[OS X TeX] Configuring LaTeX produced PDF's for a Kindle

[David Derbes]

Hi, Themis.

I have done this exactly once, but it seemed very simple. The Kindle 3 has a recharging USB cable; one end is a standard mains plug for a two pronged outlet, but the plug is a snap-in USB female to standard US outlet converter. You pull that off, and you wind up with a USB cable very much as you would have for an electronic camera or Palm or something. That can be used to charge the Kindle on a computer's USB port, but also serves as a data conduit. I connected the Kindle to a USB jack on my Mac. On my Mac the Kindle shows up as a flash drive or removable hard drive, and I simply dragged my own PDF to the Kindle. The PDF then showed up in the list of contents on the Kindle. Disconnected, and that was that. 

The problem is that each page, though rendered perfectly on the Kindle (no problem with equations, diagrams, you name it), was in microscopic type. Yes, I could read it, but it would give you a migraine in twenty minutes.

The links provided by William in this thread were extremely helpful, and I will investigate them further when I have some free time, in a few weeks.

David Derbes
U of Chicago Lab Schools

On Jan 4, 2011, at 6:56 AM, Themis Matsoukas wrote:

> On Jan 3, 2011, at 11:23 PM, David Derbes wrote:
> 
>> I'm writing a book (probably for free), and wanted to see what it looked like on a Kindle, which I was given as thanks for doing a school evaluation. Being a sensible husband, I gave it immediately to my wife, but wanted to see what my book looked like.
>> 
>> Basically, the standard 8.5 by 11 pages are rendered as miniature pages on the Kindle. You can read 'em if your eyes are good enough, but it is really tiring... I tried rotating into landscape mode, and blowing up the font but the result is a tiny little fraction of the page. 
> 
> David,
> 
> how do you get your pdfs  on the Kindle? On my (wife's...) new iPad I have the Kindle software but I use the iBook app to read my pdfs (and they look fine, by the way). 
> 
> Themis
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