Make a PDF e-book from any text file using Open Office

Original article at http://flagrantdisregard.com/howto-make-a-pdf-e-book-from-any-text-file-using-open-office/

I’ve been looking around for a good text reading application for my desktop computer so that I can comfortably read books. All I wanted was an application that would open plain text files, show them to me with nice margins and easy to read type, allow me to customize the font, background, and foreground colors, let me move forward and backwards by pages, and remember where I was at so I could pick up reading later easily.

I found a couple but wasn’t happy with any of them. Then I thought, why not PDF? PDF readers like Adobe Reader (Windows) and Evince (Linux) are free and support most of the features I want. And it turns out that creating a PDF book version of a text file is really easy. Here’s how:

1. Get Open Office. It’s a free, open-source office suite similar to Microsoft Office. Technically, you could use any PDF creation tool but I like Open Office because it’s very easy to use.
2. Start Open Office Writer and open your plain text file.
3. Select Format Page and change the following:
   - Paper size: 5×7 inches
   - Margins: 0 all around
   - Header: 0.5 inches
   - Footer: 0.5 inches
   - Background: black
4. Click OK
5. Select all text (Ctrl-A). Change the font and text color to something pleasing that will prevent eye strain. I like a medium dark color on a black background.
6. Export PDF. Choose the option to open the PDF file in full screen mode.

You’re done! When you open the PDF file, it should open in full screen with the text nicely centered. Depending on your reader, you may have some paging controls but if you don’t then the Page Up/Down keys on your keyboard will probably do what you want. It’s perfect.

The only other thing you’ll want to change is the “remember last position” preference in Adobe Reader. Choose “For any PDF document” and it will remember where you were in any book you convert in this way.

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