Hi Yuma,
I don't know of a direct answer to your question, but I can give you a
few thoughts of what to try. First, I'm going to assume that your
eBook format is DRM-free PDF, and that's the single format that you
have to use. (Some publishers, like O'Reilly, offer an eBook package
in which you can get multiple versions of the same book, all DRM-free,
and read any version of it, so you could read the ePub version on
their Bookworm ePub reader page by page through an account on the web
site. But they're the only ones doing this right now.) The general
way to decrease size of PDFs is to decrease the resolution of images
or the range of colors. I assume this is what your shrinkit does.
You might be able to get a little bit more if you have a setting that
makes everything black and white.
A Google search turned up a reference to File Juicer:
http://echoone.com/filejuicer/
It's primarily used to extract images out of documents, but there's
also a mode to recover and extract text. You might give this a go.
A second thought: how about splitting your PDF file into smaller
sections? This would make using the Table of Contents a bit tougher,
but you could read through the complete sections.
My first thought of a simple thing to try on your Mac is simply the
services menu option of "New Window Containing Selection". This was
recently mentioned as a way to read continuously through web pages,
but it works with anything you select in any application. If you can
"select all" with Command-A and use "New Window Containing Selection"
with your TextEdit default set to plain text files, you'll get all the
text stripped out of your selection. This must work as a piped
process rather than storing and processing, so the memory impact is
relatively low. Here's the recent post from the archives:
http://www.mail-archive.com/macvisionaries%40googlegroups.com/msg16921.html
(Re: Blog post: First Glance at Firefox Accessibility on OS X Snow
Leopard)
The subject line is a bit weird because the discussion veered to the
various things people liked/disliked about VoiceOver with Safari, and
one of those items was reading continuously, and a second was being
able to copy and edit content. The disadvantage of this method for
your eBook reading is that it sends everything to TextEdit, which has
very low impact on VoiceOver use, and is easy to navigate and read
continuously, but which doesn't preserve the information (e.g. page
numbering, and table of contents) of your original eBook. But if I
absolutely wanted to get on with things, this is what I would use
right away, because it has a high likelihood of simply working.
The other suggestion has to do with how to make your system operate
more efficiently with the resources it does have so that your reader
is less likely to crash even when you do work with these documents. I
know that you've been keeping your system lean, but have you tried
using iDefrag? For most users the way the OS X and most unix or linux
operating systems are set up, you don't need to worry much about
fragmentation. But I have the impression that you're doing a lot of
work with larger media files. If so, fragmentation will be an issue
for you, because the existing system is less efficient at handling
degfragmentation when you're habitually working with/editing large
audio or video files.
Here's the link to iDefrag ($30):
http://www.coriolis-systems.com/iDefrag.php
If you do end up deciding to use this, I'll point you to this column
titled "Reluctantly Reviewed: iDefrag"
http://www.oak-tree.us/blog/index.php/2009/02/06/idefrag
The reviewer discovered that he needed to defrag his drive in order to
set up a BootCamp partition for Windows 7, and details his experience
of finding out that he needed to buy and use iDefrag. (The
"reluctant" part of the review is that he didn't know his system
needed something like this software to get on with his task.) The
main points are that the best Defrag is run off-line (Quick on-line
defrag is not "quick", except by comparison). And to run an off-line
defrag, you need to use the additional software that comes with your
purchase to burn a DVD so you can run off-line. I've only run the on-
line version so far, because I don't generally have lots of audio
editing and video files. However, I've been trying to optimize things
more since my Safari 4 installation (and I wish I could permanently
disable Preview images). If you need more specific help with iDefrag,
there are some folks on the mac-access list who do routinely use video
editing, audio editing, etc, and work with large files. One of the
them started out by complaining that he was unable to read PDF eBooks
(of what I would consider to be modest size -- the Take Control
Guides), without having things crash. Since these people claim to see
substantial performance increases, it may also make a difference for
you. (I do see some improvements, but I went for 5 years without
having to use this, even knowing about this software. It's only
because I've been working with some large files recently that I
decided to get this.) Similarly, if you have questions about running
this in offline mode with VoiceOver, you could join the mac-access
list and post your questions. (I'm sure it's straight forward, and
I'll get around to it eventually). Anne gave the address earlier
today. To join that list, go to:
<www.tft-bbs.co.uk>
HTH. Sorry not to have a better answer. I don't know of any way to
avoid loading images when opening a PDF (in Preview, Skim, or Adobe
Reader).
Cheers,
Esther
Yuma Antoine Decaux wrote:
Hi list,
wondering if there's a way to not load images when opening a pdf?
I've gotten an essentials book on the unity 3D engine, and it
crashes on me all the time. ANd this is a pruchased e-book.
So i got shrinkIt which saves a lighter version of pdfs
But not success, the file still crashes though opening the 347 page
file loads up at 75% less time than originally.
I have some other pdfs which have the same problem, and i'm loathe
to skim through them for help on my current projects. Can anyone
suggest a direction for a solution?
Thanks, and best
Yuma Decaux
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