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?"

Comments

Oh man

[Anonymous Coward]

"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?

Uh, yes

[orledrat]

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 gave up and used a tablet

[jaymz2k4]

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.

Calibre?

[karimicus]

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

Re:DRM

[Radak]

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.

I'm so pissed at electronic devices!!!

[brxndxn]

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.

Re:I'm so pissed at electronic devices!!!

[mspohr]

This is an impressive rant but it you spent as much time researching the problem as you took to write the rant, you could solve your problems.
On the cloud: Dropbox, etc. have clients for all OSs. You can even use Owncloud to have complete control.
Updating: You could spend a few minutes to set up your options to update when and where you want (Google it... all of the OSs have these options).
PDFs: Again, spend a few minutes to find a PDF reader that has the options you want.

(I did enjoy your rant, though. Good to see someone get this worked up on a Saturday morning. Maybe you should try getting outside more.)

PocketBook e-ink readers

[stasike]

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 answer is obvious

[supercrisp]

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.

Re:The answer is obvious

[davolfman]

Nook Simple Touch's and Glowlights are technically Android and once rooted can run Moon+ last I checked. Rooted Nooks alse run the Kindle app if you pick the right version. Best of all worlds.

Mobius

[jadrian]

The only one I know of is Sony's Mobius, which was conceived specifically with academia in mind.

It's easy to read highlights and notes off-kindle

[gwolf]

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.

I think you need a different software solution

[astralagos]

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.

Re: Short Evaluation

[ArgumentBoy]

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.

Re:DRM

[0123456]

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.

Re:Short Evaluation

[buchner.johannes]

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).