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Comment by justusthane | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious what folks here would use to save and read this on mobile? The question doesn't apply so much to this particular instance since there's an .epub version available, but I often come across long HTML or PDF articles or books that I mean to read but never do, because I don't have a good way to maintain them (and especially save my current place) for reading on mobile.

Bonus points if it's self-hosted.

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I use this bookmarklet from DotePub:

  javascript:(function()%7Btry%7Bvar%20d=document,w=window;if(!d.body%7C%7Cd.body.innerHTML=='')throw(0);var%20s=d.createElement('link'),h=d.getElementsByTagName('head')%5B0%5D,i=d.createElement('div'),j=d.createElement('script');s.rel='stylesheet';s.href='//dotepub.com/s/dotEPUB-favlet.css';s.type='text/css';s.media='screen';h.appendChild(s);i.setAttribute('id','dotepub');i.innerHTML='%3Cdiv%20id=%22status%22%3E%3Cp%3EConversion%20in%20progress...%3C/p%3E%3C/div%3E';d.body.appendChild(i);j.type='text/javascript';j.charset='utf-8';j.src='//dotepub.com/j/dotepub.js?v=1.2&s=ask&t=mobi&g=en';h.appendChild(j);%7Dcatch(e)%7Bw.alert('The%20page%20has%20no%20content%20or%20it%20is%20not%20fully%20loaded.%20Please,%20wait%20till%20the%20page%20is%20loaded.');%7D%7D)();

To be honest, I first read this entirely in a mobile browser tab in HTML format during breaks at work (until I got so hooked I began reading it on my phone while sitting on the porch for hours at a time). It was a bit of a pain, but I thought it was so cool that it was available for free that I dealt with the issues of having to scroll back to my place once in a while.

I keep dreaming of good article->epub conversion, but the options out there aren't great. Most of the browser plugins run through "reading mode", and if that doesn't work (especially if the article is posted in a SPA) they're cooked. Calibre in theory can turn webpages into ebooks, but in practice it's a lot of work to make it nice, if it works at all, and there's no real way to use it on mobile.

I found the PDF much more readable than the epub. The fonts or something. Finished it on my iPad using the stock PDF viewer, it’s pretty good in iOS (except it forgets your page sometimes).

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