick Pearce (MCP)
Date: 29 Dec 11 - 01:54 PM

Tootler

Re pdf conversion: It sounds like the same sort of conversion that archive.org do; they generate mobi files with OCR text and the music lines become garbage. I tried a stand-alone conversion program (Calibre) too, which generated mobi with the same results. It means staying with pdf for the books with music in them (the ones that are text only should be ok - as good as the OCR anyway).

Martin

I think that comes from the pdf properties. (The kindle can also retrieve book information from amazon's servers). I don't think you can alter it on the kindle, but there are utilities that will let you edit the pdf properties before you load it.


Mick

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: MartinRyan
Date: 29 Dec 11 - 01:58 PM

Thanks for that, Mick - I'll dig out a suitable utility and have a go. Still teasing out the problems...

Regards

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Tootler
Date: 29 Dec 11 - 02:18 PM

Mick,

I tried Calibre and was somewhat underwhelmed by it so I removed it.

I might try the Amazon conversion service with a text only Word file and see how that does as my pdfs were generated from Open Office documents anyway.

The archive.org files I have seem to be one continuous "page" so one song runs into another with no proper break between them and the indexing is poor. With one or two of them, I have managed to find songs I was particularly looking for and added bookmarks so I can find them again.

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Melissa
Date: 29 Dec 11 - 03:08 PM

The search thingy can't find songs if you put in the title or a line?

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Tootler
Date: 31 Dec 11 - 11:51 AM

I sent a text only file in MSWord format to Amazon last night for conversion and it worked much better than the pdf conversion except that all the hyperlinks that I put in so I could jump to individual songs did not work. Otherwise the result looks fine and there were page breaks in the right places.

I since found out that in converting from Open Office to Word, the internal hyperlinks got lost. I don't know if that's a bug in Open Office or not. I will have to look for the bug tracker - presumably in Libre Office now.

I have just sent another file to Amazon. This time I converted it to html (html is on the list of accepted file types for Amazon's converter) and the hyperlinks all saved OK. I had also converted all the inline music notation images into jpegs from Enhanced Metafile (the format my notation editor exports the music files as). I think that was partly the cause of the corrupted notation in the original pdf conversions I got back from Amazon. The Enhanced Metafile relies on a font provided by the notation editor to display or the music notation glyphs and the computer needs to have it installed for the notation to display correctly. I found that out when I went over to Linux. It was easily resolved in that case, I just had to make sure the necessary fonts were installed within Linux.

I'll report back when I pick up the html file from Amazon.

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Tootler
Date: 31 Dec 11 - 03:07 PM

Well that was a disaster. The images were sent back individually and did not appear in the text. The hyperlinking worked so that that you could jump to individual songs from the contents list.

Back to the drawing board!!!!

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Stringsinger
Date: 31 Dec 11 - 03:09 PM

Fahrenheit 451 anyone? Start memorizing.

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 31 Dec 11 - 03:13 PM

one can skip the step of sending PDFs to Amazon by simply loading them irectly to a Kindle. (If your Kindle is connected to a computer, it appears as another stotage device>)

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Mick Pearce (MCP)
Date: 31 Dec 11 - 09:03 PM

Dick

The point of sending the pdf to amazon is to allow the converter to reflow the text (in a text only pdf) for better reading.

If you copy the pdf directly to the kindle (which, btw, is all I've done so far), the kindle will try to show a pdf page on the screen, often resulting in very small type; I've been rotating the screen orientation and reading in landscape, which is fine for the files I've got. (Using the zoom feature is unwieldy - you have to scroll horizontally to read a line).

The converter (and you don't need to go via amazon - there are free converters that will do the same job, convert to mobi, which is what amazon's azw format essentially is. Calibre mentioned above will do this) will allow the text to flow better in larger type on the screen. There do seem to be problems with pdf conversion however - header, footers and page numbers may end up in the text. If you can do without them, there are some recommendations to crop the pdf to the text are before conversion.

For image-based pdfs the problems are different. At least one site I looked at recommended using a utility which splits out the pages and alters the contrast for better reading on the kindle, then reassembling the pdf and converting to mobi. I haven't looked at this in detail (maybe tomorrow - or later today as it is now) so I can't say whether it's worth the trouble or not.

Happy New Year to come from where we already are.

Mick

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 31 Dec 11 - 10:36 PM

I have the cheapest version where they send you advertisements when you shut it down..sort of like screensavers...

I have read dozens of books for free..for the foreseeable future anything I get will be free...I have read some Celtic magazines, some books about African American and Scots music, some Irish history, slave narratives..and of course some romance novels. mg

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 31 Dec 11 - 10:46 PM

I still read books on paper. Silly me. ;-)

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: MartinRyan
Date: 01 Jan 12 - 05:11 AM

Mick

Very good summary of the overall situation - reflects my own experience over the last (first!) few days.I'm beginning to think that in some cases at least I'll need to hold both a PDF and a Kindle-ised version of a book. The balance of advantage varies depending on whether I want to read through, search or make quick reference to content.


Regards

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Tootler
Date: 01 Jan 12 - 05:31 AM

The point of sending the pdf to amazon is to allow the converter to reflow the text (in a text only pdf) for better reading.

If you copy the pdf directly to the kindle (which, btw, is all I've done so far), the kindle will try to show a pdf page on the screen, often resulting in very small type

If you are creating your own pdf, the alternative to conversion is simply to use a large font size. I find a minimum of 16pt is needed for a readable pdf and 20pt, or even larger is better. For my song books, I mostly use 16pt to try and keep most on one page or, at the most, two, but for continuous text, I normally use 20pt. Inline images will show up fine, but any colour images will end up monochrome.

I will have to investigate converters again and maybe give Calibre another try.

Subject: RE: Tech: Christ - Kindle!
From: Mrrzy
Date: 02 Jan 12 - 02:31 PM

I just realized/found out that (we must have the same Santa) I can upload pretty much all my music to the "cloud" which will then make it accessible on my new Kindle fire, since most of it was bought there anyway... yay!

But how is your problem working out?