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I'm looking for a free converter from Pdf to Mobi, for reading on a Nokia E71; I find more confortable to read on this format, but i'm open to other solutions.

What are the alternatives that I have?

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You can use Auto Kindle to convert a PDF to a Mobi file.

This project was originally a quick and dirty method for me to convert my ebook collection in various formats to a kindle compatible format without worrying about the ebook source type. It takes PDF, Lit, and HTML files and converts them to .mobi.

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I've tried Calibre too; it works, but the GUI too bulky for my simple needs (Calibre provides for library/ebook reader management, allowing you to see your whole library and control which books are synced to which device, including seamlessly converting books to the preferred format for any device along the way).

Fortunately Calibre is written in Python, and is nicely segmented; one tiny part of Calibre, ebook-convert (a command-line interface to the routines that actually handle the conversion) does everything I need.

On OS X, this is located under /Applications/calibre.app/Contents/Resources/loaders (assuming you installed calibre into the default /Applications folder).

To convert a pdf to a mobibook, run:

/Applications/calibre.app/Contents/Resources/loaders/ebook-convert input-filename.pdf output-filename.mobi

On Ubuntu Karmic Koala, installation can be done with sudo apt-get install calibre. this will place ebook-convert in /usr/bin which should already be on your $PATH, so conversion just requires ebook-convert input-filename.pdf output-filename.mobi

The conversion is reasonably good, considering that you're going from a fixed layout format that has no concept of lines of text, let alone paragraphs, to a reflowing format; I've found that it makes reasonable guesses about chapter boundaries (and prepares a simple TOC accordingly), but other things (eg, hyperlinks in the existing TOC in the PDF) can get horribly mangled.. However, ebook-convert is very configureable - [the website][2] has a laundry list of flags you can use to improve chapter detection, what to do with detected chapters, stripping or adding page headers, etc

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  • It's been awhile since this comment was written and I'd recommend giving Calibre another go. It doesn't seem too awfully bulky to me and the wide range of possible conversions is rather amazing. Seems to be really headed in the right direction.
    – trench
    Oct 24, 2010 at 9:46
  • It's still a little bulky for my tastes; I don't want the library management, I just want conversion. It's starting to win me over though - every time I look at it I realise a new way library management could be useful to me. I'll probably end up making the switch soon. Also, I've just started using its scrape-news-and-send-straight-to-kindle features - having daily news when I wake up is awesome. I stand by ebook-convert as being more lightweight than the gui - but it's not for everyone :)
    – James Polley
    Jan 2, 2011 at 6:10
  • thanks for the command line tip, now in heavy use with a ruby script for automated conversion of technical docs.
    – Mark
    Apr 1, 2011 at 9:04
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I would suggest Calibre. It will convert from most ebook formats to most others.

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