[O] 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

[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

Post by 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
#+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

[Kyle Sexton]

Post by 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?

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.