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Cows Look Like Maps to Technology@lemmy.worldEnglish • 2 years ago

What Amazon Kindle? Here's an Open Source eBook Reader

itsfoss.com

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  • opensource@lemmy.ml
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What Amazon Kindle? Here's an Open Source eBook Reader

itsfoss.com

Cows Look Like Maps to Technology@lemmy.worldEnglish • 2 years ago
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  • opensource@lemmy.ml
When it comes to an eBook reader, the choices are limited. The market is dominated by Amazon’s proprietary Kindle along with a few other options like Kobo, Nook and Onyx. An interesting news for open source enthusiasts is that a developer, Joey Castillo, is working on creating an open
  • @BoneALisa@lemm.ee
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    148•2 years ago

    IIRC it only suports plain text files / Markdown rn. Not supporting EPUB is a non-starter for me. I use my Kobo right now and love it. If they add EPUB support i will heavily consider building one.

    • @Synthead@lemmy.world
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      32•
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      2 years ago

      Yeah it’s an interesting project, but it looks bad with the printed case and exposed tact switches, and seems to have little functionality.

    • @Isoprenoid@programming.dev
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      18•2 years ago

      The creator is working on an epub-to-text-file converter here:

      https://github.com/joeycastillo/libros-convert

      • WaDef7
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        78•2 years ago

        I’m not sure I understand, epub is both the industry standard and an open format, as far as I know. Why not work on using it or build it around epub from the get-go?

        I have to admit I’ll have to wait for the project to start implementing epub to consider getting on board, but it’s still a great effort.

        • runefehay
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          17•2 years ago

          It looks like it is powered by a microcontroller. Maybe it isn’t powerful enough to support epub?

        • Richard
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          5•2 years ago

          Probably because the computational hardware is not powerful enough to implement a (proto) web browser

          • @mesamunefire@lemmy.world
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            2 years ago

            It’s a raspberry pi pico. Ebooks could probably work with it on the new version.

      • Hyperreality
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        7•2 years ago

        Doesn’t calibre also have a built in converter?

        It used to be able to strip DRM from stuff too, but I think they got rid of that for legal reasons.

        • @jayandp@sh.itjust.works
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          8•2 years ago

          Yes, Calibre can convert to most formats.

          DRM removal is not a feature of Calibre, but of plugins you can add to it. Kobo and Adobe DRM have plugins available. Amazon DRM plugin is in a poor state as Amazon cracked down on a major method earlier this year.

          • Hyperreality
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            2 years ago

            Think I did it that way for some books.

            I also seem to remember there being another workaround, by exporting it to my old sony e-reader via the official sony app, which is so old it doesn’t have proper DRM, but I did have to sign up for adobe digital editions or some or other BS. Something like that. End result was a DRM free epub.

            Huge waste of time, especially for something I’d paid full price for, so after that I gave up on buying ebooks, and simply pirated them.

            Just like with DVDs back in the day and streaming now, you get a shittier experience if you pay full price. Better to pirate.

      • @mesamunefire@lemmy.world
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        6•2 years ago

        Calibre already does this but cool we have options.

      • @solrize@lemmy.world
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        3•2 years ago

        Epub to text is very easy and Pandoc can do it. I end up using lynx -dump because that’s faster though.

        • @MonkderZweite@feddit.ch
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          2 years ago

          Technically, epub is basically a wepage and thus everything but easy.

          • Morphit
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            5•2 years ago

            You could just strip out the content with a big regex. Surely nothing could go wrong with ̴̬̮̳͔̬̹͖̩͍̄̈̓̀͋̀̎̊̈́̑͛͊̕t̶̘͇̺̠̗̓̿̆̓͋͗́͑͆̈́̈́͊̉̈̍̚ͅḥ̷̡̛͓̹͕̞͎̃͂̽͠ͅã̸͈̟̩̫̪̣̳̜̑̈́̓͗͘t̴̡̮̹͌́̄̔̂́̒͑͘.

          • @mesamunefire@lemmy.world
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            2•2 years ago

            You can unzip an epub and find out. Ive done it a couple of times to remove some images from books.

            unzip book.epub

            • @JaymesRS@literature.cafe
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              1•2 years ago

              Last time someone told me I could find out if I would just unzip it didn’t go so well…

        • @helenslunch@feddit.nl
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          9 months ago

          deleted by creator

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