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Create MediaWiki and RTF links for opening an ePub file at a specific position with Calibre viewer

Ebooks, unlike paper books, have no concept of pages. Instead, as you read through the book in Calibre’s Ebook Viewer, you will notice that your position in the book is displayed in the upper left corner in a box like this navposi . This is both your current position and the total length of the book. These numbers are independent of the screen size and font size you are viewing the book at, and they play a similar role to page numbers in paper books. You can enter any number you like to go to the corresponding location in the book (from Calibre’s manual).

On 02/12/2011 I asked for the addition of a book position argument in the ebook-viewer commad from Calibre’s developer Kovid Goyal. On 09/12 the 0.8.30 version of Calibre was released with the above enhancement incorporated in it! Thanks Kovid! As a result, now we are able to create links to a specific point of an ePub file which is very handy for reference reasons.

I modified the AppleScripts of the previous post and now when you execute them, a window will pop up and you will be asked for the specific book position. Afterwards, the necessary code will be sent to the clipboard. Finally, you should have selected the ePub file, for which you want to create the link, in Finder before executing the script.

The AppleScript code for creating MediaWiki links is the following:

Click here to see the source code

--http://www.organognosi.com
display dialog "Give the book position:" default answer ""
set bookPosition to text returned of the result
tell application "Finder"
set selectedFile to selection as alias
set fileName to name of selectedFile
set selectedFilePOSIX to get the POSIX path of selectedFile
--set encodedFileName to my encode_URL_string(fileName)
set encodedPOSIXPath to my encode_URL_string(selectedFilePOSIX)
set applescriptURL to "[applescript://com.apple.scripteditor?action=new%26script=tell%20application%20%22Terminal%22%0D%09do%20script%20%22ebook-viewer%20--open-at%20" & bookPosition & "%20--raise-window%20\\%22" & encodedPOSIXPath & "\\%22%22%0Dend%20tell (" & fileName & " - " & bookPosition & ")]"
set the clipboard to applescriptURL
end tell
--Text handlers from Apple to encode the Search string
property allowed_URL_chars : (characters of "$-_.+!*'(),1234567890abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz")
on encode_URL_string(this_item)
set character_list to (characters of this_item)
repeat with i from 1 to number of items in character_list
set this_char to item i of character_list
if this_char is not in allowed_URL_chars then set item i of character_list to my encode_URL_char(this_char)
end repeat
return character_list as string
end encode_URL_string
property hex_list : (characters of "0123456789ABCDEF")
on encode_URL_char(this_char)
set ASCII_num to (ASCII number this_char)
set x to item ((ASCII_num div 16) + 1) of hex_list
set y to item ((ASCII_num mod 16) + 1) of hex_list
return ("%" & x & y) as string
end encode_URL_char

The AppleScript code for creating RTF links is the following:

Click here to see the source code

--http://www.organognosi.com
display dialog "Give the book position:" default answer ""
set bookPosition to text returned of the result
tell application "Finder"
set selectedFile to selection as alias
set fileName to name of selectedFile
set selectedFilePOSIX to get the POSIX path of selectedFile
set encodedPOSIXPath to my encode_URL_string(selectedFilePOSIX)
set applescriptURL to "<a href=\"applescript://com.apple.scripteditor?action=new%26script=tell%20application%20%22Terminal%22%0D%09do%20script%20%22ebook-viewer%20--open-at%20" & bookPosition & "%20--raise-window%20\\%22" & encodedPOSIXPath & "\\%22%22%0Dend%20tell\"> (" & fileName & " - " & bookPosition & ")</a>"
set the clipboard to applescriptURL
tell application "Finder"
do shell script "pbpaste | textutil -stdin -format html -convert rtf -stdout | pbcopy -Prefer rtf"
end tell
end tell
--Text handlers from Apple to encode the Search string
property allowed_URL_chars : (characters of "$-_.+!*'(),1234567890abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz")
on encode_URL_string(this_item)
set character_list to (characters of this_item)
repeat with i from 1 to number of items in character_list
set this_char to item i of character_list
if this_char is not in allowed_URL_chars then set item i of character_list to my encode_URL_char(this_char)
end repeat
return character_list as string
end encode_URL_string
property hex_list : (characters of "0123456789ABCDEF")
on encode_URL_char(this_char)
set ASCII_num to (ASCII number this_char)
set x to item ((ASCII_num div 16) + 1) of hex_list
set y to item ((ASCII_num mod 16) + 1) of hex_list
return ("%" & x & y) as string
end encode_URL_char

Dec 2011

AUTHOR John Sidiropoulos

CATEGORY

all my posts, AppleScript, Calibre, hyperlink

COMMENTS No Comments

Create MediaWiki and RTF links for opening an ePub file with Calibre viewer

I have all my ePub files inside a Calibre database and I use its very nice Ebook Viewer for reading them. Unfortunately Ebook Viewer is not a seperate application and you need to open first the Calibre database, then find the file and at last you can open it with the viewer by pressing the V key. But there is a faster way to open it by using the following command in Terminal:

do script “ebook-viewer –raise-window \”/Users/MB/Downloads/Object-Oriented Programming with Objective-C.epub\”"

An extra advantage of this method is that the ePub file is not required to be inside a Calibre database! You can have your files wherever you want.

Of course, it is quite difficult to write the above command every time you want to read a book. But AppleScript can carry all that burden for us! Specifically I wrote an AppleScript which creates automatically the above command for a selected file in the Finder and wraps it up inside a MediaWiki link or a RTF link. Then you can just paste the link in a wiki page or a RTF document. Afterwards, every time you click the link an AppleScript editor window opens with the required AppleScript code inside it. Finally, you may press cmd + R (executes the script), cmd + W (closes the window) and cmd + D (without saving)!

The AppleScript code for creating MediaWiki links is the following:

Click here to see the source code

--http://www.organognosi.com
tell application "Finder"
set selectedFile to selection as alias
set fileName to name of selectedFile
set selectedFilePOSIX to get the POSIX path of selectedFile
set encodedPOSIXPath to my encode_URL_string(selectedFilePOSIX)
set applescriptURL to "[applescript://com.apple.scripteditor?action=new&script=tell%20application%20%22Terminal%22%0D%09do%20script%20%22ebook-viewer%20--raise-window%20\\%22" & encodedPOSIXPath & "\\%22%22%0Dend%20tell " & fileName & "]"
set the clipboard to applescriptURL
end tell
--Text handlers from Apple to encode the Search string
property allowed_URL_chars : (characters of "$-_.+!*'(),1234567890abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz")
on encode_URL_string(this_item)
set character_list to (characters of this_item)
repeat with i from 1 to number of items in character_list
set this_char to item i of character_list
if this_char is not in allowed_URL_chars then set item i of character_list to my encode_URL_char(this_char)
end repeat
return character_list as string
end encode_URL_string
property hex_list : (characters of "0123456789ABCDEF")
on encode_URL_char(this_char)
set ASCII_num to (ASCII number this_char)
set x to item ((ASCII_num div 16) + 1) of hex_list
set y to item ((ASCII_num mod 16) + 1) of hex_list
return ("%" & x & y) as string
end encode_URL_char

The AppleScript code for creating RTF links is the following:

Click here to see the source code

--http://www.organognosi.com
tell application "Finder"
set selectedFile to selection as alias
set fileName to name of selectedFile
set selectedFilePOSIX to get the POSIX path of selectedFile
set encodedPOSIXPath to my encode_URL_string(selectedFilePOSIX)
set applescriptURL to "<a href=\"applescript://com.apple.scripteditor?action=new&script=tell%20application%20%22Terminal%22%0D%09do%20script%20%22ebook-viewer%20--raise-window%20\\%22" & encodedPOSIXPath & "\\%22%22%0Dend%20tell\"> " & fileName & "</a>"
set the clipboard to applescriptURL
tell application "Finder"
do shell script "pbpaste | textutil -stdin -format html -convert rtf -stdout | pbcopy -Prefer rtf"
end tell
end tell
--Text handlers from Apple to encode the Search string
property allowed_URL_chars : (characters of "$-_.+!*'(),1234567890abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz")
on encode_URL_string(this_item)
set character_list to (characters of this_item)
repeat with i from 1 to number of items in character_list
set this_char to item i of character_list
if this_char is not in allowed_URL_chars then set item i of character_list to my encode_URL_char(this_char)
end repeat
return character_list as string
end encode_URL_string
property hex_list : (characters of "0123456789ABCDEF")
on encode_URL_char(this_char)
set ASCII_num to (ASCII number this_char)
set x to item ((ASCII_num div 16) + 1) of hex_list
set y to item ((ASCII_num mod 16) + 1) of hex_list
return ("%" & x & y) as string
end encode_URL_char

Dec 2011

AUTHOR John Sidiropoulos

CATEGORY

all my posts, AppleScript, Calibre, hyperlink, MediaWiki

COMMENTS No Comments

Some tools of the trade

I use the following hardware:

a MacBook Pro 17in
a MacMini (as a server for my wikis and my ebooks library)
an iPad
a Time Capsule
an iPhone 3G
several external hard drives (for backup)
a 27in LG monitor

In my academic workflow I use the following programs:

Skim: for reading papers and books (in pdf format)
Calibre: for organizing all my ebooks (read and unread)
DevonThink: for organizing everything that I have read
BibDesk: for reference management and automated bibliography creation
MediaWIki: for notes management
TextMate and LaTex: for writing my papers
AppleScript: for automating my workflow

Feb 2011

AUTHOR John Sidiropoulos

CATEGORY

all my posts, BibDesk, Calibre, DevonThink, iPad, IPhone, LaTeX, Mac mini, MacBook Pro, MediaWiki, Skim, TextMate, the big picture

COMMENTS 1 Comment

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