News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Kindle is OK by jordanroher on Thursday July 29, 2010 @10:30AM (#1557659)
Very seriously considering a Kindle, but all my eBooks are non-DRM ePUBs. I know Amazon has a feature to get your existing files on the Kindle, but has anyone tried to import ePUBs? Do they transfer 1:1 to Amazon's format?
Re:Kindle is OK by ruchi on Thursday July 29, 2010 @10:33AM (#1557673)
Kindle supports MOBI/PRC/AZW but not ePUB. You could use the free conversion tool calibre and batch convert your books from ePUB.
Re:Kindle is OK by mhd on Thursday July 29, 2010 @10:41AM (#1557698)
Most books are pretty easy to convert. As mentioned elsewhere, calibre does a good job at it, although the GUI looks like it crept out of someones mid-90s Tcl/Tk nightmares.

A problem I've seen with epub books is missing hyphenation, which really messes up the display. And this was on "native" devices (Sony PRS, nook). Haven't seen really good typography on any of the ereader devices. This includes the iPad…

Re:Kindle is OK by quadhome on Thursday July 29, 2010 @12:46PM (#1558160)
calibre also comes with an "ebook-convert" CLI program.

It works as advertised.

    $ ebook-convert book.epub book.mobi
    ...
    $ cp book.mobi /media/Kindle/documents/
Re:Kindle is OK by jsulak on Thursday July 29, 2010 @01:16PM (#1558285)
The kindlegen command-line program from Amazon is pretty easy to use, and supports ePub and HTML: http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000...

Works on Linux, Mac, and Windows.

Re:Kindle is OK by zandorg on Thursday July 29, 2010 @12:30PM (#1558108)
PDF: Fine

HTML: Rename file to .txt and it lets you read the HTML page like a text file. But it's not perfect and sometimes complains.

Re:Kindle is OK by jmelloy on Thursday July 29, 2010 @10:43AM (#1557710)
The nook support ePUB.
Re:Kindle is OK by angstrom on Thursday July 29, 2010 @10:58AM (#1557760)
This is one of those things that surprises me about technology people that push openness. I won't buy a Kindle until it supports ePub as a default format. Amazon went out of their way to create a proprietary format for a reason: lock-in. There are plenty of official ways to convert to AZW, but the format is owned by Amazon and can change breaking any of the unofficial ways to convert back.
Re:Kindle is OK by mikebo on Thursday July 29, 2010 @12:42PM (#1558143)
I'm interested in the nook for following reasons:

- Access to public library books using Overdrive

- Being able to 'lend' books purchased from B&N store for 2 weeks to other nook owners.

I like B&N's focus on more customer friendly features.

Re:Kindle is OK by hugh3 on Thursday July 29, 2010 @11:03AM (#1557784)
Thanks, I've been trying to decide between Kindle and Nook on the assumption that I'll mostly read Project Gutenberg books anyway. So you're saying that Nook would be better for me?
Re:Kindle is OK by joshfinnie on Thursday July 29, 2010 @11:20AM (#1557846)
The nook works perfectely well with the Project Gutenberg books. I recently found this fact out and downloaded over 50 books and they are all nicely sitting on my nook now. The only drawback is that they are seperated from your purchased books and are found only in the My Documents section of the nook. (I do not know if this is a rule, but I haven't found a way around it.) I would have liked to see them right along side my purchased books.
Re:Kindle is OK by callahad on Thursday July 29, 2010 @12:36PM (#1558118)
Thanks to http://manybooks.net/, either would work perfectly well for texts in the public domain.
Re:Kindle is OK by quadhome on Thursday July 29, 2010 @12:45PM (#1558153)
Gutenberg has all their books in Mobipocket as well, which the Kindle supports natively.
Re:Kindle is OK by JoCoLa on Thursday July 29, 2010 @02:58PM (#1558790)
This is precisely why I got a Sony Reader instead.