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by CharlesW
3598 days ago
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> Configure your own using one of the existing tools; if you use Owncloud or Nextcloud you could use my OPDS Catalog app… Okay, so this is a whole new world for me. Thank you! OPDS appears to be for electronic publications what RSS is to blogs and podcasts. There are feeds, there's content management software that generates them (like "OPDS catalog"), and there are reader-style apps to consume them and view the syndicated content. Yes? But as someone with tons of Kindle purchases, I'm a little confused about where to go from here, and how to protect myself from what happened to throwaway1974. Is there an "OPDS for Dummies"? |
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What OPDS enables you to do is gain access to a collection from any OPDS client device. To test it you can just install an OPDS-compatible reader on a phone or tablet or some such device and point it at an OPDS catalog. If you install FBreader (for Android) you'll find a number of OPDS catalogues pre-configured for your perusal, it is also possible (and easy) to add your own. You'll be able to browse the catalog, search for publications (something which I have not implemented in my Owncloud/Nextcloud tools yet due to the (IMnsHO) lacking search infrastructure in Owncloud) and download publications to the device. So yes, in this way it works just like a feed reader, which makes sense as it is based on the same technology (RSS and Atom).
Kindle does, as far as I know, not support OPDS - I don't have one so I can not try. I do know that it has a (rudimentary) browser so that might be an option to get access to publications on a 'personal cloud server'. In the case of OPDS Catalog you can just point the browser at the library root in the Owncloud/Nextcloud 'Files' app to see the same files as those which are served through the OPDS feed, bar any filtering done on the latter (it can be configured to show only certain types of files and/or to skip certain patterns). You will not see the metadata which OPDS Catalog has collected on those publications, once Nextcloud matures I'll see if it is feasible to implement this as an addition to the Files app.
Calibre (https://calibre-ebook.com/) is able to convert publications on the fly to a format understood by (unmodified= Kindle devices. It also contains a server which publishes in both OPDS as well as HTML, the latter would be useable on a Kindle. I think Calibre does a good job on the conversions but it is rather overweight and overly complex to use as a server. Of course there are other options, check that Mobileread wiki I linked to for some examples.