url2epub VS koreader

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)

Kobos[1] and Pocketbooks[2] are a lot more open than Kindles. AFAIK you can transfer .epub files into both devices and these epubs are perfectly readable via the stock OS. If for some reason you find the stock proprietary OS lacking, you can install an open source one like KOreader [3] or Plato[4]

Of course you want a good way of organizing epubs pdfs mobi, and like has already been mentioned Calibre[5] is a great option.

[1]https://www.kobo.com/

[2]https://pocketbookstore.com/en-ca

[3]https://github.com/koreader/koreader

[4]https://github.com/baskerville/plato

[5]https://calibre-ebook.com/

[2]: https://github.com/koreader/koreader/wiki/Dictionary-support...

Oh man I absolutely love the work that you guys do. I'm actually in the process of learning Ebook production using the 'Step by Step' guide on your website. I'm essentially learning it all from scratch as I have little to no programming/SWE experience (I learned a bit of Lua because of KOReader[1]) but the technical side of ebook production has always fascinated me enough to keep learning.

[1] https://github.com/koreader/koreader

Ha! I feel similarly, if not as eloquently.

Installed https://github.com/koreader/koreader on mine + enabled SSH server.

I read that KOreader is unstable on the Libra 2[0], so I haven’t installed it yet even though I would like to. What has been your experience running it?

[0] https://github.com/koreader/koreader/issues/8414

You can easily modify it (like adding KOReader).

I'm using Kobo Clara 2E (6" screen size), and it is unpleasant to read PDF and CBZ files (comic/manga) since Kobo only provides zoom and orientation mode. I installed KOReader on my Kobo. It has more setup to display those files way better. The views of PDF in KOReader and Comic in Koreader. I read Epub files in Koreader to maintain its original format.

I installed KOReader on my Kobo Clara 2E. KOReader is a document viewer to read PDFs and manga/comics. KOReader has more setup to display fixed-layout format in a way that is better than the native Kobo display (Kobo stock).

It doesn't try to solve the same use cases that Calibre does, but I built an open source (EPUB only) manager / reader / statistics tracker called AnthoLume [0]. It mostly stemmed from me reading in KOReader [1] on my Kindle, and not having the ability to sync the progress to my iPhone / iPad.

It's got metadata matching, support for multiple users, and statistics tracking which allows me to have a "Leaderboard" that shows how fast you read (words per minute). Fun competition between my wife and I (that I'm 100% losing). It's a Progressive Web App and utilizes a Service Worker to support 100% offline reading as well.

There's a demo server [2] (creds are "demo" for both user & pass).

[0] https://gitea.va.reichard.io/evan/AnthoLume

[1] http://koreader.rocks/

[2] https://antholume-demo.cloud.reichard.io/