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pdf2kindle

pdf2kindle is a command-line tool that automates the process of mailing a pdf to your special kindle email address. This tool is specifically designed to be used with scientific papers, which usually require some pre-processing before being viewed on a kindle. We use the excellent k2pdfopt to perform this pre-processing.

Running

Make sure you have a copy of k2pdfopt (here) installed in somewhere in your path, along with the pdf2kindle file. Before running the tool you need to set 4 environment variables that tell pdf2kindle how to mail your pdf, and where to mail it to:
PDF2KINDLE_FROM The 'From:' address of the mail, i.e. your email address. For example: [email protected]
PDF2KINDLE_SMTP_HOST The address of the host that delivers your mail. For example: smtp.gmail.com
PDF2KINDLE_SMTP_PORT The port the above host uses to receive mail. For Example: 465
PDF2KINDLE_KINDLE Your secret kindle address. If you don't know what this is, you can learn about it here. For example: [email protected]

Now, you invoke the tool:

$ env PDF2KINDLE_FROM="[email protected]" \
      PDF2KINDLE_SMTP_HOST="smtp.gmail.com" \
      PDF2KINDLE_SMTP_PORT="465" \
      PDF2KINDLE_KINDLE="[email protected]" \
  pdf2kindle paper.pdf

If you want to invoke the tool more easily, you can add something like the following to your ~/.bashrc file:

export PDF2KINDLE_FROM="[email protected]"
export PDF2KINDLE_SMTP_HOST="smtp.gmail.com"
export PDF2KINDLE_SMTP_PORT="465"
export PDF2KINDLE_KINDLE="[email protected]"

Then you can invoke it like this:

$ pdf2kindle ./paper.pdf

Usage Notes

  1. The tool currently assumes that your SMTP host requires TLS before authentication. This assumption appears to be pretty standard, but it may not be correct in all cases. If you run into weird SMTP bugs, feel free to post an issue.
  2. The tool currently optimizes the processed pdf output for the kindle 'paperwhite'. this will likely be just fine, but if you want to tune it some more you can look at the documentation for k2pdfopt. I'd be happy to accept patches to add an easy model selector to the tool.
  3. The tuning I do to the pdfs works well in about 84% of the cases I've tried. Sometimes, figures will get messed up, or text sizes will be wrong. k2pdfopt especially hates centered figures in two-column papers. Feel free to try and tune the system better, or submit issues with pdfs that cause degenerate behaviour, I'd love to make the pre-processing better.