[HN Gopher] From RSS to My Kindle
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       From RSS to My Kindle
        
       Author : alastairr
       Score  : 87 points
       Date   : 2024-06-24 06:47 UTC (2 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (olano.dev)
 (TXT) w3m dump (olano.dev)
        
       | xd1936 wrote:
       | Many years ago, I built a Bash script to do something similar.
       | 
       | https://gist.github.com/leoherzog/1dcffe776af200cd9117
       | 
       | Very cool!
        
         | netol wrote:
         | I also did something similar 14 years ago. It was a php website
         | that allowed you to subscribe to online newspapers and get the
         | news sent to your Kindle, in MOBI format. It worked but it was
         | basically calling calibre under the hood. I never made it
         | public (and I remember a similar website existed already at
         | that time that did not work well)
        
       | freeplay wrote:
       | Not much to contribute other than "this is great." It's one of
       | those things I didn't know I wanted until I read your article.
        
       | sriacha wrote:
       | I'm using Singlefile firefox extension on computer and phone to
       | save article to html. Then it gets synced to kobo via syncthing
       | (through koreader). Works pretty well.
        
         | dgarrett wrote:
         | Interesting, I've never thought of running syncthing behind
         | koreader. Do you use any particular plugin like
         | [this](https://github.com/jasonchoimtt/koreader-syncthing)?
         | 
         | How do you configure wifi connectivity in koreader to make this
         | useful? koreader seems to prefer keeping wifi off unless you do
         | an action that needs the internet. Do you leave wifi on, or
         | just periodically turn it on manually to sync?
        
       | velcrovan wrote:
       | Nit (maybe minor, maybe not): The EPUB standard requires[1] that
       | the `mimetype` file be the first file stored in the ZIP
       | container, and also that it be stored without being compressed.
       | 
       | It doesn't look like the author's code is conforming to this part
       | of the standard.
       | 
       | If that is the case, then their Kindle may be able to tolerate
       | the deviation. But using this code with an e-reader that adheres
       | closely to the EPUB spec may produce broken results.
       | 
       | [1]: https://www.w3.org/TR/epub-33/#sec-zip-container-mime
        
         | facundo_olano wrote:
         | TIL thanks for commenting, I'll make a note to fix this.
        
           | velcrovan wrote:
           | Yeah, understandable given that the "sample-epub-minimal"
           | repo you were going off of effectively says "just zip it all
           | up and you're good to go", which is incorrect. Not sure what
           | the best remedy is there, maybe I'll open a pull request.
           | 
           | [1] https://github.com/thansen0/sample-epub-minimal
        
       | timvdalen wrote:
       | I've been doing a similar thing for my Kobo with an ITTT action
       | that fetches RSS feed URLs and adds them to my Pocket account,
       | which automatically syncs. I'm obviously not as in-control as
       | this method, but it's been surprisingly stable.
        
         | nunodonato wrote:
         | I've been wanting to do the same, haven't explored ITTT yet. Is
         | it possible to fwd an email (say a newsletter) and have it on
         | the kobo?
        
       | nop_slide wrote:
       | Semi related, but have you found a way to get kindle highlights
       | out of amazon?
       | 
       | I've been using Readwise (and Reader) which have been great, but
       | it's rather expensive.
       | 
       | I'd love to be able to send an arbitrary article to Feedi like I
       | can with Reader, but also would love to sync highlights back from
       | my kindle.
       | 
       | Going to lurk the repo, cool stuff!
        
         | tedunangst wrote:
         | My kindle has a document called clippings with all the
         | highlights in it.
        
           | nop_slide wrote:
           | Sorry I failed to mention I'm aware of the "clippings.txt"
           | setup, but I would like to be able to have it automated via
           | background API process on the web.
           | 
           | See my other comment above.
        
         | matthewmcg wrote:
         | I looked into this in 2013. At that point there was a "My
         | Clippings.txt" file stored on the kindle that was accessible as
         | a USB storage volume when plugged in. This file stored each
         | annotation in plain text, along with the document ID and the
         | start and ending location of the annotation.
         | 
         | Trouble was, the location was in the Kindle's "Loc" format
         | which is nontrivial (at least to me at the time) to connect to
         | specific text in the document.
         | 
         | I'm sure someone's probably worked this out by now?
         | 
         | Update: yes, at least 160 projects
         | 
         | https://github.com/search?q=%22my%20clippings.txt%22&type=re...
        
           | nop_slide wrote:
           | Sorry I failed to mention I'm aware of the "clippings.txt"
           | setup, but I would like to be able to have it automated via
           | the web.
           | 
           | Amazon doesn't expose a direct API for highlighting, and
           | Readwise for example does a little "hack" where you use their
           | browser extension to redirect to the Kindle highlights page
           | and I think they just slurp up the authenticated API
           | requests.
        
           | jwrallie wrote:
           | There are some books where if you exceed a certain number of
           | highlights, they are not saved on the file anymore, and I'm
           | pretty sure it also affects the web version too.
           | 
           | This is set as part of the DRM, so be careful that you are
           | really saving the data you want. I went deep into a book
           | highlighting things before I noticed this limitation.
           | 
           | It obviously does not affect files without DRM.
        
         | supermdguy wrote:
         | clippings.io has a browser extension that scrapes all your
         | highlights from Amazon's website and lets you download them in
         | various formats.
        
           | nop_slide wrote:
           | nice, hadn't heard about them I'll check it out!
        
       | locofocos wrote:
       | Very neat. I've been doing this with Calibre (https://calibre-
       | ebook.com/), which involves plugging it into your PC via USB.
       | Simple RSS feeds work with little configuration, and more
       | complicated news sites require writing a custom python "recipe".
       | 
       | This project uses Amazon's email gateway, which I think is
       | limited to 25 articles per month (don't quote me on this).
        
         | ajot wrote:
         | Could Calibre (or any other software) generate an OPDS feed? I
         | know that at least KOReader has support for OPDS[0], maybe
         | vanilla Kindle firmware has it too. That would let you forget
         | the part of connecting your device to a PC.
         | 
         | [0] KOReader also has an RSS reader, but I'm not sure how good
         | is it and what it can support in terms of feeds
         | "complicatedness"
        
       | funksta wrote:
       | I've built something similar for myself (generating 2x-per-day
       | pdfs for my reMarkable 2) and it's so nice to catch up on
       | internet news on this kind of calm device instead of a laptop or
       | phone.
       | 
       | I used a traditional web-based RSS reader for many years but
       | found that I wounded up checking it just as compulsively as the
       | sites it ostensibly replaced.
        
       | adam_albrecht wrote:
       | I subscribe to QiReader for exactly this feature. Works great.
       | https://www.qireader.com/
        
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