Previously I have written about both my T1 and my Glo. Now, I’m writing about my reading setup: files, settings, and whatnots to create e-book articles from non-books and for reading. There are a lot of setups and tutorials available (especially in mobileread), but these are I use the most/ most comfortable in. (not really into using them wirelessly, syncing and stuff)

(warning: the usual I’m in Windows(!!))

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File extensions

Glo

Coolreader (Kobo. Normal ver. also for Android, Windows, Linux): main main reader app right now. My page-turn setup is like below. I use stardict‘s Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary for dictionary. Charter e-ink, 29 .

My page tap setup

My page longtap setup (swipe left-right for pages. Don’t have keys so no keys setting

 

Koreader (Kobo, Kindle): mostly for PDF (landscape, fit content width) and CBZ (portrait, fit content height). Also use Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary for dictionary.

T1 & Android

FBReader: not much, just install TTS plugin for awkward lady-voice telling me stories when I’m washing dishes.

Windows

Grabmybooks (Firefox, Chrome, Android): Really nifty extension that not enough people know. I mostly use this in Firefox (my Chrome one always failed so I just don’t bother and use the Firefox one) to save articles and translations linked in one masterpost. You can also setup the cover. I like to just have a list of page links and save them as epub to read with this.

Just select your page links, right click, Grab link

• If I want to make the page I read to epub, just use Express page grab

• Other setup that I like is to use the Feeds setting to save a few RSS pages (sadly can’t fetch all, only 10 latest)

• 

  Expand the RSS on the left, select pages, Add Selection to Book

• Sometimes the grabbing will fail for complex pages, so for those address first setup the area with Rule Editor. If all else fails, I just select the part and Grab Selection

• 

  My favourite is choosing an image from grabbed pages as cover. Don’t forget to change Metadata as well

  Can also save all opened tabs with Grab tabs

Calibre (Windows, Linux, Mac): My main epub management software. I also utilise the plugins, oh the plugins:

• Calibre recipes: Reading your RSS-es. I just import my opml from Inoreader, honestly. You can setup the fetching to daily, weekly, etc. Scheduled. Really nice for news reading, but for me sometimes the max number is not enough and the result is not satisfactory, so mostly I use Grabmybooks. But they are nice! Especially for doing things in batches

Add custom news source first. After finished, schedule new download

Import opml if you have them already

Maximum 100 articles, you see

• Generating cover from metadata with Generate Cover

• OPML Importer to convert OPML to recipes

• I also set-up its reader as default program to open epub and mobi in windows so no need to open Calibre to read (It’s in C:/Program Files/Calibre2/e-book-viewer.exe)

Open epub outside Calibre

• 

  Just install them Calibre plugins

  Other interesting plugins: BBC GoodFood Recipe Reader (there are other recipes plugins as well), WikiReader to convert Wikipedia pages to epub (can use Grabmybooks as well but the result is nicer-looking), or FanFicFare for people who’re too attached to their fictional characters.

K2PDFOPT (Windows, Linux, Mac): Really nice conversion software, especially for those two-column journals and papers with pictures. Can setup the setting so that you can just drag and drop the file you want to convert or doing it in terminal.  The downside is that it’s increased file size and the conversion takes quite the time.

Set them up first before drag-and-drop

Writer2epub (Windows, Linux, Mac): a plugin for Open-Source Office program to create epub. It can turn odt to epub, with TOC from Header (which is very convenient). The downside is that I now use rather convoluted way in creating doc/docx in Word, save it as odt. Open Libreoffice Writer, and Write2epub.

Ready with odt with headers. Writer2epub. Edit metadata and add cover

Sigil : I use this for editing Grabmybooks e-books, like changing punctuations, headers, etc.. Sometimes to add cover/ TOC. Haven’t really utilise it to its fullest potential yet

My top two favourite options in Sigil

Balabolka (Windows)  The Text-to-speech software I use to listen to epub file. It can also be used to make an audiobook from a text (very useful but I have TTS+ so naah.) Can also be used for mp3 lrc editing (which I haven’t really explored yet). Can work together with calibre after using OpenWith  plugin.

You can just right-click and read or save as mp3

SumatraPDF: Software I usually recommend to people wanting to read epub/mobi without installing Calibre. I now normally use this to read PDF (before I was really into Foxit PDF but Sumatra is lot less heavy). Can also open other files (magic, really), like those corrupted CBZ and CBR that I fail to open with CDisplay)