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eReaders -- a hardware thread

Started by Z, October 21, 2017, 09:17:25 PM

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mothman

I use and trust Calibre to organise my library. I've not had any problems with it until the other day when I attempted to create another library to archive in, then it got really flaky and I abandoned the attempt. Plus, when I switched from MS to MacBook I struggled to locate some of the functionality. It's an essential for the serious ebook consumer.

NoSleep

Anyway, my B&N collection of books are not simply invisible, so I think that's that; I'll leave things as they are.

Calibre (even the old version I'm using) is good for organising and converting my huge collection of non-DRM books so I'm happy.

touchingcloth

Quote from: mothman on October 24, 2017, 04:53:11 PM
I use and trust Calibre to organise my library. I've not had any problems with it until the other day when I attempted to create another library to archive in, then it got really flaky and I abandoned the attempt. Plus, when I switched from MS to MacBook I struggled to locate some of the functionality. It's an essential for the serious ebook consumer.

Having never used it before today, I'm quite quickly coming to the same opinion, so much so that I've already bunged the developers a fiver. The only problem now is that I'm going to have to come up with a good way of clearing up the daily delivery of news dumps, because I'm used to sending them manually one at a time. I think I'm going to have to suck it up and do it via the device or Amazon's personal document manager, as I don't think I'll be getting into the habit of connecting my Kindle via a cable.

Porter Dimi

Make sure they're converted to MOBI first -> right-click one or multiple books -> connect/share -> email to (your Kindle email address)?

touchingcloth

It's not getting them on the Kindle that's the problem, but clearing them off when I'm done with them. I don't mind books staying on there pretty much forever as they're so small, but I could do without however many daily news dumps sticking around for too long. I'll have to get into the habit of a weekly clearout I reckon.

Porter Dimi

Oh, I see what you mean! There's no easy shortcut around that on the Kindle itself, but in Calibre under the Fetch news button, you can tell Calibre to delete downloaded news older than a certain number of days. With the Kindle, you may just need to get into the habit of deleting books manually once you've finished with them and clearing out your Docs folder (if you're sending them remotely) on your Amazon account.

touchingcloth

Yep, I've been having a play with that today, but we'll see if it becomes enough of a chore in the long term that I go back to reading news and blogs and things mainly on the laptop. Any advice for getting ebooks to show in the "books" rather than "docs" section when emailing them to a device as mobi files? I've tried a few ways without success, and it seems like it might be a niggle I have to suck up for the ease of not using wires to connect things.

Porter Dimi

Quote from: touchingcloth on October 24, 2017, 07:07:17 PM
Yep, I've been having a play with that today, but we'll see if it becomes enough of a chore in the long term that I go back to reading news and blogs and things mainly on the laptop. Any advice for getting ebooks to show in the "books" rather than "docs" section when emailing them to a device as mobi files? I've tried a few ways without success, and it seems like it might be a niggle I have to suck up for the ease of not using wires to connect things.

Files sent remotely automatically become docs, sadly.

Z

Quote from: Porter Dimi on October 24, 2017, 12:31:41 PM
or shell out a little more for the fancy 8-inch version
I feel like 8 inch is just too big for an ereader. The kind of cases that it'd be useful  (bad PDFs, comics, unwieldy textbooks) are so uncommon that a cheap 9-10 inch tablet would surely more than suffice whilst also giving you all the larger tablet benefits.

MikeShaft

Actually, if I had to criticise the Paperwhite it's the fact illustrations will never be up to much. I'm reading quite a graph and equation heavy book at the moment and it's frustrating.
At least they sorted out footnotes.

mothman

I use the Chunky app on my iPad Mini for large illustrated PDFs and comics. It's the best one I've tried and you can access websites (like Image Comics) and download purchased comics direct to the app, as well as loading them on manually from iTunes of course.

touchingcloth

Quote from: Porter Dimi on October 24, 2017, 07:09:31 PM
Files sent remotely automatically become docs, sadly.

I thought that was probably the case, alas. I've just realised one solution to my issue of cleaning up is that Calibre let's you stick multiple feeds into a single synced collection, so I can group them by category and change the frequency so that blogs update weekly while articles update daily and that's a lot less of a housekeeping chore for me.

Sebastian Cobb

So can you do these news dumps with the New Statesman?

touchingcloth

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on October 25, 2017, 03:11:42 PM
So can you do these news dumps with the New Statesman?

Yep, anything with an atom or RSS feed.

https://www.newstatesman.com/feeds/site_feed.rss

It's got a nice little engine for turning a feed into an e-magazine. You get a table of contents and everything.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: touchingcloth on October 25, 2017, 03:16:42 PM
Yep, anything with an atom or RSS feed.

https://www.newstatesman.com/feeds/site_feed.rss

It's got a nice little engine for turning a feed into an e-magazine. You get a table of contents and everything.

Might have a crack at that. If I can make calibre magically do the conversion without my intervention I reckon I could push it to my reader over dropbox or something.

Porter Dimi

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on October 25, 2017, 03:11:42 PM
So can you do these news dumps with the New Statesman?

Follow the instructions I gave to touchingcloth on the previous page, substituting the link for this one: https://www.newstatesman.com/feeds/site_feed.rss

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Porter Dimi on October 25, 2017, 06:45:45 PM
Follow the instructions I gave to touchingcloth on the previous page, substituting the link for this one: https://www.newstatesman.com/feeds/site_feed.rss
Ah yeah - sussed it. It turns out it was already in the sources. Ta.

Porter Dimi

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on October 25, 2017, 07:17:29 PM
Ah yeah - sussed it. It turns out it was already in the sources. Ta.

I tried the Calibre source and all the articles came up blank? Making a custom source with the above link solved that issue for me.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Porter Dimi on October 25, 2017, 07:24:37 PM
I tried the Calibre source and all the articles came up blank? Making a custom source with the above link solved that issue for me.

Yeah, I was jumping the gun a bit, should've waited for it to download. Custom source worked though. Thanks.

Porter Dimi

Went and bought a Kobo Aura H2O Edition 2. Lovely big, crisp screen; a huge upgrade from my Paperwhite 2.

chocky909

I've been looking to replace my stolen paperwhite. Looking at the Kobo Aura One but the new Kindle Oasis looks nice too. Is it still easy to sideload 'acquired' files on the Kindle using Calibre? I know the Kobos are easier for this and read more formats. The only thing I prefer on the Kobo is the colour changing backlight for night reading and the price £189 vs £229 for the new Oasis. I like the Oasis because it has page turn buttons and a side to grip with one hand.

I probably won't read much but I like nice things.

Porter Dimi

It's easy to sideload to either device. Kindles take MOBI or AZW3, whereas Kobo takes EPUB or MOBI. Calibre can convert those formats either way. I'd actually recommend the Kobo Aura H2O over the One; the size is plenty big enough, the resolution can easily fit more words on a page, and it's still completely waterproof.

mothman

I'm intrigued by the Kobo endorsements, I'll check them out. Thing is though, my Kindle still works so I'm loath to just change it for the hell of it. I hate getting rid of things if they still work: I recently got myself a new beard trimmer, not because the old one was 20 years old and looked it, but because the shortest setting cut my beard too short, and the next one up (of six subsequent settings!) was too long. And despite having perfectly good reasons to do so, I'm still feeling guilty about replacing something that still worked. Though less so when I put it away in the cupboard (felt too guilty to jjust throw it away) and then my eldest daughter asked to have it to trim her there are no actual words here, the ramifications of what she's trimming are so alarming I've blotted it from my memory.

hermitical

Quote from: touchingcloth on October 25, 2017, 03:16:42 PM
Yep, anything with an atom or RSS feed.

https://www.newstatesman.com/feeds/site_feed.rss

It's got a nice little engine for turning a feed into an e-magazine. You get a table of contents and everything.

any idea what to do if the rss feed doesn't go back very far?

touchingcloth

Quote from: hermitical on October 31, 2017, 01:22:51 PM
any idea what to do if the rss feed doesn't go back very far?

Are you sure it's the feed that doesn't go back far enough? Calibre has an option to only collect a maximum number of articles covering a maximum period of time, so it could be those limits you're hitting. If not, there might be a separate archive feed or something that can be found with enough digging. What are you trying to get?

hermitical

I'm looking at Mark Fisher's k-punk blog, thought it would be good to download the blog entries, pretty massive though but the rss feed only has a handful. I should just read the blog online, just being lazy

http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/index.rdf

http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/


touchingcloth

I think the issue there is just that the RSS feed itself is poorly maintained unfortunately. If you wanted to read on a Kindle then you could use the Mercury Reader plugin I mentioned upthread to send individual articles via email one at a time to your device...

hermitical

aye, I'm sure you're right about the RSS feed - cheers though

QDRPHNC

Trying to decide between the Paperwhite or the Kobo Aura, soley for book reading so I'm not concerned about Calibre and such. Anyone used both? Paperwhite is about $20 more expensive.