Reading scientific pages on Kindle

When reading science (math) pages, the large screen (2K or 4K) is the best,

but I would like to have the whole library of papers in my pocket on Kindle.

I can send via email a PDF of any page to Kindle, but the PDF reading on a small Kindle device is awful. 

The same on Kindle Scribe might be a bit better, but in the end, I want font-scalable ePub.

Let's take an example from the following Wikipedia page as it has nice mathematics:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_coordinate_system

Pretty much every tool I have tried does convert HTML but fails to convert the math,

in-line LaTEX math seems to work fine, 

but the vector-graphic .svg does not:

I do have to consider that MAYBE it is the viewer that does not display Vector Graphics (.svg)!

Here is a list of tools I have tried:

WebToEpub Chrome extension

• Shows tables nicely
• shows images nicely
• converts LaTEX math YES
• SVG NO, shows them as "?", it might be the viewer's problem, I tried a few
• Calibre E-book viewer
• Kindle 7-inch 2022
• Apple Books
• Apple Preview - does not open ePub

EpubPress

• Creates a table of Contents with each Web page included, useless if converting a single page
• fails to convert table borders
• converts LaTEX fine
• drops (does not display) the Vector Graphics (.svg) 

dotEpub

• in the non-immerse mode, you can view the first few images only
• results in an error on Apple books
• fails to convert table borders
• converts LaTEX math YES
• on Kindle: SPELLS OUT the SVG formula, not good.
• in Calibre E-book viewer shows SVG nicely!

Summary 

1. Use print-to-PDF and view it in MacOS Preview on a big screen
2. If you read a long MATH and NO-image page, use dotEpub and read in the Calibre E-book viewer
3. If you want images, but you do not care for SVG math, WebTOEpub is best.

Sorry, no winning here.

View Kindle Scribe on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4db51Q7

How to write a Math or Data Science eBook?

When studying, I like to take notes, usually, I do it on my Blog, but often I use Jupyter notebooks which I commit to GitHub. If I am writing a paper I use Google Docs. Having my writing in 3 different places is not optimal. 

On top of that, using math formulas complicates things as it is not supported everywhere.

Example of a formula written using LaTeX:

$$ LogLoss = - \frac{1}{n} \sum_{i=1}^{n}
( y_i \cdot log(\hat{y_i}) + ( 1 - y_i ) \cdot \log(1 - \hat{y_i}) ) $$

So, how should I write a Math, or a Data Science, eBook?

First, publishing papers as PDF is most common, I read tons of them, but they are hard to digest unless you print them, or view them on a big screen. I do not want to sit in front of the computer any longer than I already do.  I like using Kindle reader, so an eBook format is much more user-friendly. I can set font sizes, and spacing, take notes, etc. The PDFs on Kindle are a really bad experience. Also, I would like to distribute my papers over the Amazon Kindle store (for free or not). Not everyone has a university or a work subscription to access papers on ieee.org, sciencedirect.com, proquest.com, etc.

Below, I will investigate different approaches and hopefully, come to a good conclusion.

How to send documents to Kindle:

• Every Kindle account has an associated (secret) email, you can attach a file to it and it will show in your Kindle.
• Make sure the file name is human-readable!
• HTML (export from Jupyter Lab) sent to Kindle:
• PRO:
• it is readable, good for text-only pages
• CON:
• LaTeX is not converted to math formulas
• Images are missing
• PDF (of the same HTML) sent to Kindle:
• PRO:
• images show up
• LaTeX formulas show up
• good enough to publish a "paper"
• CON:
• still the problem with PDF in general -- no font size adjustment
• ePUB (of the same HTML) sent to Kindle:
• conversion is done with convertio.co
• PRO
• font adjustable
• plots included
• CONS:
• missing images
• LaTeX not converted to math formulas 
• conversion with  calibre-ebook.com
• 
  

Is Blogger (Blogspot) good for writing papers and articles?

Pro:

• searchable 
• easy to manage and edit
• use of tags (labels) for finding related articles
• support for LaTeX math notation

Cons: 

• No good ways to "clean" export to ePub, PDF, or Markdown
• I could write embedded JavaScript in Blogger that creates "print" version of article text only

Using Jupyter Notebook

Pro:

• inline and current code (Julia, Python)
• incline and current plots 
• export to HTML, PDF, Markdown with pandoc.org/

Cons

• no spellcheck while writing (Grammarly)

• conda install -c conda-forge jupyterlab-spellchecker

• GitHub Diff is garbage

How to install brew?

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

How to install pandoc? 

[see reference 5]

brew install pandoc

[see reference 1]

Using Markdown

Pros:

• GitHub diff is readable

Using Google Docs

Pros:

• Available on all devices, online and offline

[see reference 2]

References

1. https://towardsdatascience.com/transform-jupyter-notebook-to-an-ebook-ef3a9d32ac4f
2. https://workspace.google.com/marketplace/app/autolatex_equations/850293439076
3. https://tug.org/mactex/mactex-download.html
4. https://nbconvert.readthedocs.io/en/latest/install.html#installing-tex
5. https://pandoc.org/installing.html
6. 
   

#book: ebooks

Having been a long-time user of Kindle and Nook, I end up using Google Books most of the time, here are some reasons:

• Amazon Kindle does not support ePub which is a most common format
• Barnes and Noble Nook does not allow to upload new books to the cloud and from there to the Nook via WiFi
• Only Google Books allow reading the text using the Android system voice (TTS)
• For Google Books adding newly purchased books is as simple as clicking "Upload files"

To manage my eBooks I use:

• https://calibre-ebook.com/download_osx
• https://www.adobe.com/solutions/ebook/digital-editions/download.html

ebooks

Having been a long-time user of Kindle and Nook, I end up using Google Books most of the time, here are some reasons:

• Amazon Kindle does not support ePub which is a most common format
• Barnes and Noble Nook does not allow to upload new books to the cloud and from there to the Nook via WiFi
• Only Google Books allow reading the text using the Android system voice (TTS)
• For Google Books adding newly purchased books is as simple as clicking "Upload files"

To manage my eBooks I use:

• https://calibre-ebook.com/download_osx
• https://www.adobe.com/solutions/ebook/digital-editions/download.html