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App-Zapzi-0.008
River stage zero No dependents
2 ++
/ zapzi

NAME

zapzi - a tool to store articles and publish them as eBooks to read later

VERSION

version 0.008

SYNOPSIS

  $ zapzi init
  Created Zapzi directory ~/.zapzi

  $ zapzi add ~/src/foo/README.txt
  Added article 2 to folder Inbox

  $ zapzi add http://perldoc.perl.org/perlintro.html
  Added article 3 to folder Inbox

  $ zapzi ls
  Inbox    1 05-Jul-2013 Welcome to Zapzi
  Inbox    2 05-Jul-2013 README for project foo
  Inbox    3 05-Jul-2013 perlintro - perldoc.perl.org

  $ zapzi publish
  Published ~/.zapzi/ebooks/Zapzi - Inbox - 05-Jul-2013.mobi

  # See USAGE below for more details on command line options.

DESCRIPTION

Zapzi is a command line tool to take articles - from files or from the web - and create eBooks for reading later.

FEATURES

  • Can read articles from local files or via HTTP.

  • Understands plain text, POD, HTML and Markdown format articles.

  • HTML is converted to a more readable form (eg no menus or footers) to make the article easier to view on an eReader.

  • Articles can be stored in different folders to organise your reading.

  • eBooks are created in MOBI format (other formats should be added later).

  • Once you publish a folder of articles to an eBook file, the articles are archived so you can retrieve them later if needed.

CONFIGURATION

Zapzi needs very little configuration to get running - just type

  $ zapzi init

and it will create a directory (by default ~/.zapzi) to store its database and files. You can override this directory by setting the environment variable ZAPZI_DIR.

ADDING ARTICLES

To add an article, use zapzi add with a filename on your computer, the name of a module containing POD (eg File::Basename) or an HTTP URL. Remember to quote URLs if they include space or shell special characters, eg

  $ zapzi add 'http://example.com/article?id=4'

Zapzi will download a copy and store it in its database. Note that if you need to log into a site this will not work - save a copy of the page locally using your browser and then point Zapzi at the file.

TRANSFORMERS

By default, Zapzi will detect the file type and if it is HTML it will use HTML::ExtractMain to strip out non-essential parts of the page such as menus. Other formats are treated as plain text with Markdown.

You can override this by setting the -t option to add. For example, if HTMLExtractMain does not correctly determine which parts of the article are readable you can get the complete HTML text instead:

  $ zapzi add -t HTML 'http://example.com/article?id=4'

FOLDERS

By default, Zapzi will store articles in the 'Inbox' folder. This can be changed by using the -f option, eg

  $ zapzi add -f Foo project.txt

In order to use other folders you will need to create them first using the make-folder or mkf command, eg

  $ zapzi make-folder Foo

Folders can be deleted with the delete-folder or rd command. Note that this will also delete all articles in the folder.

To see a summary of your folders and how many articles are in them use the list-folders or lsf command.

  $ zapzi lsf

  Inbox        2
  Archive      4
  Foo          1

To see a summary of a particular folder, use list or ls:

  $ zapzi ls -f Foo
  Foo      1 05-Jul-2013 Project readme

PUBLISHING

To create an eBook, run zapzi publish or zapzi pub. By default this will publish articles from the Inbox folder; use the -f option to select another folder.

If everything worked OK, Zapzi will create a new eBook in the ebooks sub-directory of your Zapzi directory, eg ~/.zapzi/ebooks.

When you publish a folder, the articles are moved to the Archive folder unless you set the --noarchive option.

Instead of publishing, if you want to see a copy of an article use zapzi show to view the article in a browser or zapzi export to send a copyof the readable article to the standard output. Both these commands will not archive the article.

SUPPORT AND DEVELOPMENT

Bugs and requested issues can be reported at Github. Pull requests are also very welcome; please try to follow the existing style and organisation of the module.

  https://github.com/rupertl/app-zapzi/

BUGS AND FUTURE PLANS

This is an early version of Zapzi and although the basic functionality is there I plan to improve it further. If you have any suggestions please add them to the issue tracker at Github.

  • Improve text extraction and formatting - complex pages may not render correctly or may miss sections at present

  • Support other ways to fetch articles, eg FTP or IMAP for email.

  • Support other article formats, eg mbox/maildir.

  • Add the ability to read sources with state, eg RSS feeds.

  • Publish to other eBook formats such as EPUB or PDF.

  • Add options to distribute published eBooks, eg by email or copy to an eReader.

NAME

Zapzi comes from the Chinese word 雜誌, meaning magazine. It is pronounced ZAAP-zi in Cantonese.

USAGE

  $ zapzi help | h
    Shows this help text

  $ zapzi version | v
    Show version information

  $ zapzi init [--force]
    Initialises new zapzi database. Will not create a new database
    if one exists already unless you set --force.

  $ zapzi add [-t TRANSFORMER] FILE | URL | POD
    Adds article to database. Accepts multiple file names or URLs.
    TRANSFORMER determines how to extract the text from the article
    and can be HTML, HTMLExtractMain, POD or TextMarkdown
    If not specified, Zapzi will choose the best option based on the
    content type of the article.

  $ zapzi list | ls [-f FOLDER]
    Lists articles in FOLDER.

  $ zapzi list-folders | lsf
    Lists a summary of all folders.

  $ zapzi make-folder | mkf | md FOLDER
    Make a new folder.

  $ zapzi delete-folder | rmf | rd FOLDER
    Remove a folder and all articles in it.

  $ zapzi delete-article | delete | rm ID
    Removes article ID.

  $ zapzi export | cat ID
    Prints content of readable article to STDOUT

  $ zapzi show | view ID
    Opens a browser to view the readable text of article ID

  $ zapzi publish | pub [-f FOLDER] [--noarchive]
    Publishes articles in FOLDER to an eBook. Will archive articles unless
    --noarchive is set.

AUTHOR

Rupert Lane <rupert@rupert-lane.org>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This software is copyright (c) 2013 by Rupert Lane.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.