url2epub VS KeenWrite

Somewhat similarly, I wrote a web app to generate epub (instead of pdf) out of urls and send to eink reader(s) directly (via a telegram bot) so I can read them. Currently it supports sending epub by email (for kindle) or uploading epub to dropbox (for kobo, etc.). It originally also supports reMarkable cloud but we can no longer make reMarkable cloud actually work. There's also a REST api to generate epub to be downloaded directly: https://github.com/fishy/url2epub/blob/main/REST.md

For e-ink readers epubs are generally better than PDFs for urls anyways, as epubs are basically packed htmls, and also the flow text works better on smaller screens.

I wrote a service (Google Cloud Run as the backend, with Telegram bot as the frontend) to generate readable ePub from URLs and send directly to e-ink readers. It was originally wrote for reMarkable 2 (using reMarkable cloud), I recently added support for Kindle (by using the send-to-kindle emails). The code is at https://github.com/fishy/url2epub and I blogged about the recently added kindle support at https://b.yuxuan.org/url2epub-kindle.

I'm open to suggestions on what other e-ink platforms to add, as long as they have a reasonable cloud API. I'm also looking for a good e-ink platform to move to personally, as it becomes apparent that reMarkable really doesn't want third parties to use their proprietary cloud "API".

2. It's a relatively open system (compared to other e-ink readers), so it's pretty fun in terms of hackability.

I did get the forever free subscription which helps, but I also totally understand why they would want to charge for that, and I think the new $3/month is a pretty reasonable price for it.

Regarding instapaper use case and also hackability, shameless plug: I wrote https://github.com/fishy/url2epub for my own use case, so instead of relying on a third party service and manually sync stuff to reMarkable 2, I just send the link to the telegram bot (I picked telegram bot so that I can easily send links from my phone, not only desktops), and the epub will be auto synced to my reMarkable cloud account (they did made some changes to the cloud api causing I have to manually open their official mobile or desktop app to sync once before the reMarkable 2 itself would accept the new epub I uploaded through url2epub, haven't figured out how to avoid that yet, but it's still mostly automated).

For reMarkable, I also wrote a Telegram bot to convert http url into ePub and send to reMarkable directly: https://github.com/fishy/url2epub

(if you don't like telegram or don't use reMarkable, it also comes with a public rest API to generate epub out of urls)

Shameless plug and this is only loosely related: Over the last holiday season I wrote a backend (written in Go and running on App Engine) to convert http url into epub. The frontend is a telegram bot that sends the epub to your reMarkable account directly, but it also has rest api to download the epub file: https://github.com/fishy/url2epub/blob/main/REST.md

With the purchase of reMarkable 2, I have this need to easily send web articles to my reMarkable 2 from my phone, while officially they only provided a Chrome extension, which can only be used on desktops.

As a result I wrote some go code (https://github.com/fishy/url2epub) for the past 2 days, to generate ePub from URL. I also implemented reMarkable API to send them to reMarkable tablets directly.

The current UI for it is implemented as a Telegram bot (https://t.me/url2rM_bot?start=1), running on AppEngine (code: https://github.com/fishy/url2epub/tree/main/appengine). I initially considered making an Android app for the UI, but decided that Telegram bot is less work for me, and works good enough for this use case (sorry for people who don't use Telegram, but this also means that people on iOS, desktop, etc. will be able to use it).

For the future, I might do:

- Expand the URLs supported (currently it only supports URLs with an AMP version provided, and the AMP version does have article tag inside)

KeenWrite is my free, open-source, cross-platform desktop Markdown editor that can produce beautifully typeset PDFs. I started working on it years ago to help write a novel that has a complex timeline and I couldn't find a text editor that would allow me to integrate a character sheet with the story itself.

https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite

Tutorials:

* https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB-WIt1cZYLm1MMx2FBG9...

Here's what I mean by using variables directly:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFCqe3A5dFg

CommonMark doesn't propose a standard for bibliographic references. Would anyone find the editor more appealing if it had cross-references and citations?

My cross-platform desktop text editor, KeenWrite, allows users to define variables in an external YAML file. The editor calls out to Kroki[1] to convert text-based diagrams to SVG. The diagrams can reference variables and are rendered using EchoSVG[2].

KeenWrite[3] can produce PDF documentation from Markdown documents that has PlantUML diagrams with elements stored in an external, machine-readable file. Here are screenshots showing variables on the left, diagram text in the middle, and a real-time render on the right:

* https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DaveJarvis/KeenWrite/main/...

* https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DaveJarvis/KeenWrite/main/...

KeenWrite supports all diagrams offered by Kroki, which includes "diagram-plantuml".

[1]: https://kroki.io/

[2]: https://github.com/css4j/echosvg/

[3]: https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite

Although not interactive, I've created a video series that shows advanced usage of Markdown. Namely R, external variables, diagrams, math, annotations, and a different approach to metadata:

* https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB-WIt1cZYLm1MMx2FBG9...

Tutorial 4 shows basic Markdown:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNbGSiRzx-0

The top-right of each video shows keyboard and mouse clicks to help follow along.[1] My desktop text editor, KeenWrite[2], is used in the tutorials.

[1]: https://github.com/DaveJarvis/kmcaster

[2]: https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite

https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite/blob/main/scripts/bu...

My template script provides a way to make user-friendly shell scripts. In a script that uses the template, you define the dependencies and their sources:

    DEPENDENCIES=(

I didn't create the fork, nor am I affiliated with the project. I use it in my text editor, KeenWrite to rasterize SVG.

KeenWrite Themes[1] are instructions that tell ConTeXt how to typeset XHTML documents (content) into PDF files (presentation). I made a tutorial that shows how my FOSS desktop text editor, KeenWrite[3], allows users to write in Markdown to typeset a document against a particular theme.

Before it can be used for scientific papers, it needs cross-references, which, unfortunately, aren't part of the CommonMark specification.

I posit that the vast majority of LaTeX users don't grok how to separate content from presentation. When I asked a question on TeX.SE about how to adjust the line spacing between enumerated items (spanning a couple dozen enumerated lists), the vast majority of people voted for the answer of using `\itemsep0em` to tweak each list ... individually.[4] The correct answer, IMO, is to fix the problem globally, and not waste time tweaking individual lists.

[1]: https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite-themes

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QpX70O5S30

[3]: https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite

[4]: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/6081/reduce-space-be...