- 21 May 2017: switched from Makefile to latexmk.
- 07 May 2013: fixed several packaging errors in previous tar balls.
Tired and/or guilty of printing out arXiv pre-prints everyday? Frustrated by the experience of reading two-column journal articles on your Kindle e-reader?
If you happen to own a Kindle DX device, and happen to be an avid arXiv reader, Kindlize will make reading arXiv pre-prints on e-ink screen as pleasant as on A4 papers!
The idea is simple. arXiv usually keeps the LaTeX source file of uploaded manuscripts, and Kindlize will reformat and recompile those LaTeX files so that the new pdf file is Kindle-friendly.
CAVEAT
Currently Kindlize only works with astro-ph posts on arXiv, but it could
be easily adapted to other fields by adding LaTeX style files for relevant
journals. Please let me know if you want to work on implementing Kindlize
for fields outside of Astrophysics.
- python2.7
- a LaTeX environment
- latexmk
- rsync
- Dropbox (suggested)
- GNU Make
If you have mercurial installed, clone the source
$ hg clone ssh://hg@bitbucket.org/nye17/kindlize
otherwise you can download tarball from here, then
$ tar zxvf kindlize-0.1.0.tar.gz
to de-compress under your current directory.
To install,
$ cd kindlize
$ python setup.py install
or if you want to install to a specified directory INSTALLDIR
$ python setup.py install --prefix=INSTALLDIR
It is useful to explain the ideal workflow using Kindlize. There are three major goals I want to achieve for a hassle-free reading experience:
- Converting the source tarball downloaded from arXiv server into Kindle-friendly pdf for any arXiv-id.
- Maintaining a local directory of "kindlized" pdfs among multiple computers (using Dropbox).
- Synchronizing your Kindle arXiv content to the local directory on your computer.
Kindlize is designed to take care of all three goals, with some help from Dropbox (simply by storing your local copy of kindlized pdfs inside your Dropbox directory).
However, before typing kindlize on your terminal, you need to configurate
Kindlize first. Let's get started!
Obviously, Kindlize needs to understand the filesystems of both your computer
and Kindlize device - like, where to put temporary files during compiling, where
to put kindlized pdfs on your computer and on your Kindle, etc. For this
purpose, Kindlize needs to read a configuration file under your home directory
~/.kindle.cfg. You can modify the example.cfg file that comes with the
source package and copy it to your local home directory,
$ copy example.cfg ~/.kindle.cfg
and tailor it to your own needs. The required items in ~/.kindle.cfg are
Currently Kindlize only serves the Kindle DX device, as other Kindle versions are too small for serious journal reading. But if you want to give it a shot, please let me know (I don't personally own other Kindles, so I may need your help on tests).
Determines where the TeX file will be unpacked and compiled into pdfs. A
standard tmp directory would be ideal.
Determines where on your local directory you want to store a backup of your
Kindlized pdfs. Here I put it as a subdirectry within my Dropbox folder,
so that I could select and process the desired pdfs on my office machine,
then sync and update my Kindle using my home computer later. You need to
create dropDir on your computer manually.
The mount point of your Kindle device. You have to make sure that mountDir is
writable by your user account.
Tells Kindlize where your Kindle content will show up in your file system
(i.e., the /media/Kindle part, which should be the same as mountDir)
and which subdirectory you want to store the
arXiv files (i.e., the documents/Incoming part). Note that incomingDir
will always be synced to dropDir. You also need to create incomingDir
on your Kindle manually.
Determines which LaTeX font package to use for pdfs. You have
to make sure they are available in your LaTeX environment - place
\usepackage{YOUR_CHOICE_OF_FONT} in your test LaTeX file and compile.
Determines the height of your fonts.
Determines the baseline of your fonts.
Determines which pdf viewer to preview the generated pdfs on your computer. mupdf is
strongly recommended.
To kindlize an arXiv article, simply do
$ kindlize 1211.1379 astrocoffee
where 1211.1379 is the arXiv identifier for
the paper you want to read, and astrocoffee is the name of the subdirectory
you want to keep this file under your dropDir and incomingDir. If you
don't want to bother with organizing your pdfs, simply substitute astrocoffee
with ..
As indicated by example.cfg, I have created a local directory
~/Dropbox/kindle_sync/ as my dropDir for storing kindlized pdfs, so that
the reformated pdf (turns out to be, accidentally, Zu12.pdf) will go into
~/Dropbox/kindle_sync/astrocoffee directory.
The above command will also enable you to preview the kindlized pdf using
your favorite pdfviewer.
I have also created a new directory under Kindle documents/incoming/ as my
incomingDir to synchronize to the ~/Dropbox/kindle_sync/ directory on
my computer. To synchronize, simply plug in your Kindle and make sure that
the Kindle filesystem is accessible (e.g., in my case, /media/Kindle/
exists.), then run
$ kindlize
without arguments. This will force the Kindle incomingDir directory to
be exactly the same as your local dropDir directory (i.e., files could
be either added or deleted from your Kindle!). This command will also send
the newly added pdfs to the right collection on your Kindle. For example,
Zu12.pdf file will appear in the incoming - astrocoffee collection,
however, you have to reboot your Kindle to see the new collection in action ;-(.
You can always type
$ kindlize -h
for help.
And last, enjoy reading!
Kindlize is licensed under GNU GPL, and you are welcome to modify and use the code for your own purpose. Please, report bugs and issues as I won't be able to cover all the TeX formats on arXiv. Feel free to send me ideas through the issue tracker or pull requests!