# .pdf files and font size que.



## Shastastan (Oct 28, 2009)

Today I imported a couple of .pdf help files from one of my music programs.  Yes, I own the program which does not come with a printed manual.  Yes, I can print it out, but that is a real waste of paper.  I need the full screen in the music program so tiles doesn't work for me.  Also, it is easier to see both screens rather than min and max back and forth.  My problem is that the font size is way too small.  I don't see anyway to enlarge the screen font like you can with a formatted book.  Is there another way to do this via formatting?  Thanks for any ideas.


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

PDFs do not use the Kindle fonts. There isn't any way to enlarge a PDF image. Unfortunately.

Mike


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## BasicGreatGuy (Dec 27, 2009)

Shastastan said:


> Today I imported a couple of .pdf help files from one of my music programs. Yes, I own the program which does not come with a printed manual. Yes, I can print it out, but that is a real waste of paper. I need the full screen in the music program so tiles doesn't work for me. Also, it is easier to see both screens rather than min and max back and forth. My problem is that the font size is way too small. I don't see anyway to enlarge the screen font like you can with a formatted book. Is there another way to do this via formatting? Thanks for any ideas.


If you email the pdf file to your kindle email account, making sure to put convert in the subject line, you should receive the newly formatted edition in a matter of moments. The font size should be fine with the conversion. The cost for the conversion is $0.15 a megabyte.


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## aw (Dec 25, 2009)

BasicGreatGuy said:


> If you email the pdf file to your kindle email account, making sure to put convert in the subject line, you should receive the newly formatted edition in a matter of moments. The font size should be fine with the conversion. The cost for the conversion is $0.15 a megabyte.


It is important to tell people that are new that if you send it to the [email protected] you get the same formatted edition back to your email account, which you can transfer to your Kindle for free.


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

People should also know that any process that converts PDF to text is imperfect, and may not produce acceptable results. And it won’t work at all if the PDF is locked or is an image of the text instead of having imbedded text. There are programs which use OCR to convert the text, but they have less than satisfactory results.

Speaking as someone who edited technical manuals for years (with PageMaker and Adobe Acrobat) I can’t give any of the translation programs I've tried so far any better grade than a C. I've spent a substantial amount on programs that claimed to do the job, and all of them failed to do a satisfactory job. The Amazon conversion is a hair better than most, but still leaves a lot to be desired.

Mike


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Both the Kindle and the Kindle DX display PDF's "as is".  On the Kindle, screen size can make font size an issue.  On both devices, you can set to landscape mode and get some level of 'zoom' but neither one provides a 'full featured' PDF reader.

If you send a PDF to Amazon for conversion, be sure to put the word 'convert' in the e-mail subject or it will not be converted.

Converted PDF's can be problematic if there is specialized formatting as it is often lost in the process.  You may get a better result if you do it yourself via Calibre or MobiPocket Creator.  Either way, you will then be able to adjust font size, but diagrams and tables and such may come out wonky.

Good luck. . . .


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## Shastastan (Oct 28, 2009)

Wow!  You guys are the greatest!  Those are some very helpful tidbits of info.  

Mike:  I know what you mean about ocr.  I bought the "professional" version of a program that is supposed to be capable of scanning music notation in and have very few corrections to make.  In actuality, it's a lot easier for me to just input the music via the keyboard than trying to make a heckuva lot of corrections to the scanned in version.

All:  The maunual for Band In a Box has a lot of tables and staff notation graphics, but I'm will to give the conversion a try for 15 cents.  What the hey...

Many thanks to you all.

Stan


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

Shastastan said:


> All: The maunual for Band In a Box has a lot of tables and staff notation graphics, but I'm will to give the conversion a try for 15 cents. What the hey...


Yeah, the manual for BiaB would seem to be a poor subject for conversion. Let me know how it turns out.

Mike


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## Shastastan (Oct 28, 2009)

jmiked said:


> Yeah, the manual for BiaB would seem to be a poor subject for conversion. Let me know how it turns out.
> 
> Mike


Mike: Actually sending it to Amazon worked out pretty good. The formattting is okay now that I can increase the font size. The TOC works, too. I was not paying attention and I only sent in the 2010 update which is less than a MB. The main file is 9MB and my email pgm would not let me send it in. I'm not sure if Amazon is okay with that either. I found an add-on feature in ATT-Yahoo email that says you can send a file up to 100mb, but it never did load in. I'm going to try it again. Some of the graphics were a little small, but I didn't try to zoom in either. Overall looks like it worked okay though. Thanks for your input.

Stan


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