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- Hacker News
- In case it is useful for anybody.
I forked the old Pocket-Plus-Calibre-Plugin recipe when Pocket died, so it run with Todoist: https://github.com/rga5321/todoist2ebook
My workflow is:
(1) Browse my favorite sites and rss feeds. Save the urls I want to read to a specific Todoist list. I coded a little extension for firefox to do it using a keyboard shortcut https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/todoist-quick.... But in some sites, every feed is added to the list automatically using IFTTT
(2) Every day at a given hour, a cronjob runs on my raspberry pi executing the script, which builds a epub, mark the articles (tasks in todoist) as completed, and sends the ebook to my kindle email address.
In general it works well, although as more web sites implements anti bot measures, some articles are not downloaded correctly. What I do in those cases is add the domain to the exception list, and every week or so browse the articles manually, use https://dotepub.com to download every article in a given folder, and run another script that joins them in a single file and sends it to my kindle email address. I'd like to find time to code that the main script todoist2ebook detects when an article has not been correctly processed so it can automate that fallback logic using chrome headless or something like that.
Final note, I used todoist to store the articles because I was already using it for task management and have a simple rest api, but the script could be easily modified to store the articles somewhere else.
by rga5321 - My wife bought a large PocketBook (almost A4 size screen) e-reader and just last night I discovered it has a built in RSS reader.
No function to import or export OPML, unfortunately.
But adding a few high value feeds would be worth our time I guess.
by janandonly - Lack of a decent RSS client is one of the major things keeping me on an iPad over an e-ink tablet. I wish manufacturers like Remarkable would get serious about having software platforms.by Eric_WVGG
- I have an X4 as well and tried going down this path but it's just a bit too much friction for me to set my X4 to hotspot mode and run the calibre sync every time I want to refresh my feed.
Absolutely love the idea though. Just wish Crosspoint/X4 had the ability to schedule push/pull, but that would likely burn through the battery.
by jeromechoo - Calibre does this for you and has for a long time. Docs: https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/news.html
I used to read lwn.net from my e-reader, worked great.
by zie - This doesn't work for me in spite of over 10 years of trying. I am currently eating lunch and wasting time on HN on my phone, but my ebook reader full of edifying material is sitting there ignored on the table, right in front of me. I need some way of leaving the phone at home completely, but in my country so much basic everyday stuff relies on a phone (and strong bank authentication through a phone).by TFNA
- In my regular RSS reader I often have the problem that some feeds are not full feeds, or some images are missing (In case they have some gallery) and I have to click out to the page, even just to verify I got the full text. That always kinda stops me from going the eink route where I don’t have a proper browser.
Depends on which feeds you subscribe to I guess, probably works really well for long form, reliable feeds.
by dewey - I like to read a physical dirty (ink dust, not content) finger newspapers whenever I can get them. At a bakery / cafe a few weeks ago, sitting outside having cherry Danish and an Americano (the international special), I was reading the NYT and the SeaTimes section by section. It was awesome. Comics, international, regional beats, magazines. I realized somewhere in the middle of the caffeine and sugar rush, just what a huge effort it takes to put out a DAILY newspaper. It's incedible, even without considering the cheap price.
There was a couple nearby looking at the mess of papers on my table. I realized I needed to tidy my donnage pile of sections, and impulsively offered them to the couple. They almost jumped. If I didn't know better I swear they were living out some fantasy of holding a newspaper for the first time.
by ynac