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Ask Slashdot: E-ink Reader For Academic Papers?
Albanach writes "Recently, I purchased an e-ink Kindle. I like real paper books, but I'm reading lots of academic papers. The Kindle is a nice way to carry and read them, and I went through several documents, highlighting important passages. Now I learn that there is no supported way to actually get a highlighted personal document back off of the Kindle with the highlights intact. I don't need lectures about DRM, proprietary software or anything else along those lines — there are other things the Kindle can and will be used for. What I would like to know is whether there's another e-ink reader that does let you add your own documents, then highlight them and export the altered document. Or does someone know of a way to achieve this using the Kindle itself?"
"I don't need lectures about DRM, proprietary software or anything else along those lines"
Are you sure you posted this to the right geek news site?
They exist. Don't pick one that is too weak to display large PDFs or too small to comfortably navigate A4. I'd probably pick this 9.7" Icarus Excel if I had to choose one right now: http://www.amazon.com/ICARUS-R...
I tried making use of a kindle for reading papers but in the end found the experience too clunky and cumbersome - especially with dual column PDFs. Instead I've ended up using a 7 inch tablet (nexus 7 in my case) and a good PDF reader (settled on ezPDF reader). My kindle wasn't touch enabled so that may have been part of it, but even then I found it easier and more reliable to load and annotate the PDF in a good reader on a tablet.
jaymz
If I remember right there's a function within calibre which detects the meta data from kindle/pdf formats and allows it to read the highlighted meta data
Last I checked, the Kindle is capable of reading and displaying quite a few non-DRM formats. You're stuck with DRM if you purchase books from Amazon, yes, but nothing about the device itself locks you into DRM.
Don't ever let something like DRM get in the way of you getting your work done.
Screw it. Use Calibre and root your Kindle. Strip out the DRM and get a proper reader app.
There is no moral requirement for you to participate in corporate insanity.
In the words of a great tech guru: "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law."
And while we're at it, "All you have to do is be yourself, do your will, and rejoice."
You are welcome on my lawn.
I have a little rant because I hate these little fucking problems like the OP is talking about. That is bullshit. What the fuck is the point of the highlighting feature if you cannot take it off and use it somewhere else? Seriously.. it would be like 4 hours of a Kindle programmers' time to implement that feature. I hate that shit.
Also, fuck the cloud. Every company wants to create their little own proprietary cloud that envisions you being locked into their half-assed limited selection of crap. Microsoft Skydrive.. now I'm stuck with only using Microsoft. Everyone else is the same. Where the fuck is my cloud that works on any device and lets me store any document there. Maybe dropbox is the best so far.. but something tells me I cannot store my Kindle books, Nook books, Itunes, or any other media on that cloud. It's my fucking media.. Let me store it wherever the fuck I want on whatever the fuck device I want to store it on. Maybe the new Kindle sucks and some other company makes a better implementation. Let me move my shit there.
Also, why the fuck can't all my devices just report back to a shared drive on my computer. Why can't I just have a 'pdb' (personal database) file that is constantly updating with any device I own. Let it encrypt the parts that need encryption. Let the interface pop up with a list of checkmarks and I (the GODDAMN USER THAT IS BUYING THIS CRAP) decide what I want my device to be able to access, copy, and modify out of my personal database. Seriously.. the idea that it's not just built-in to store files to a share drive on every new tablet and cell phone is as frustrating as watching someone try to be productive on Windows 8.
This ones for Android.. let me tell the fucking device when to update! I don't want it updating my apps when I picked it up to quickly read a pdf. I don't need it trying to use my internet connection when I'm at some fucking remote site 3rd world country with barely any cell phone coverage deciding it needs to update some bloated app I never use.
This one is for Windows.. updating when I want to turn off my laptop and telling me not to turn it off is retarded. Whoever decided that is the time to update should be slammed on the pavement like how Hulk smashed Loki.
I have a lot more to rant about.. but I am going to take a vacation away from technology for the next few hours.
I cannot believe people think we're innovating at this time.. We're taking 3 steps forward and 12 steps back. Fuck you, Kindle, for reminding me of this non-interchangeable mess that we call the technology world. Shit should work together. If we had a PDB that was universal (and with compatibility layers for all the proprietary shit - APPLE), then maybe the consumer wouldn't think it was such a pain in the ass to move to a new device.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
Have a look at the PocketBook e-ink readers. Sadly, they have left USA market, unable to compete with Amazon.
Here in my European country, in an online store specialized on e-book readers PocketBook is by far the most popular brand. Keep in mind that most people buying kindles are buying them directly from Amazon.
I have PocketBook Touch Lux 623. The screen and front-light are the same as on Kindle Paperwhite. It supports 18 e-book formats and lots of configuration options, all without hacking. It has headphones output with support of TTS in many languages. You can use micro SD card. There are third-party programs available, such as scientific calculator, Linux terminal (for hacking - the reader itself has busybox installed), ftp server (so you can look at *and* modify files from internal memory), Coolreader, chess, several games, Vim text editor (full-fledged recent version).
You can make your own notes and highlights and PocketBook will prepare html file for each document with your notes that you can download to your PC. No special software necessary.
You can import PocketBook from Europe.
The obvious part: Root it and install a more capable e-reader app. My recommendation: I prefer Moon+ Reader Pro, which will not only give you a highlighted and annotated file you can use elsewhere, it can also, with one click, generate a document with annotations and highlights only that you can e-mail to yourself. I should not that this is something even Acrobat Pro can't do, and also note that Moon+ is more feature complete and easy to use than is Adobe's offering for Android. NB: I don't have any stake in Moon+, nor give a crap what money they make. I'm sharing because I spent too much time wading thru all the e-reader apps to find this one.
The only one I know of is Sony's Mobius, which was conceived specifically with academia in mind.
Instead of mindlessly repeating Free Software adages that, while important in the right contexts, don't even apply to the present situation, you ought to learn how the Kindle works. The Kindle is jailbreakable and one can run any custom software they like on it. While there was a scandal some years back about Amazon deleting content from Kindles, you have nothing to fear if you simply keep your device in airplane mode all the time (if you don't plan on buying from Amazon, there's no real reason to use the device's wifi or 3G capabilities anyway).
There is a file called documents/My Clippings.txt if I'm not mistaken. Some time ago, I wrote a simple program (kindleclip — https://github.com/gwolf/kindl... ) that presents you highlights, bookmarks and comments, allows you to search, either by book or by date. It's a GTK2 project built with Glade however, and I have not yet ported it to use current alternatives, but at least I believe the source to be quite readable/followable. Hope you find it useful.
you have nothing to fear if you simply keep your device in airplane mode all the time
Like saying you're less likely to get robbed if you never go outside the house.
I think what you're really looking for is a research paper management application, such as Mendeley, Zotero or Papers. I personally use Papers, but that's a very mac-specific solution. There is apparently a Mendeley-specific application called KinSync that should help with using it on the Kindle. In general, if you're reading a bunch of academic papers and you don't have a manager like this, I recommend getting one.
Hi, I am the submitter - most of the papers I am working with a plain text and either directly available in a compatible format or very easily converted to one. I should really have made clear that I am not stuck with PDFs which makes the small size of the regular kindle more of a plus than a disadvantage.
Been asking myself the same question the last couple of months, as the quantity of books required these days has become too much to carry. I first considered the Kindle DX, but I'm not familiar with the OS "ecosystem" of Amazon and the restrictions within (transfer of files/DRM). After some more searching I ended up deciding on the Boyue G10 (random chinese device), as linked here: http://www.aliexpress.com/item... Very satisfied with it.
I use iAnnotate on an iPad. I download the PDF or Word document from my Dropbox, highlight and so forth on the iPad, and then can sync the marked up copy back to Dropbox. It's not the Kindle solution you wanted but otherwise it seems to be just what you want.
I cannot read a maths book or paper without writing on it.
Microsoft OneNote is cloud-based with syncing, has drawing tools, OCR for image content, handwritten comments, and even a Maths editor, and can organize your stuff. There might even be a symbolic calculator buried somewhere in it. I use it on a Surface Pro; to make the handwritten annotation part work well you really need the Wacom Stylus.
There are a bunch of PDF readers on the PC and Mac which can annotate. I think they all export the annotated PDF, and a couple of smart folders or Google Drive might be enough to maintain a synced system.
Unfortunately, this whole area is one where proprietary is ahead of open source - OneNote and InkSeine are masterworks.
Edmund
This is not a signature.
"The problem is not the Kindle. Publishers (particularly scholarly publishers ) have not adopted epub format. PDFs do not reflow to screen size therefore they will NEVER be useful in devices of variable screen sizing. Sorry. "
That's where Calibre comes in.
You're stuck with DRM if you purchase books from Amazon, yes, but nothing about the device itself locks you into DRM.
Uh, no. Publishers choose whether they put DRM on Amazon ebooks, there's no requirement to use it. I've never intentionally bought a DRM-ed ebook on Amazon.
I wrote a small script that takes research papers and splits them up if they have two columns. It tries to figure out when you have figures, and to strip away the header/footer etc. It produces epubs (which you can convert with Calibre)
https://github.com/JohannesBuc...
The pages are first converted to images, the white spaces figured out, and the page sliced and diced. The linearized content is a sequence of page number, and rectangle definitions. You could make those into a pdf again, but I just stick to images and html (epub).
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
Also synchronizing reading progress between different devices, and as Ozoner pointed out, getting firmware updates and transferring your own files. I buy my books from Baen (DRM free, not that I really care), and just tell Baen to e-mail them to my kindle directly. It's simpler than plugging it into a computer and copying them over.