I know that it is possible to convert ePubs to numerous other formats, and that is most convenient. But if I wanted to keep the format and highlight the text (just like in Apple Books or elsewhere) I am not allowed to. Is there any way? Could this be an idea for future development?
Not good enough to use the terrific feature of DEVONthink that enables easy access to files in their native app, e.g. Apple Books? Do your highlighting, bookmarking, and reading there in a secondary window of Apple Books holding that epub. No different really using a subset of features that DEVONthink might be able to provide (at some cost to them) in a secondary window. No?
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It is certainly enough to work with, but with an enhancement of the internal reader it would be possible to stay within the same ecosystem, avoiding “dirty” applications like Apple Books that are slow and populate its library every time an ePub is opened.
Ohhh Kaaaay.
Just a matter of perspective, I guess. I consider it The macOS “ecosystem” which is there to use.
I’d rather not DEVONtechnologies spend a lot of their scarce resources on developing yet another ePUB reader, esp since Apple Books and surely other apps are available now.
thanks.
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Calibre comes to mind
Calibre is a great Swiss Army knife but as a reader it is even worse. And besides as well as Books, Fb Reader or others, it adds every open ePub to its library, not allowing a cleaner “opening on the fly”.
There are several problems using an external reader
- ibooks does not work offline
- cannot even see epubs in devonthink on iPad
- cannot comment the highlighted passages and search the comments within devonthink
My workaround is to convert epubs to pdf with calibre if I need them in Devonthink BUT the conversion provokes MANY little mistakes, missed letters, breaks, that are annoying when I need to read / quote the texts
Welcome @Haim
My workaround is to convert epubs to pdf with calibre if I need them in Devonthink BUT the conversion provokes MANY little mistakes, missed letters, breaks, that are annoying when I need to read / quote the texts
Have you contacted the Calibre developers to see if this can be improved?
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Thanks @BLUEFROG
Sure, will try and contact calibre (a great program!)… But I guess no conversion of format is without penalty…
Still, my point was that not having a good way to deal with epub in devonthink is a big drawback, as more and more non academic books are available in epub only.
Why would you expect DEVONthink to be better than Calibre for such a format that has few real standards?
A future release will improve the conversion to PDF but the current conversion should already be suitable for simple EPUBs without sophisticated styling.
From where for example… ?
I mostly buy EPUBs from https://www.lafeltrinelli.it, I convert to DRM free using calibre and then read them in iBooks or devonthink
Yes it is ok but often there are misspelled words - at least in Italian and French - I guess some characters get lost in translation?
A simple conversion to PDF shouldn’t change characters actually. A screenshot before/after converting would be useful.
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It happened. Few lost characters that did not bother me so much. Now I cannot go back and look for them but if it happens again will post the screenshot. Otherwise calibre serves me well and it will be my way to deal with epub until devonthink can deal with them. PS: Are you a developer of calibre?
Thanks. Good suggestion but still an external app. For my purposes I prefer to convert epub to pdf than keep everything in Devonthink.