Texinfo 7.0 released

Posted Nov 9, 2022 20:11 UTC (Wed) by dvdeug (guest, #10998)
Parent article: Texinfo 7.0 released

Apparently Texinfo doesn't drive much excitement around here. I'm not sure what win converting to LaTeX, as opposed to just TeX, gives us, but ePub will be a nice addition to place these books into personal collections of ebooks. (Does the license of most GNU Texinfo files let you upload them to your personal Kindle account? I'm sure RMS would explain why you shouldn't...)

Texinfo 7.0 released

Posted Nov 9, 2022 23:59 UTC (Wed) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (6 responses)

> Does the license of most GNU Texinfo files let you upload them to your personal Kindle account? I'm sure RMS would explain why you shouldn't...

As a USER, a Free licence does not restrict you in any way whatsoever. If you want them on your Kindle, why not?

It's only when you SHARE stuff, that Free licences kick in ...

Cheers,
Wol

Texinfo 7.0 released

Posted Nov 10, 2022 0:19 UTC (Thu) by dvdeug (guest, #10998) [Link] (5 responses)

The file is sent to Amazon who converts it to what I believe a proprietary DRMed format and sends it back to you. (I may be wrong about the conversion, which would make a difference.) The problem is that a lot of stuff involves some form of distribution to third parties, be it Dropbox, Google (Drive), Amazon (to send to Kindle) or many similar things, that may translate it into DRMed formats along the way.

Texinfo 7.0 released

Posted Nov 10, 2022 5:53 UTC (Thu) by donbarry (guest, #10485) [Link] (4 responses)

As predatory as Amazon is, they have not yet gone so far as to claim ownership of material processed for download to their kindles yet. Thus it takes a fairly pedantic definition of "distribution" for it to kick in.

That said, it boggles me that anyone would consider for use a system in which a mother ship must be consulted and their processing contributed for you to move a file of your own from one of your devices to another. I neither own nor use any such device nor would I knowingly buy one, and I seek to educate others to avoid them. I'm with RMS on this, who opposes such systems for good reason.

Texinfo 7.0 released

Posted Nov 10, 2022 8:44 UTC (Thu) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (3 responses)

That said, it boggles me that anyone would consider for use a system in which a mother ship must be consulted and their processing contributed for you to move a file of your own from one of your devices to another.

If you connect a Kindle to a Linux machine via USB it becomes, in effect, an external flash drive, so you can copy stuff (including documents) back and forth in the usual way without having to involve Amazon's servers. Just saying.

Texinfo 7.0 released

Posted Nov 13, 2022 20:08 UTC (Sun) by jch (guest, #51929) [Link] (2 responses)

You'll first need to convert your ebooks to the proprietary AZW3 format. Calibre works fine. The procedure is:

apt install calibre
ebook-convert book.epub book.azw3
sudo mount /dev/sdb ~/mnt
cp book.azw3 ~/mnt/documents/
sudo eject /dev/sdb

This works even with an unregistered Kindle.

Texinfo 7.0 released

Posted Nov 17, 2022 9:35 UTC (Thu) by Moarc (guest, #137864) [Link] (1 responses)

AFAIK, that's unnecessary. Kindles have always supported Mobipocket files and even plaintext, and recently they've implemented the far more common EPUB. (unless I'm missing something crucial and it doesn't work as well as AZW)

Texinfo 7.0 released

Posted Nov 22, 2022 17:18 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

They only "implemented" it by having Amazon's servers convert your epub to AZW3, apparently using the binary-only kindlegen tool they *used* to make available on Linux but long ago stopped providing. Using USB transfer (or HTTP transfer via the built-in web browser) requires you to convert it first. (Of course, thanks to Calibre, this is trivial to do, and probably preferable anyway because you have much more control over the conversion.)

I use my Kindle and love it: as a reading device it is without peer... but oh my god do I ever wish it wasn't so damn proprietary (and didn't have so many stupid bugs, many unfixed for a decade, sometimes even affecting things as simple as turning the page).

Texinfo 7.0 released

Posted Nov 10, 2022 8:07 UTC (Thu) by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958) [Link]

You might want to buy pocketbook next time.

They support moving files via usb and sd card, besides proprietary cloud stuff.