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I am interested in buying a Kindle (specifically Kindle Wi-Fi, 6" E Ink Display). My intention is to read scientific papers and I mainly wanted to know if is possible to read files normally pdfs of the articles (eg Physical Review) with mathematical equations and graphs without difficulty.

Is it appropriate for this purpose a Kindle?

I have understood that not read the pdf, but transforms to an ebook format. So, what good is this conversion?

What do you recommend?

Thanks in advance

Bruce_Warrior
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I have an earlier 6" Kindle (Kindle 2 international version), and have tried to use that for reading technical papers that come in PDF form. I haven't found this a very pleasant experience. The typical formatting of PDF papers doesn't lend itself to reading on such a small screen. Usually I switch the Kindle to landscape mode, which often results in a readable font size. But then scrolling becomes a nuisance, especially for papers in multi-column layout.

Another problem is that (at least on my Kindle), you cannot annotate PDFs in the way you can annotate "native" e-books. This is relevant for technical papers, especially when you do reviewing.

It would be great if there were a program to convert arbitrary PDF (or just the PDF generated from the tools used for technical papers, i.e. TeX, Word, and ...?) to e-book formats so that the layout can be adapted to smaller screens and different font sizes. But such a program would be difficult to write, because it would have to reverse-engineer the intent of the layout. I don't know whether anything useful exists.

For PDF viewing, I'd try a touch-screen device with fast and easy scrolling and zooming. Maybe something like an iPad or a Kindle Fire.

sleinen
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    K2pdfopt convert two columns paper to a perfect format for Kindle and other mobile reader. It works really well : http://www.willus.com/k2pdfopt/ – Jean-Philippe Jodoin Jul 10 '12 at 19:42
  • You can email the pdf to your own Kindle address with the subject "convert". Amazon will then convert the pdf to the Kindle (mobi) format before sending it to your Kindle. It works well except for mathematical formulas and tables. – Suzana Dec 08 '13 at 23:55