Finally… updates to the Mac OS X eReader scripts!

I’ve been using Kovid Goyal’s excellent Calibre application for a few months now to manage ebooks on my Sony eReader. It’s a great tool for managing my library of ebooks, and can also automatically download, convert, and install news from any RSS feed you throw at it. I’ve converted a lot of stuff I had in LIT format using it, and been very pleased with Kovid’s work overall.

At the same time, I’ve used Feedbooks as a source for ebooks, especially classic literature. Feedbooks provides all the formats you’d expect, and its ePub output looks really nice on the eReader. It also provides reading lists so I can tag content I want to download later, and has the makings of a social network for bookworms through those lists. I frequently download ePubs from Feedbooks and drop them on the eReader via Calibre, so I can keep both current events and literature on the device.

Last night, I took a look at the News section of Feedbooks, and was I impressed! They have a lot of RSS feeds they’re aggregating and formatting, and it looks great on the eReader. Sadly, since I’m using Mac OS X, I can’t use their News Stand application to automate content downloads when I attach the eReader.

But I liked the idea of getting the news formatted content straight from a server; not only would it be faster, but I wouldn’t have to either leave Calibre running or launch it every morning. Since automating the download and installation of Feedbooks news content is an extension of what I’d already done previously for PDF printing, I figured it was time to do a bit more hacking.
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Better printing to the Sony eReader using CUPS-PDF

After the recent work I’ve done integrating my Sony eReader with Mac OS X, I still wanted to be able to optimize page layout for the device. 

After some digging around and realizing that I don’t have ppdc I grabbed a PPD file for a generic Postscript printer and started hacking. 

Download ereader.ppd

The results work pretty well, although I see goofy margins from some applications such as TextMate.

Next up? Ditching the Folder Action script I wrote about yesterday in favor of launchd.