Willus.com Home   |   Archive   |   About  

Willus.com's K2pdfopt Help Page

Return to K2pdfopt Home Page

MENU
Getting Started:
    1. Windows
  (now with video!)
  2. Linux
  Ubuntu
  Env vars
  3. Mac OSX

FAQ | Forum

Customizing K2PDFOPT:
    1. K2pdfopt GUIs
    2. The interactive menu
    3. List of command-line options
    4. Using a shortcut
  (now with video!)
  5. Using the K2PDFOPT environment variable
  6. Using the command line

Adjusting the output:
    1. Screen Size
    2. Increasing the magnification
    3. Landscape mode
    4. Output File Size
    5. Setting Margins
    6. Color Output
    7. Uneven Line Breaks/ Excess Margins

Processing Options:
    1. Showing Markings
    2. OCR
    3. Native PDF
  (now with video!)
    4. Auto-Straightening
    5. Ignoring Borders/ Headers/Footers
    6. Detecting Columns
    7. Column Order
    8. Right-to-Left Page Scanning
    9. Using Ghostscript
 
  FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (last updated 13 April 2013)

Why does the Mac OSX version not run on my mac?
If you are running OSX 10.5.x or earlier, k2pdfopt may not run on your system. See the first paragraph in my Mac install notes.

How do I increase the text size?
See the help page on increasing the magnification.

The output file size is large. Can I make it smaller?
With the default conversion, which allows text re-flow, every converted page is a bitmap, so the file size of the converted file is often larger than the original. See my help page on output file size for options that reduce the output file size, mostly at the expense of the output quality. If you don't need text re-flow, you might try using a mode which converts using native PDF output.

I just want k2pdfopt to remove the excess borders on my PDF file. Can it do that?
Absolutely. As of v1.60, the shorthand option for this is -mode fw (fw = fit width), which is equivalent to -n -wrap- -col 1 -vb -2 -t -ls. If you still want to rasterize the output, use -mode fw -n-. If you don't want to turn the document on its side, use -mode fw -ls-. You can select the mode from the user menu by typing "mo" at the prompt. Here are some examples of other k2pdfopt modes.

The output file has poor resolution on my device. Can I improve it?
Definitely. The default k2pdfopt settings are for a kindle 2, and your device may have better or slightly different resolution. You can change the device by using -dev (interactive menu option "d"). Or see my page on setting k2pdfopt for any custom device resolution. You can also just use, for example, -dr 2 (new option in v1.60), which increases the display resolution by a factor of two. This drawback is that your converted files will be significantly larger and may take longer to render on your device, so you may want to experiment to find the right value (you can use fractions, e.g. -dr 1.5). You can type this option directly into the user menu prompt, e.g. "-dr 2" (without the double quotes).

I don't understand how k2pdfopt is interpreting my PDF file.
Try using the -sm command-line option ("sm" from the interactive menu), which will write out a PDF file that shows the regions found by k2pdfopt.

Is there a k2pdfopt GUI (graphical user interface)?
As of August 5, 2012, yes there is (Windows and OSX).

Can k2pdfopt run directly on my kindle?
Yes. See the information on my third-party contributions page.

How do I prevent images / figures from being split across pages?
Use -f2p -1, or select "bp" from the interactive menu and enter -1 for the "fit-to-page" value.

Some of the text is truncated / clipped. Can I fix that?
Yes. By default, k2pdfopt (before v1.65) ignores (crops) a 0.25-inch border around your document. Turn this off by using command-line option -m 0 (no longer necessary in v1.65--the default is now -m 0. See Ignoring Borders/Headers/Footers.

Some of the text is much larger than the rest. How can I avoid that?
If your document does not have multiple columns, try turning off multiple column detection with command-line option -col 1 (interactive menu option "co"). See the page on column detection and also the page on showing markings so that you can see how k2pdfopt is converting your document.

How can I get rid of the document headers, footers, page numbers and/or other marks near the edges of the source pages?
You can tell k2pdfopt to ignore an arbitrarily sized border around your document. See Ignoring Borders/Headers/Footers.

Sometimes I get multiple rows of text at smaller magnification than the rest of the document. Why?
This generally happens when there is not a clear gap between rows of text and k2pdfopt thus views the region as a graphical block (figure) rather than as rows of text. If you haven't updated to v1.65, you should do so. K2pdfopt v1.65 is smarter about breaking rows--if it detects a double- or triple-height text row amidst other single-spaced text rows, it will usually fix this. See this mobileread.com thread for tips on how to adjust your k2pdfopt settings (posts #48 and #49).

Is there any way to search the text in the converted PDF file?
Yes, as of v1.50, k2pdfopt has OCR capability, and as of v1.60, k2pdfopt has options for native PDF output, much like Cut2Col, SoPDF, and the latest version of PaperCrop.

My PDF file has a lot of pages. Can I convert only certain pages?
Yes. See the Windows Getting Started page and scroll down to "2. Enter Page Range" (or use the -p command-line option).



 

This page last modified
Sunday, 17-Mar-2013 13:16:06 CDT