Understood. But what about the other OSs? I don’t see much advantage of epubs over PDF really. Is there any?
Isn’t the point that the text can reflow to the size of the device?
I read it on a dedicated e-ink reading device (Kobo).
Most non-Kindle ebooks are packaged as EPUB, and should solve exactly the problems you list: They are reflowable, zooming of SVG math looks great, and the typesetting is optimized for the device.
It sounds like Adobe Reader’s feature for viewing PDFs in Liquid Mode, which comes handy in cell phones.
Hi,
Apparently Apple’s Books needs a special meta data entry. Could you try the following file?
https://github.com/laborg/DocumenterEpubExample/blob/master/The_Julia_Language_color_mac.epub
Best regards,
Actually, I was able to find Calibre for Windows. It is able to reflow and zoom the text, which really looks rather good:
I own a few epub books, which I read in the past without much enjoyment for the esthetics, so I am happy to have found this!
Another option that seems to work well on Windows, is available on other platforms, and is free is Adobe Digital Editions. It handles both EPUB and PDF documents nicely.
Thanks you!!
I use a lot my ebook reader (mainly for reading novels, but sometimes I use it also for technical reading), and for large manuals it is great to have that option.
Version 0.1.1 is queued to for merging in the GeneralRegistry. With this, Apple Books will correctly use @cormullion’s JuliaMono font.
With the release of 1.6 I’ve built the corresponding manual as EPUB:
https://github.com/laborg/DocumenterEpubExample/blob/master/TheJuliaLanguage-1.6.0.epub
Looks interesting! It would be great to have documentation of Julia manuals and tutorials available on an e-reader.
I’ve checking out possible readers to replace my Kindle e-ink. Problem with my Kindle e-ink:
- Too smal screen, only 6"
- Kindle e-ink readers cannot open ePub, I think
- Kindle e-ink readers can even not open science books with math, etc., sold as Kindle books. But Windows, iOS, and Android Kindle apps can display such Kindle files.
Currently, I’m looking at 7.8" or 10.3" e-ink readers from Onyx, e.g., Onyx Boox Note Air, or similar. Their advantage:
- long battery life (apparently up to 75 hours of continuous reading) – which is much better than LED based readers (iPad, Android, etc.)
- Android 10 OS: comes with ePub reader, can install Android Kindle reader, etc.
- It even comes with pen and note taking features.
Down-side: no color. Oh, there is a new Onyx Boox Note 3 Color, but (i) the colors are somewhat dull (less critical), (ii) there is some color memory that bleeds through when changing pages (= need for frequent refreshing), (iii) (even worse) the coloring layer makes the screen somewhat too dark to read without back lighting, which “kills” the battery life, and (ii) only 7.8" screen at the moment.
Sony will come with a 10.3" (?) note taking e-ink color reader soon, based on Android 9 (I think). But that most likely suffers the same problems as the Onyx color e-ink.
Supposedly, Chinese TV maker TCL will come with an 8.88" reader based on new technology, TCL NXTPaper in April (isn’t “8” a lucky number in the Chinese culture?). It will be based on Android 10, and has much better screen update than e-ink. But most likely shorter battery life.
Regarding size: printed science books typically have a text field of ca. 10", so to view such books in the “natural size” would require a 10" reader. If note taking is the primary use (not for me), then a 13+" pad would be better. For reading other books (e.g., I read the Decameron last year on the Kindle), smaller size than 10" would probably be ideal.
As several have mentioned, some of the formats allow for re-flowing of the text based on magnification, so perhaps the size is not super important. [Many Youtubers discuss such e-readers. E.g., “my deep guide” is very up-to-date, and provide tutorials on setting up and using various readers.]
When I load the julia 1.6.0 epub on the reMarkable2 (RM2) tablet, I don’t get a table of contents.
When I loaded in in Calibre a nice table of contents is present.
I think this may be a limitation of the epub viewer on the reMarkable2 tablet. I will continue my investigations.
If anyone has tested this epub on their preferred e-book reader, I would be interested if they have a better experience. There may be other software options for epub format on the RM2.
Nice to have the epub version regardless. Thanks for the contribution!
I can confirm. I get the following message if I try to access the ToC in the RM2 tablet:
This book is missing table of contents
Unfortunately this book does not contain any table of contents.
Some books don’t and some do.
By the way, it takes a very long time to load the 3700-page document! (Which is also a fault of the ReMarkable, as I’ve read that other readers can cope much better.)
I don’t think there is anything I can do in this regards. I use “epubcheck” to verify the integrity of the produced epub and only have one expected error (I accept this to satisfy the need of using JuliaMono on Apple Books).
There are even two TOCs available to satisfy devices with only EPUB 2 support…
A quick google shows me that the EPUB implementation on the ReMarkable might be subpar: https://www.reddit.com/r/RemarkableTablet/comments/ftfv6v/programming_booksdocs_on_remarkable/
Concerning the size: I think it might be helpful to split of the dev-docs, as most everyday users won’t be interested in it.
Oh, definitely! I just wanted to reassure @devel-chm that it was not an issue with his particular device but indeed a bug in the ReMarkable software
On Win10 I’m using Calibre (not current version). I noticed there is no TOC on the rendered pages, but a right click brings up Calibre’s menu and there is a TOC choice. It opens as a bookmark list. Clicking the topmost bookmark “Manual” does produce and error, but the only problem I noticed. Great work. As someone just starting with Julia, I’ll use it a lot.
Hi!
I’ve released version v0.2.0 of DocumenterEpub.jl which is now compatible with Documenter.jl v0.27.+.
As an example I built the Julia manual with it:
- Julia Manual 1.7.0: https://github.com/laborg/DocumenterEpubExample/blob/master/TheJuliaLanguage-1.7.0.epub
Have fun!
This is awesome! Perhaps we can make this more widely available.