Can I put a PDF into a user book?

[Eric]

Can I put a PDF into a user book? I just searched the forums, but didn't find anything that answered my question?

If so how can I do this? Will the text in the PDF be searchable in SwordSearcher (if it's made from a program like Word and saved to PDF, or if it's been OCR'd)?

Does it just link to images? I.e., if I want Bible references to link in SwordSearcher, then do I need to manually copy in the text from the PDF?

Thank you!

 

[wsbones]

You can put a link to a pdf file that is on your system, and it will open when you click the link using your pdf viewer. an example of a link to a pdf using the code editor:

<A href="file:///{ModuleAssets}/guidelines.pdf">Guidelines for the Understanding of the Scriptures</A>

The pdf itself will not be searchable in SS and the verses will not be linked. Highlighting a verse in the pdf and dragging it to the verse and search box is supposed to work, but I have never been able to get that to work.

You could paste the contents of the pdf into a user book, but the format will messed up. If you paste it into SS then the verses would probably link, and the text would be searchable, but the format would not be right.

Try it. I just pasted Guidelines for the Understanding of the Scriptures by J.V McGee into a topic. The verses were highlighted. The library search was able to find text in the book, but the text did not have paragraphs and the lines did not end appropriately.

 

[marty]

If the above doesn't work for you, you could try opening the pdf file in Word - make it editable, then make sure everything is where it should be and formatted correctly and copy it to your SS module from Word.

 

[Eric]

OK, thanks, to both of you. I'll look into it. It's a rather large PDF full of references (and a lot of pictures, which is why I wanted the PDF). I'll see if I can justify the time to fiddle with it.

I appreciate your help!

 

[Brandon Staggs]

The problem with PDF files is that they do not contain information need to "reformat" them. Line endings, paragraphs, stuff like that.

For simple jobs, just copy-and-paste from your PDF file and fix the formatting after you do.

For larger jobs, I would recommend first converting the PDF to something like HTML. Adobe Acrobat has several export functions for doing this. There are other programs too, like Jaws PDF. I have never used one that is better than 90% accurate in re-creating an editable document from a complex PDF source. But once you convert to something like HTML, then a copy-and-paste into the SwordSearcher editor will work much better.

Looks like Microsoft Word can import a PDF file into an editable document. That would also be a good starting point.

 

[Eric]

Oh, the Microsoft WORD idea might be good. I need to OCR it first, but I think I have something that'll do that.

Thanks!

 

[wsbones]

Try this website. I just converted the above mentioned pdf to a word doc. See attached zip file. It converted very well. There are some hyphenated words with spaces in them when I pasted it into SS. Worth a try and it's free.

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