(ADDENDUM: Also see later responses from Gagan to commenter requests.)UPDATE to PDF Scissors introduction yesterday plus Gagen's mention of BRISS - another PDF crop tool, found by him and also mentioned by a commenter to this post who would like to see them compared (me too -- there is much feedback on it at Briss's site but they are all by 'anonymous' so I hope others here can compare them.
The author, Gagan Mazed, responded to the thread at Teleread.com and I'll post most of that here though I'm not linking to the specific thread because it has info from 2008 that is now out of date.
Gagan responded to a request I made for a bit more information and this was his answer, with a couple of corrections:
'Hi Andrys,
You are quite right, there is not really much text in the site http://www.pdfscissors.com. The idea was that I would create a very simple tool that takes minimum effort to run the app (no script/no console mode, so that my wife can run it ;) ). That’s why I used java web start, simply clicking the button launches the app directly from the web, so that ppl can try it by themselves and see if it does what they need (it’s just one click away).
About the tool, the way it works is that it “tells” how much area should be visible, it does not reflow text / do any modification to images. If the ereader honors crop area (At least kindle 3 did for my test pdfs), setting to ‘fit-to-width’ zoom should show the cropped area nicely. So the tool does not really care about landscape / portrait mode, also user is free to draw crop areas of any size and any numbers. If only dropping the margin makes the content width readable in 6inch reader, then creating just one ‘crop area’ should work.
Oh one more note, although the tool runs using ‘webstart’... it does NOT upload any pdf file to any server, all calculations are handled locally and no information goes outside. The tool itself does have any code that connects to internet. So user should feel free to try any doc without privacy concern (I’ll add this note to the web).
This is a new born baby hobby project (so is the site), long way to go for improvement. Thanks for your feedback, really appreciated. '
@Andrys
Nice post at your blog, very explanatory. I quickly checked it, will check in details later.
About batch processing, same crop areas are applied to all pages, so user needs to draw them just once.
Btw, the first page shows all pages together with transparency (hard to explain, give it a try :) )
Commenter Tom Semple requested a few more refinements and I can't tell how far he got with trying it after finding that "File open" was offered after some cropping but not "File save" - so he may have stopped there.
Anonymous wrote that
' "It 'stacks' the pages and "crops" all the pages similarly in the manner you specify. It'd work well if all the pages are laid out in exactly the same way but won't work if each page is different. '
And commenter Brad reports this:
' I tried PDF Scissors on a 400 page PDF ebook today. It seems to be a handy little program. It took about 15 min or so to do the 'stacking' of the book.
Unfortunately the last three lines of every page were missing but I just estimated where to put the second box and everything was ok in the final cropped PDF.
When you go to save, the button is mis-labeled 'Open' though it does act like 'Save'. I find reading an ebook in landscape normally gives three screens per page, with the third screen mostly blank. Only two screens per page in portrait with PDF Scissors is a nice improvement. Thanks for the heads up on this. '
(See later responses from Gagen Mazed in the Comments area of the introductory blog article on PDF Scissors.
Kindle 3's (UK: Kindle 3's), DX Graphite
Check often: Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources. Top 100 free bestsellers.
UK-Only: recently published non-classics, bestsellers, or highest-rated ones
Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.
I couldn't be here the last day and a half, and I hope any tips from this blog's comment areas and from my visits around the Kindle world will help. I'll be doing more of these with one or two tips at a time so people can focus on those and have time to work with them, rather than tossing a bunch of them in one blog article which might be put aside until there's time and then forgotten.