Reading books with org-mode

Reading books with org-mode

[Kyle Sexton]

Just wanted to share a tip I've been using that is pretty nice.  Convert
any epub/mobi technical books you are reading to org-mode files and read
them in Emacs.  Then you can do nice things like easily cut and paste
portions of the book to org-drill for flash cards or into capture
templates.

The conversion process is different for every book (imagine that), but
not too horrible.  Basically, Calibre -> htmlz -> unzip -> pandoc:

#+BEGIN_EXAMPLE
$ cp ~/Calibre\ Library/Metz*/Practi*/*.htmlz ./book.htmlz
$ unzip -q book.htmlz 
$ pandoc ./index.html -o book.org       
#+END_EXAMPLE

After that I usually have to global convert [[image/foo.png]] to
[[file:image/foo.png]] and add inlineimages to a start-up option on the
file.

--
Kyle Sexton

Re: Reading books with org-mode

[Christian Wittern]

Hi Kyle,

Thanks for sharing this, this is excellent.  I have been looking for a way 
to read epub books in Emacs and this is even better!

However, trying this out I noted that I can't seem to follow the (internal) 
links in the file, whatever I click on, it all ends up at the same place.  
The file seems to have the right voodoo in it to allow for the links to 
work, so it might be either my setup or a general org problem.  Do you see 
the same behaviour for links?

Christian

On 2013-07-30 05:24, Kyle Sexton wrote:
> Just wanted to share a tip I've been using that is pretty nice.  Convert
> any epub/mobi technical books you are reading to org-mode files and read
> them in Emacs.  Then you can do nice things like easily cut and paste
> portions of the book to org-drill for flash cards or into capture
> templates.
>
> The conversion process is different for every book (imagine that), but
> not too horrible.  Basically, Calibre -> htmlz -> unzip -> pandoc:
>
> #+BEGIN_EXAMPLE
> $ cp ~/Calibre\ Library/Metz*/Practi*/*.htmlz ./book.htmlz
> $ unzip -q book.htmlz
> $ pandoc ./index.html -o book.org
> #+END_EXAMPLE
>
> After that I usually have to global convert [[image/foo.png]] to
> [[file:image/foo.png]] and add inlineimages to a start-up option on the
> file.
>
> --
> Kyle Sexton
>
>


-- 
Christian Wittern, Kyoto

Re: Reading books with org-mode

[Kyle Sexton]

Christian Wittern <cwittern@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi Kyle,
>
> Thanks for sharing this, this is excellent.  I have been looking for a
> way to read epub books in Emacs and this is even better!
>
> However, trying this out I noted that I can't seem to follow the
> (internal) links in the file, whatever I click on, it all ends up at
> the same place.  The file seems to have the right voodoo in it to
> allow for the links to work, so it might be either my setup or a
> general org problem.  Do you see the same behaviour for links?
>

I have the same problem.  Unfortunately the conversion isn't perfect,
but for me it's worth the little things like that.  I think the issue is
in the pandoc exporter, but it could also be in how Calibre is
generating the links for the htmlz.

-- 
Kyle Sexton