mariochavez / docs_on_kindle

Bring web docs to the Kindle

docs_on_kindle

This project aims to translate web documention for popular software tools and APIs into Kindle ebooks that are easy to navigate and a pleasure to read.

Here are two example Kindle ebooks generated with docs_on_kindle. You can download them and transfer them to your Kindle via USB.

Heroku Guide

Download Heroku Guide for Kindle

Original Heroku Web Documentation

Thoughbot Playbook

Download Thoughtbot Playbook for Kindle

Original Thoughtbot Playbook Web Documentation

Read on if you're interested in learning how to contribute recipes for turning web documentation for other products and services into Kindle ebooks.

Requirements

• Ruby 1.9
• ImageMagick (i.e. the convert command)
• You must be a fairly good at slicing and dicing HTML with Nokogiri

Also, download Amazon's KindleGen 2 tool and put it on your PATH.

How to write a recipe

Go to the Github issues page for this project to check if someone is working on the recipe you had in mind. If not, post a Github issue saying that you're working on this recipe and give it the "recipe in progress" label. This will help prevent unnecessary duplication of effort.

Fork this project and git clone your fork. cd into the cloned git directory.

Run bundle install to make sure you have the required dependencies (nokogiri and kindlerb) in the gem path.

Create a recipe file in the recipes/ directory.

Follow the recipes/heroku.rb recipe as a model. The requirements of a recipe should be fairly simple and straightforward.

Once you finish your recipe, generate the ebook with this command:

ruby -Ilib recipes/your_new_recipe.rb

If all goes well, you should have a nice Kindle ebook version of the web documentation you processed.

Now submit a pull request on your fork so I can pull in your recipe.

All recipe contributors will be recognized and thanked on this page!

Issues

This project is new and rough around the edges, so please feel welcome to report issues and contribute to the code.