IBU

Consol

eBooks for eReaders :
.epub for Tolino etc &
.azw3 for Kindle &
? for InkPad 3

This is http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/epub/

by Julian Stacey

See Also

• Berklix: Tolino
• Berklix: Kindle
• Berklix: epub/withouthotair.com/ More generic notes are to be moved from here
• wikipedia: eReader
• wikipedia: E_Ink
• wikipedia: Comparison_of_e-readers

Notes

• Epub can be unlocked or locked format, book sellers promote & sell locked format.
• Android has apps that read epub format, eg
  •   Aldiko on play . google . com Liked by LJK & GJ, installed by JHS.
  • Tolino Android App See Also Tolino Hardware
  • FBReader usr / ports / deskutils / fbreader works OK on BSD & FBReader on android
• Free epub here
  • archive . org
  • www . gutenberg . org :Project Gutenberg is a library of over 60,000 free eBooks @ Wed Aug 26 23:50:33 CEST 2020 no access from Germany !
  • My tiny directory of a few ePubs & Public PDFs waiting for me to export to ePubs
• Directories Etc
  • ./epub/
  • ./epub/withouthotair.com/

Format

• Epub is a container, just a renamed zip, containing multiple HTML files and optional graphical files. So to force Tolino to show in an index a different name for eg an epub2 or 3
  • mkdir tmp; cd tmp; unzip ../ SusEn2.epub
  • vi -c/dc:title OEBPS/content.opf
  • Edit Line: <dc:title>Sustainable Energy - without the hot air</dc:title>
  • zip ../newtitle.epub `find -s . -type f -print` ; cd .. ; rm -rf tmp

Conversion Tools

•   Calibre can generate ebook formats such as .epub (for Tolino etc) (& .azw3 for Kindle ) from .pdf & maybe other formats.
  • It is fronted by a graphical tool runs on X11 etc,
  • runs on FreeBSD & Android & MacOS & iOS & MS-Windows .
  • It has a built in reader
  • open source
  • can take plugins to do a wide variety of additional things, eg there is a Kindle DRM stripper plugin, with that one can buy Kindle ebooks on Amazon, strip the DRM and convert to epub for other devices.
  • GJ notes:
    • Search "PDF to EPUB with Calibre" : most of the hits were for other programs which are designed to convert PDFs to EPUB. In most of the hits there was a statement like "People always complain about how poorly Calibre handles PDFs. Use my app instead."
    • Calibre: There's a Wiki or support forum for it someplace. You can also edit the EPUB in Calibre.
  • JHS exported the UK's Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament - Russia Report from PDF to epub with Calibre (using default settings)
    See note Re. Calibre in (by now possibly obsolete?) comment in withouthotair . com / epubVersions . html "The original seems to have been made with a software package called Calibre which is not renowned for the quality of its products"
  • Later JHS will convert Geoff's Books
  • Command Line Interpreter Usage Later ?
    • JHS has sp far added a hook to text conversion macros in www . berklix . com /~ jhs / src / bsd / fixes / FreeBSD / src / jhs / share / mk / berklix2.mk FreeBSD make macros.
    • Would be best to also add invocation of CLI commands, if tools & parameters are later discovered sufficient from: .)
    • Bunch of binary commands ( calibre calibre-complete calibre-customize calibre-debug calibre-parallel calibre-server calibre-smtp calibredb ebook-convert ebook-device ebook-edit ebook-meta ebook-polish ebook-viewer fetch-ebook-metadata lrf2lrs lrfviewer lrs2lrf markdown-calibre web2disk )

• Sigil: " Sigil ... is a multi-platform EPUB ebook editor with the following features:"

• sigil - ebook . com
• sphinx - doc . org
• pkg install sigil # OK, but then fails with
  WARNING: Application calling GLX 1.3 function "glXCreatePbuffer" when GLX 1.3 is not supported! This is an application bug! Segmentation fault
• cd / usr / ports / textproc / sigil ; make ; make install ; rehash - still fails

• pdftohtml - a tool based on the Xpdf

• runs on Freebsd
• does a fairly good job, but it produces lots of .png files which contain the text - which will kill scalable text & line folding. & HTML browser on tolino is awful.

• TeX: (As some PDF are produced from TeX such as withouthotair . com )
  Noting the /tex/ clue in: inference . org . uk / sustainable / book / tex / ...
  Maybe some TeX tool would work better, as .tex contains more meta info than from a .pdf ?
  Tex Ports To Investigate on FreeBSD :

• editors / texmaker
• misc / latex - mk
• print / hyperlatex
• print / lyx
• print / texlive - full
• textproc / gutenmark
• textproc / htmltolatex (HTML to LaTeX to PDF Converter)

Problems viewing similar .epub simultaneously to compare formats:

• Calibre can display epub (GJ & LK have, JHS failed)
• The Tolino viewer is too `clever' : it extracts book & author name, but doesn't show path name to select by, so at first, only way was to delete all but one, & reboot Tolino, until I learnt how to edit an EPUB
• Not tried an epub plug-in on firefox on BSD, nervous of plug-ins there.