How can I reformat a PDF file for easier reading on iPhone?

Question

I'd like to read an arbitrary PDF on my iPod Touch (or iPhone) with a reasonable font size. Some PDFs are already formatted with narrow columns and wide margins. Once I zoom the document to "remove" the margins, the text is easy to read.

Most documents have one very wide column of text. When I zoom in enough to make the text readable, the column is bigger than the screen, and I have to scroll left and right on every line to read. Not workable.

I'd like to run a program to convert my wide-column PDFs into narrow-column PDFs. I've researched a number of PDF libraries (like PDFKit on Mac OS X), but they all seem focused on displaying or creating PDFs.

Could you point me to any resources for reading the text in a PDF? I would rather write my own utility than buy a product, but I'd accept a product if that's the only way.

Answer 1

I've been using the iPhone app called Stanza to do this. I got it from the app store for free. There is a desktop version which can convert pdfs into files that can be read comfortably on the iPhone screen with Stanza.

Stanza's main use is downloading public domain books and reading them on the iPhone, but the PDF to iPhone conversion works well too. I'm not sure how well it will work with graphics heavy documents, however.