Show HN: LastingPaper – A Desktop App for Your E-Ink Kindle | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: LastingPaper – A Desktop App for Your E-Ink Kindle

lastingpaper.com

138 pointslvscar34 comments

I like the idea and will give the app a go. I think most other comments so far are being extremely nit picky. Sure he graphics needs work, but it’s unfortunate that commenters seem to only be able to comment on that.

Give the guy a break!

Does this only work with the Amazon Kindle, or can you use any e-reader? Standard EPUB support would be nice.

LastingPaper is design to be a "helper" for Amazon E-Ink Kindle.

As a longtime E-Ink Kindle user, I wish there would be a software existed ,but there isn't, so I create LastingPaper.

But I think the webpage to Ebook local convertor and eBook management features could help other e-reader user to a certain extent.

When you have generated a eBook using LastingPaper, you can right click the virtual cover, there will be a "Open eBook storage folder" menu item. Clicking it, you will find a standard ePub Ebook file there.

"Sorry , current version only available for 64Bit Mac and Windows."

Very sad

I currently use 'Send to Kindle' official extension/app to do this. I once thought of creating custom setup using calibre API to do the same without sending the data to Amazon; So I think you to highlight that Privacy part, perhaps a table comparing the features between 'Send to Kindle' & 'LastingPaper' would be helpful.

Physical connection and not using Internet for conversion should mean faster transfer as well.(I haven't tried it yet).

Is there a way to convert PDFs to Kindle format though ? I'd love to have research papers on kindle.

Calibre handles this very well. Plug in kindle > open calibre > go to device settings and uncheck pdf support > add books and calibre automatically converts to .mobi

Thank you :) have to try this and see.

I read PDFs on Kindle all the time. You don't need to convert anything.

You just need to put it in landscape mode, instead of portrait, to make it readable.

Just email your PDF to your kindle email address with “convert” as the subject line.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/email

This works, but subject is not needed, just approved From: address.

Maybe I misread the link I shared. Can you clarify:

> PDFs can be converted to the Kindle format so you can take advantage of functionality such as variable font size, annotations, and Whispersync. To have a document converted to Kindle format (.azw), the subject line should be "convert" when e-mailing a personal document to your Send-to-Kindle address.

I use K2pdfopt to convert scientific articles to a format (mostly) readable on my Kindle.

Sad that there's no linux version, I would have loved to try this.

I can't figure out how I am supposed to connect it to my Kindle.

When you attach Kindle to the computer using a USB cable, your Kindle will be a USB storage device. As long as LastingPaper found there is a Kindle as a USB storage device attached to the computer, It could copy eBooks to your Kindle and could read highlight logs from the Kindle.

No Linux version :/

Can relate

The idea is good and I'm always looking forward to the day where there's a good alternative to Calibre.

Unfortunately the design is giving me a very strong Calibre vibe.

Some suggestions that I think don't look good on top of what the other people already said:

- 3 different fonts, unify it to use one (and none of them should be Papyrus)

- The book covers are the main part of your app, so they should stand out by either using the book cover, or a place holder which the book title being presented in a way that doesn't result in 5 line breaks

Calibre is not bad if you stick to the CLI utilities and avoid the GUI. ebook-convert in particular is pretty much all I need from Calibre. I normally run it with the following options:

  ebook-convert input.someformat output.mobi --remove-paragraph-spacing --change-justification=justify --enable-heuristics --unsmarten-punctuation

(It's picky about the ordering of the input/output vs the flags)

I usually download some additional metadata and then send it to my Kindle via the "Mail to Kindle" Mail address, I could probably script that part easily but for the few times I use it right now I'll just have to stick to the GUI.

There's a project called COPS which adds a small web site to your Calibre library so you open it in the Kindle browser - it's pretty convenient:

https://github.com/seblucas/cops

http://www.linux-magazine.com/var/linux_magazin/storage/imag...

“Some webpage” should be “some webpages” I think :)

Very cool!

This looks like an electron app. Is it, and if so can you make Debian/Ubuntu releases? Depending on what you're doing it should be a relatively simple change to your build process.

I'd definitely try this out if it was available for Ubuntu.

@iudqnolq Yes! The UI of LastingPaper is built on ElectronJS. I'm used to be a long-time desktop Linux user too. I would like to release it on the Linux platform. But at current, the highest priority of LastingPaper developing is fixing feedback problems submit by early-stage users. After there no more obvious problem and un-implementation future existed, I will spend time to release a Linux version. I will inform it to you at that time, Thanks for your attention!

First, the good. There are a lot of nice ideas here. I especially like that somebody is working on the problem of getting highlights and notes out of the device. Does the Kindle have to be physically connected to the computer, or does it work over the network?

There's also bad... I hate to say this, but I don't think I would use the app because of the way it looks. For example, look at the top screenshot with the tiles for the books and the postage-stamp image in the bottom right corner. IMHO, it doesn't look good. Graphic design isn't something I'm good at so I don't have any recommendations here, but I know that I don't like it.

There also seem to be a lot of odd font choices in the application. I would probably stick with one font family for the UI portions.

I'm not a specialist in graphic design, but a few issues that appeared to stand out to me, in no particular order:

1. Whatever the shadowed rectangle is lower left, it looks like an ad that I'm supposed to be sure isn't their content. In other words, it completely doesn't fit with everything else. Its shadow makes it above everything else on the z-index, as if it's the most important thing on the page

2. Inconsistent padding. Similar things should have similar spaces between them. The whole padding scheme falls apart in the lower left, and the massive difference between vertical and horizontal padding on the tiles makes them look wrong. Also, this is a nitpick but the search button should be aligned with the other icons or farther away from them.

3. The tiles are too narrow. This is partly caused by too much padding between the tiles, taking up valuable space.

But text

flows

badly if

you

squish

it too

much

The items should have a set width that lets the examples look nice (maybe so that "Beijing's tallest tower" fits on one line, not sure exactly without seeing it) and then have fewer items on one row if the window can't fit them all.

4. The thumbnails, like you said. If you've got images for titles one can put the text over the image. This is the trickiest of my suggestions to get right. I think it looks cool. Some people hate it. A discussion of ways to do this: https://css-tricks.com/design-considerations-text-images/

5. Color. Color draws attention. Right now my attention is drawn to the thumbnails the floating action button. The rest feels like a mock up that hasn't been colored yet. This seems to use material design, and material design has color palettes. I'd pick one of them and color according to the instructions.

6. That "Storage" floating action button. Does that mean connect a device? If so: the FAB is for stuff people need to do frequently. If people don't need to connect devices frequently this might be better as a de-emphasized button and a prompt on the first run

But then, I'm a random person on the internet whose never launched anything near this impressive. Feel free to ignore my thoughts OP.

@iudqnolq Thanks for your suggestion!

A few problems (padding of those virtual book cover) I have already tried to fix before posting the "SHOW HN" thread. But you have given me a lot of other clue to improve.

Yes, I'm using material design, but at a superficial level, after the initial releasing, I will spend more time at better use the design tool. (eg: lever up color).

The "storage" button is just an entrance of popping up menus. I will change it in the next release version.

Your modest but inspiriting language gives me lots of engergies. Thanks again.

Some webpage deserve to be lasting kept in eBook format

This is not a valid English sentence. Perhaps you meant “Some webpages deserve to be permanantly kept in eBook format”?

There’s lots of other errors throughout the site that make me suspect English is not your first language; I would suggest finding a native speaker to do an editing pass.

I don’t own a Kindle, I just use the app on my phones and tablets, so I am assuming I can’t use this since it repeatedly refers to “your e-ink Kindle”.

“Permanantly”...

What is the name of that law which says people correcting misspellings on the internet are doomed to make typos in their own comments...?

(But I concur that the copy needs reviewing.)

Muphry's law [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law

@egypturnash Yes, the better sentence should be “Some webpages deserve to be permanently kept in eBook format”. I chose the word "lasting" just for responding to the App's name.

I'm not a native English speaker. I'm learning English by reading books and webpages. Learning English is one of my motivations for developing LastingPaper.

Yes, It only works with E-Ink Kindle, I recommend you to try an E-Ink device, it will give you more immersive reading experience.

Thanks for your reply~

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