Show HN: Lue – Terminal eBook Reader with Text-to-Speech

Re:Show HN: Lue – Terminal eBook Reader with Text-to-Speech by nd4spdviper on Saturday August 16, 2025 @03:39PM (#44926341)

For some reason I'm more interested on the "read epubs in terminal" than the TTS part. Don't know for certain for how long would one be interested on reading monospace text, also without certainty of the app remembering where I left, pagination and that stuff.

For me, running it on my home server so it can save my progress would be good.

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Re:Show HN: Lue – Terminal eBook Reader with Text-to-Speech by superstarryeyes on Saturday August 16, 2025 @03:48PM (#44926399)

thanks for your insight! i started to build this project mainly for the tts features but you can certainly just read text on it.

it saves the state of having the narration on or off, so if you ever open the book again you don't hear any voice. also the reading progress and state is automatically saved to your system log files. I'm pretty sure with a few settings in the config.py file you could direct them to your server.

about the monospace fonts. yes, they're not the prettiest but they're very easy to read! easier than many much more beautiful fonts. and if you're tired of reading, just switch on the tts. ;)

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Re:Show HN: Lue – Terminal eBook Reader with Text-to-Speech by starkparker on Saturday August 16, 2025 @04:13PM (#44926549)

In a DE and depending on the terminal emulator, one could probably set up a profile that uses variable-width fonts and switch to it for Lue. That experience would depend on how well it renders text, particularly typographical elements.

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Re:Show HN: Lue – Terminal eBook Reader with Text-to-Speech by superstarryeyes on Saturday August 16, 2025 @04:27PM (#44926645)

that's a really cool idea! i wonder if it would break the ui though? i should try that.

me, mainly i just look for the most beautiful monospace font i can find that has a nostalgic feel. recently my favourite has been "modeseven" (https://online-fonts.com/fonts/modeseven), which is also featured in the screenshot on the github page.

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Re:Show HN: Lue – Terminal eBook Reader with Text-to-Speech by starkparker on Saturday August 16, 2025 @05:29PM (#44927060)

It does break the border, but that's a two-line fix in ui.py to use a Rich Panel without side borders:

  +  from rich import box
     ...
     book_panel = Panel(
         book_content,
  +      box=box.SIMPLE_HEAD,
         title=f"[{COLORS.PANEL_TITLE}]{progress_text}[/{COLORS.PANEL_TITLE}]",
     ...

Then running lue in an emacs ansi-term or mlterm with a variable-width font configured, it looks like a typical ePub reader.

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Re:Show HN: Lue – Terminal eBook Reader with Text-to-Speech by superstarryeyes on Saturday August 16, 2025 @05:37PM (#44927104)

fantastic! good to know.

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Re:Show HN: Lue – Terminal eBook Reader with Text-to-Speech by aidenn0 on Saturday August 16, 2025 @07:13PM (#44927615)

If you already have a favorite pagination tool, then just pipe this into it for reading epubs in the terminal:

    pandoc -f epub file.epub -t plain

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Re:Show HN: Lue – Terminal eBook Reader with Text-to-Speech by okasaki on Saturday August 16, 2025 @08:13PM (#44927892)

Emacs has a package for reading epubs. https://depp.brause.cc/nov.el/

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