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I have found that some archived versions of old textbooks use DJVU files. From what I understand, the DJVU file only contains text, but perhaps I am wrong about that and there is some additional image data that is not shown in an e-reader.

Archiving something like a math textbook using this format feels strange, as the equations are converted to seemingly random characters. Presumably this is just a result of an OCR software that converts the symbols to the closest ascii characters. Is there any logic to this?

Does there exist some way to decode the DJVU file to some other format (e.g. PDF but maybe also postscript or latex?) to recover the equations? Or is that information just lost?

John
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  • Try an online converter such as https://www.zamzar.com/convert/djvu-to-pdf/ or https://djvu2pdf.com/, or software such as http://www.pdflite.com/djvu-to-pdf/ . Before installing any software, check it at VirusTotal. – DrMoishe Pippik Apr 18 '23 at 22:49
  • @DrMoishePippik I did try with Calibre but it wasn't helpful and just gave the same broken equations. – John Apr 19 '23 at 08:31
  • Correct, Calibre currently can only convert djvu text: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=257162 . That was not suggested. – DrMoishe Pippik Apr 19 '23 at 15:37
  • @John (sorry for the belated comment) first of all, what do you use to display a djvu file? second: could you upload a screenshot of a snippet of a page with formulas? (just a snippet in order not to incur in copyright violation) – mau May 25 '23 at 18:22

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