I imagine the problems have to do with the multi-layered nature of the Internet Archive scans; even on my PC, the PDF doesn't render well until it is fully downloaded -- while it is in the process of loading, I see a blurry mess.  Perhaps the tablet devices are doing the same thing -- attempting to display content prior to the full load of the file but not entirely succeeding.

It may be possible to flatten the layers of the PDFs in some way, but I'm not sure exactly how.

Additionally, I notice that there are different versions of the PDF here:

http://www.archive.org/details/canarybird00schm

(one labeled PDF, another B/W PDF)

Does one version work better on tablets than the other?

- Demian
________________________________________
From: Code for Libraries [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Eric Lease Morgan [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, October 03, 2011 11:26 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] opening a pdf file

Most people seem to have mixed results when trying to open the PDF files on their tablet-based (Android and iOS) devices. Bummer! These PDF files were harvested from the Internet Archive. They seem to be viewable just fine for desktop machines, but not tablets.

The number of files I have in the collection is finite and small -- less than 100. Does anybody have any suggestions on how I could convert or modify the files to make them more useful? I would be willing to manually do the modifications if necessary.

--
Eric Morgan
University of Notre Dame