Dhamma Books in ePub and mobi Formats

[mettafuture]

ePub is an excellent format for ebooks, and has become a standard for a lot of e-reading devices. Unlike pdf, the text in an ePub file is able to shift and adjust to fit almost any device.

Access to Insight recently started a section on their site for ePub files:
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tech/lis ... -epub.html

Mindfulness in Plain English is available as an ePub here:
http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html

And the 3 published Nikayas, and In The Buddha's Words, are all available through Nook and the iBooks store for iPad and iPhone.

If you know of any other quality dhamma books in ePub, please share them.

[Ytrog]

Maybe we should make those epubs ourselves. The tipitaka is readily available on access to insight and could be converted to epub.

[mikenz66]

Maybe we should make those epubs ourselves. The tipitaka is readily available on access to insight and could be converted to epub.

I presume that the site maintainers are working on that. My guess would be that the html files that you see there, and the epubs, are automatically generated from some more general mark-up format. At least, that would be the obvious way to do it, rather than mess with html...

Mike

[Ytrog]

Maybe we should make those epubs ourselves. The tipitaka is readily available on access to insight and could be converted to epub.

I presume that the site maintainers are working on that. My guess would be that the html files that you see there, and the epubs, are automatically generated from some more general mark-up format. At least, that would be the obvious way to do it, rather than mess with html...

Mike

I just tried to convert http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bodhi/abhiman.html to ePub with calibre. Calibre doesn't even load the html.
One alternative is PDF made with LaTeX. I tried to do that as well, but LeD is really unstable. I will be switching to texlipse as my LaTeX platform. I have had good results with that in the past.

I get the impression from my search for ePub creators that those tools need to mature a bit first.

[mettafuture]

Maybe we should make those epubs ourselves. The tipitaka is readily available on access to insight and could be converted to epub.

I would gladly help out.

I recently bought In The Buddha's Words in epub format from iBooks. Wow... It's really really nice to have that book, along with about 10 other books , in such a convenient format. I can fit them all in my pocket now. I also carry Mindfulness in Plain English by Ven. Gunaratana, Satipatthana Vipassana by Ven. Mahasi Sayadaw, The Noble Eightfold Path by Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi, and Wings to Awakening by Ven. Thanissaro Bhikkhu.

Mahasi Sayadaw's ebooks in ePub format can be downloaded from here:
http://yuttadhammo.sirimangalo.org/post ... ollection/

[Ytrog]

I have made a PDF version of: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/auth ... himan.html

See the attachments (what an ironic term here ).

The source file has the extension ".tex.txt", because the board doesn't allow attachments to have the extension ".tex". This is also plain text, so removing the ".txt" part gets you the original file.

These are the tools used

• http://texlipse.sourceforge.net
• http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/packag ... /heliossr1 (texlipse is a plugin of this program)
• http://miktex.org/2.8/ (other TeX distributions, like TeXLive also work of-course)

[mikenz66]

Hi Ytrog,

That's nice. It even processes correctly for me once I comment out this line:
\usepackage[version=3]{mhchem} % Voor elegante scheikundige formules
which is OK, since there are not many chemical formulas in the document...

Did you use some automatic translation to LaTeX? That would be very handy for doing nice printouts of Suttas.

As I said above, I presume that A2I has source files in a more general format than html and could probably eventually do this automatically, much like some newspaper websites have a "print version" button.

Mike

[Ytrog]

No, I have been busy this evening doing it all by hand. Took me over 4 hours.

That's nice. It even processes correctly for me once I comment out this line:
\usepackage[version=3]{mhchem} % Voor elegante scheikundige formules

It's from a template I made for my documents. I did my graduation paper (or how that's called, it's not a thesis) with it.

As I said above, I presume that A2I has source files in a more general format than html and could probably eventually do this automatically, much like some newspaper websites have a "print version" button.

Probably can generate it from the data in the database, but I don't have access to it and the aren't publishing everything to PDF or ePub themselves, so I have no other way.

[mettafuture]

I have made a PDF version of: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/auth ... himan.html

Beautifully done! Thank you.

See the attachments (what an ironic term here ).

You've inspired me.

I have some computer knowledge. I might as well put it to some use to help the community as well. There are 2 books that I think would be of great benefit to Theravada Buddhists in ePub format. Mindfulness of Breathing and 4 Elements Meditation and Knowing and Seeing, both by Pa Auk Sayadaw.

I'm going to try converting Mindfulness of Breathing and 4 Elements Meditation tonight.

[SammaSankappo]

Hello,
So, did you succeed in converting to ePub ?
I personally can't seem to be able to make it (maybe the Mac ?)

[James the Giant]

I have converted Access To Insight's Sutta Pitaka to both EPUB and MOBI formats (for kindle).

Here's the Epub version, 11.17 Megabytes
http://www.mediafire.com/?wuyhrlltt59kikn

And here's the MOBI version, for kindle, 15.88 Megabytes.
http://www.mediafire.com/?aeeee0zwylbbmgd

They are both MASSIVE ebooks, 16 megabytes for the Mobi and 11 megabytes for the Epub.
It's a quick and dirty conversion using Calibre auto-convert, but it works.
The hyperlinks and contents pages work fine, but there are also links to other pages of Access To Insight that aren't in the Sutta Pitaka, so they are basically dead links unless you have internet access on your ebook.

Please share the links around and publicise them elsewhere until someone makes something better.

With metta

[Jhana4]

I remember back in the 90s, everything was in plain text with the funky markings of a homemade markup language in it anticipating the arrival of HTML. I spent many hours converting my favorite BPS files into HTML.

[Beneath the Wheel]

I just stumbled onto this thread. My Kindle and I thank you for the mobi conversion!

I've tried doing some conversions with Calibre but they never turn out quite right for some reason.

[frank k]

James,
How were you able to convert the ATI tipitaka section with calibre? I just tried doing that with the december 2011 local pc version of ATI from the index.html on the tipitaka subdir, calibre wouldn't even read it in.
I want to do the conversion for the ATI vinaya section and make that into mobi and epub...

-Frank

[frank k]

I made a mobi version of [Digha Nikaya # 2], so you can see why I'm excited about touch screens and dhamma reference material converted into useful ebook formats that are easily navigable.

https://sites.google.com/site/frankkpublic/dn02

-Frank

[nyanasuci]

Forest Sangha eBooks:
http://www.forestsanghapublications.org ... dEbook.php

Path Press eBooks:
http://pathpress.wordpress.com/category/ebook/

[mettafuture]

Fantastic!

We should probably assemble a collection of mobi books as well for our Kindle using friends.


Here's The Path of Purifcation in epub and mobi.
http://static.sirimangalo.org/vism/index.html

[James the Giant]

How were you able to convert the ATI tipitaka section with calibre? I just tried doing that with the december 2011 local pc version of ATI from the index.html on the tipitaka subdir, calibre wouldn't even read it in.

Yeah, I can't repeat my previous success either, it won't do it. I don't know enough about Calibre to work around the problem, unfortunately.

[leddar9947]

Hi to all,
I have converted the biography of Ajahn Mun written by Ajahn Boowa from Acrobat PDF to Microsoft Word.
(source: http://www.luangta.com/English/site/book8_biomun.html)
I'm not an expert about Calibre software: I hope that some user of this forum can convert the .doc file in the epub format!
Note: the file .doc attached does not contain the photos of the original book.

Regards,
Roberto

[bodom]

Here is a great collection of classic articles and books all ePub from Buddhist Publication Society:

BPS ONLINE LIBRARY
http://www.bps.lk/onlinelibrary_wheels.html