Live data from Hacker News

Major Mode for Reading EPUBs in Emacs

github.com

31–40 of 70 posts

Re: Major Mode for Reading EPUBs in Emacs

#31
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the screenshot, my one big complaint is that it's typeset ragged right instead of flush right (which is, generally, how books and most ebook readers do it), but I suppose that's just a CSS fix, then?

If you scroll down, the README tells you how to make it flush right: https://github.com/wasamasa/nov.el#rendering

Ah, excellent :) that looks much nicer!

Re: Major Mode for Reading EPUBs in Emacs

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

F1-m translates to "C-h m", which is the standard Emacs command to show information about the current major-mode. It's not specific to nov.el.

I did not know that. And I have been using Emacs since 1984. I use "M-X apropos".

C-h ? will show you help on help, among them:

C-h a - apropos

C-h k - detailed docs on the command run by key sequence

C-h m - docs on current minor modes and major mode

C-h w - what keystrokes will run command

There's a lot more as well.

Re: Major Mode for Reading EPUBs in Emacs

#35
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not know that. And I have been using Emacs since 1984. I use "M-X apropos".

C-h ? will show you help on help, among them: C-h a - apropos C-h k - detailed docs on the command run by key sequence C-h m - docs on current minor modes and major mode C-h w - what keystrokes will run command There's a lot more as well.

C-h is backspace and also "move cursor left" on many ancient video terminals. So it was always remapped.

Re: Major Mode for Reading EPUBs in Emacs

#36
post #25
post #23

https://github.com/bddean/emacs-ereader is another one. Similar features, the biggest difference is that nov shows a chapter at a time while ereader renders the entire document at once which allows doing isearch over the whole thing. Both of these take advantage of the shr HTML renderer built into Emacs which in turn uses libxml2 to do the heavy lifting.

From the screenshot, my one big complaint is that it's typeset ragged right instead of flush right (which is, generally, how books and most ebook readers do it), but I suppose that's just a CSS fix, then?

>which is, generally, how books and most ebook readers do it

Books flush them right. eBook readers usually don't and when they do it's horribly typographically, because they don't use a smart algorithm for hyphenation and line splitting.

Re: Major Mode for Reading EPUBs in Emacs

#38
Shameless plug for a personal project:

https://github.com/ashton314/homebrew-mm

This is really just a one-liner I put in a shell script to pass things to Pandoc so I could read them like a man page in my terminal.

Love the Emacs lib though. The more emacs I my life the better. :)

Re: Major Mode for Reading EPUBs in Emacs

#39
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the same people that run sci hub. Please remember that authors need to eat too though. If you have money you should support them by buying their books or they may write fewer of them for you to enjoy.

If they work thru big publishers authors get actually very little from every book purchase. So in practice most of your payments go to feed large majors. I wish more authors would go the path of self publishing so they can maximize their compensation per book sale.

More authors are self publishing than ever before. The problem is that you never hear about them. Additionally, the editing on self-published books tends to be a lot rougher.

Re: Major Mode for Reading EPUBs in Emacs

#40
post #25
post #23

https://github.com/bddean/emacs-ereader is another one. Similar features, the biggest difference is that nov shows a chapter at a time while ereader renders the entire document at once which allows doing isearch over the whole thing. Both of these take advantage of the shr HTML renderer built into Emacs which in turn uses libxml2 to do the heavy lifting.

From the screenshot, my one big complaint is that it's typeset ragged right instead of flush right (which is, generally, how books and most ebook readers do it), but I suppose that's just a CSS fix, then?

Constant spacing between words actually makes things easier to read. Prioritizing no ragged edges over all else prioritizes aesthetics over readability.
Post reply on HN