Little off topic (but it’s my topic!)… Could you mention which ones you are thinking of?
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Tolino 5.
While I’m on this poll - is there someone around who could explain me how to generate a table-of-contents (using Calibre on office/html) - I’ve converted some text/office files into epub, but it reduces joy-of-reading when a table-of-contents is not there… (if needed we could communicate via pm, email or zoom or something)
Not sure what you mean by this. Are you talking about a table of contents?
If so, the original document really needs (I think) for there to be headings that are marked in a way that Calibre will recognize. That is usually done by headings. Does the document you are trying to convert have headings already?
I think it’s ok to talk a little bit about this in-thread. But the official (I believe) place to get Calibre help is in this forum on MobileRead.
… of course: “table-of-contents”, sorry. I should take some meditations on english dictionaries soon… About the “headings”: I’ve seen something about paragraph-formatting with styles “H1” and “H2”, but looking at the html-sources of my texts-to-be-converted it seemed to be an intractable chaos, so I thought some inital direct advices would help to proceed on my own… as usual, earlier… times ago 
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If you have a word doc (or docx) you would want to just use the built in heading styles to mark the parts that would go into a table of contents. I don’t use MSWord, so I’m not exactly sure how to do it, but if you google msword heading styles that should help.
Here is a test file https://ufile.io/ybl8glnd
Take a look and try running it through Calibre. I believe the default settings should produce a valid table of contents. They do for me.
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…(just downloaded the file - can do something only in the evening - thanks provisorically for support anyway!)
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My goodness, these answers.
I just read on my kindle. Suddenly I feel so inadequate 
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Kindle Paperwhite - mobi/azw3 ← preffered method
books and Documents by Readdle on iPad -epub
Calibre on Desktop (mac)
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My guess is that people using things other than e-ink readers are doing so for the convenience of reading something on a piece of hardware they are already engaging with. Beyond that I can’t imagine why they would do that over a printed book. The whole point of e-ink readers is to make things easier on your eyes and make a better physical reading experience.
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Partially. But the main reason for me is switching. I very rarely read books cover to cover these days, and am more typically switching between a book, SuttaCentral, a dictionary app, another book, my notes, etc. E-Ink devices are not built for “multi-tasking” which (to me) is inherent to more scholarly reading.
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I can understand that. My Paperwhite is great for pleasure reading, but using it as a reference is cumbersome.
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I never stopped to think about that, it’s so true.
I have 16 physical books within arms-reach of me, plus my kindle. And I have the physical books nearby because they are what I go to when I want to quickly and easily look something up, research a topic, reference a phrase/paragraph/concept, or just skim a subject. My kindle, which I use daily, nevertheless takes a back-seat unless I am reading a Dhamma or Buddhist book from cover to cover, or a DN or MN sutta from beginning to end.
My kindle, as much as I appreciate it, is no replacement for my physical Dhamma books. But then again, I am a total book nerd. 
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Absolutely. They are built for detraction free reading. And, kind of by default, for storing huge amounts of texts. Both of which are solid advantages.
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Absolutely! Just depends on what kind of reading you’re doing 
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Websites such as BuddhaNet. I can mention some more but however I do not know if they are early Buddhism or not.
Oh, yes. The pdfs there all have encryption. It’s really a shame.
I’m not sure if it would help on those, but there is some software called Briss that allows you to crop pdfs really well. Sometimes without the margins, a pdf is almost readable on a Kindle.
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lol so true. 
Here are a couple things that have worked for me (in regard to improving my experience with PDFs on my Kindle):
- Reading PDF’s in Landscape Mode on a Kindle makes it infinitely more readable; not great but much better. Settings to rotate the screen orientation are available once you open any document: “Aa” → “Layout” → “Orientation”
OR
- Willus.com offers a cool application called “k2pdfopt”, which is a free and open source multiplatform tool that I’ve used many times to successfully convert PDFs to epub for reading on my kindle. Here’s the website blurb about it:
“K2pdfopt optimizes PDF files for mobile e-readers (e.g. the Kindle) and smartphones. It works well on multi-column PDF files and can re-flow text even on scanned PDF files. It can also be used as a general PDF copying/cropping/re-sizing/OCR-ing manipulation tool. It can generate native or bitmapped PDF output, with an optional OCR layer. There are downloads for MS Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux. The MS Windows version has an integrated GUI. K2pdfopt is free open source software.”
May these “tips” be of benefit to anyone who struggles working with PDF documents on their Kindles. 
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Be careful of that site. Malwarebytes warned me of the presence of a trojan virus when I followed the Willus.com link. 
Thanks for the heads-up!
For what its worth, and I not affiliated with that site or developer, that tool has been A+ for me and my experience with it has been flawless.
I recently (a few months ago anyway) upgraded to the latest version with no pings or dings from my antivirus software etc and I use it both on Windows 10 and Linux Ubuntu LTS.
[edit]
Just another thought of reassurance since I wouldn’t want anyone to think that I was linking to any kind of harmful software:
Because it’s open source software, the code is available for anyone to download, review, and compile. It’s also quite mature software that has been in circulation since 2010 with nearly 750,000 downloads. Looking at it’s version history, it seems to receive relatively steady updates from the developer, even as recently as this month (March 2022) with v2.53. It has also been endorsed, at least by the Linux community, and they are known to be quite… fussy.
Anyway, I hope that helps!
So I suppose, as usual on the internet, be wise, savvy, and safe 
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Yes, that’s a great tip. Thanks!
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