path: root/README.md

# paper2remarkable

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``paper2remarkable`` is a command line program for quickly and easily 
transferring an academic paper to your [reMarkable](https://remarkable.com/):

```
$ p2r https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.11242
```

There is also support for transferring an article from a website:

```
$ p2r https://hbr.org/2019/11/getting-your-team-to-do-more-than-meet-deadlines
```

The script can be run through the ``p2r`` command line program or via Docker
(see below). If you're using MacOS, you might be interested in the [Alfred
workflow](#alfred-workflow) or [Printing to p2r](#printing). On Linux, a 
background terminal such as [Guake](http://guake-project.org/) can be very 
handy. Note that even without a reMarkable, this program can make downloading 
papers easier (just use the `-n` flag).

## Introduction

``paper2remarkable`` makes it as easy as possible to get a PDF on your 
reMarkable from any of the following sources:

* [arXiv](https://arxiv.org/)
* [ACM Digital Library](https://dl.acm.org/dl.cfm)
* [CiteSeerX](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/index)
* [CVF](https://openaccess.thecvf.com/menu)
* [JMLR](http://jmlr.org)
* [NBER](https://www.nber.org)
* [NeurIPS](https://papers.nips.cc/)
* [OpenReview](https://openreview.net/)
* [PMLR](http://proceedings.mlr.press/)
* [PubMed Central](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/)
* [SagePub](https://journals.sagepub.com/)
* [SemanticScholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/)
* [SpringerLink](https://link.springer.com/)
* A generic URL to a PDF file
* A local PDF file
* Any article on a website

The program aims to be flexible to the exact source URL, so for many of the 
academic sources you can either provide a URL to the abstract page or to the 
PDF file. If you have a source that you would like to see added to the list, 
let me know!

``paper2remarkable`` takes the source URL and:

1. Downloads the pdf
2. Removes the arXiv timestamp (for arXiv sources)
3. Crops the pdf to remove unnecessary borders
4. Shrinks the pdf file to reduce the filesize
5. Generates a nice filename based on author/title/year of the paper
6. Uploads it to your reMarkable using 
   [rMapi](https://github.com/juruen/rmapi).

Optionally, you can:

- Download a paper but not upload to the reMarkable using the ``-n`` switch.
- Insert a blank page after each page using the ``-b`` switch (useful for note 
  taking!)
- Center (``-c``) or right-align (``-r``) the pdf on the reMarkable (default 
  is left-aligned), or disable cropping altogether (``-k``).
- Provide an explicit filename using the ``--filename`` parameter
- Specify the location on the reMarkable to place the file (default ``/``)

Here's an example with verbose mode enabled that shows everything the script 
does by default:

```
$ p2r -v https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.11242
2019-05-30 00:38:27 - INFO - Starting ArxivProvider
2019-05-30 00:38:27 - INFO - Getting paper info from arXiv
2019-05-30 00:38:27 - INFO - Downloading url: https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.11242
2019-05-30 00:38:27 - INFO - Generating output filename
2019-05-30 00:38:27 - INFO - Created filename: Burg_Nazabal_Sutton_-_Wrangling_Messy_CSV_Files_by_Detecting_Row_and_Type_Patterns_2018.pdf
2019-05-30 00:38:27 - INFO - Downloading file at url: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1811.11242.pdf
2019-05-30 00:38:32 - INFO - Downloading url: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1811.11242.pdf
2019-05-30 00:38:32 - INFO - Removing arXiv timestamp
2019-05-30 00:38:34 - INFO - Cropping pdf file
2019-05-30 00:38:37 - INFO - Shrinking pdf file
2019-05-30 00:38:38 - INFO - Starting upload to reMarkable
2019-05-30 00:38:42 - INFO - Upload successful.
```

## Installation

The script requires the following external programs to be available:

- [pdftk](https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/), 
  [qpdf](http://qpdf.sourceforge.net/), or 
  [pdftk-java](https://gitlab.com/pdftk-java/pdftk), whichever your package 
  manager provides.
- [GhostScript](https://www.ghostscript.com/)
- [rMAPI](https://github.com/juruen/rmapi)

Specifically:

1. First install [rMAPI](https://github.com/juruen/rmapi), using
   ```
   $ go get -u github.com/juruen/rmapi
   ```

2. Then install system dependencies:
   - **Arch Linux:** ``pacman -S pdftk ghostscript poppler``
   - **Ubuntu:** ``apt-get install pdftk ghostscript poppler-utils``. Replace 
     ``pdftk`` with ``qpdf`` if your distribution doesn't package ``pdftk``.
   - **MacOS:** ``brew install pdftk-java ghostscript poppler`` (using [HomeBrew](https://brew.sh/)).
   - **Windows:** Installers or executables are available for 
     [qpdf](https://github.com/qpdf/qpdf/releases) (for instance the mingw 
     binary executables) and 
     [GhostScript](https://www.ghostscript.com/download/gsdnld.html). 
     Importantly, Windows support is untested and these are generic 
     instructions, so we welcome clarifications where needed. The Docker 
     instructions below may be more convenient on Windows.

3. Finally, install ``paper2remarkable``:
   ```
   $ pip install paper2remarkable
   ```
   this installs the ``p2r`` command line program.

**Optionally**, you can install:

- [pdftoppm](https://linux.die.net/man/1/pdftoppm) (recommended for speed). 
  Usually part of a [Poppler](https://poppler.freedesktop.org/) installation.

- the [ReadabiliPy](https://github.com/alan-turing-institute/ReadabiliPy) 
  package with Node.js support, to allow using 
  [Readability.js](https://github.com/mozilla/readability) for HTML articles. 
  This is known to improve the output of certain web articles.

If any of the dependencies (such as rmapi or ghostscript) are not available on 
the ``PATH`` variable, you can supply them with the relevant options to the 
script (for instance ``p2r --rmapi /path/to/rmapi``). If you run into trouble 
with the installation, please let me know by opening an issue [on 
Github][github-url].

## Usage

The full help of the script is as follows. Hopefully the various command line 
flags are self-explanatory, but if you'd like more information, please open an 
issue [on GitHub][github-url].

```
usage: p2r [-h] [-b] [-c] [-d] [-n] [-p REMARKABLE_DIR] [-r] [-k] [-v] [-V]
           [--filename FILENAME] [--gs GS] [--pdftoppm PDFTOPPM] [--pdftk PDFTK]
           [--qpdf QPDF] [--rmapi RMAPI]
           input [input ...]

Paper2reMarkable version 0.7.3

positional arguments:
  input                 One or more URLs to a paper or paths to local PDF files

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -b, --blank           Add a blank page after every page of the PDF
  -c, --center          Center the PDF on the page, instead of left align
  -d, --debug           debug mode, doesn't upload to reMarkable
  -n, --no-upload       don't upload to the reMarkable, save the output in current working
                        dir
  -p REMARKABLE_DIR, --remarkable-path REMARKABLE_DIR
                        directory on reMarkable to put the file (created if missing, default:
                        /)
  -r, --right           Right align so the menu doesn't cover it
  -k, --no-crop         Don't crop the pdf file
  -v, --verbose         be verbose
  -V, --version         Show version and exit
  --filename FILENAME   Filename to use for the file on reMarkable
  --gs GS               path to gs executable (default: gs)
  --pdftoppm PDFTOPPM   path to pdftoppm executable (default: pdftoppm)
  --pdftk PDFTK         path to pdftk executable (default: pdftk)
  --qpdf QPDF           path to qpdf executable (default: qpdf)
  --rmapi RMAPI         path to rmapi executable (default: rmapi)
```

## Alfred Workflow

On MacOS, you can optionally install [this Alfred workflow][workflow]. Alfred 
is [a launcher for MacOS](https://www.alfredapp.com/).

Once installed, you can then use `rm` command and `rmb` (for the `--blank` 
pages to insert blank pages between pages for notes) with a URL passed. The 
global shortcut `Alt-P` will send the current selection to `p2r`. Note that by 
default `--right` is passed and `p2r` is executed in your `bash` environment. 
You can edit the Workflow in Alfred if this doesn't work for your setup.

![Alfred Screenshot](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GjjvdBurg/paper2remarkable/master/.github/alfred.png)

[workflow]: https://github.com/GjjvdBurg/paper2remarkable/blob/master/Remarkable.alfredworkflow?raw=true 

## Printing

Printing to `p2r` allows printing prompts to save directly to your reMarkable
tablet, passing through `p2r` for processing.

For MacOS, you can follow [the guide][print-guide] for printing with `rmapi`,
but for the bash script, instead use this script:

```
for f in "$@"
do
	bash -c -l "p2r --right '$f'" 
done
```

[print-guide]: https://github.com/juruen/rmapi/blob/master/docs/tutorial-print-macosx.md

## Docker

If you'd like to avoid installing the dependencies directly on your machine, 
you can use the Dockerfile. To make this work you will need ``git`` and 
``docker`` installed.

First clone this repository with `git clone` and `cd` inside of it, then build 
the container:

```bash
docker build -t p2r .
```

### Authorization

If you already have a `~/.rmapi` file, you can skip this section. Otherwise 
we'll use `rmapi` to create it.

```bash
touch ${HOME}/.rmapi
docker run --rm -i -t -v "${HOME}/.rmapi:/home/user/.rmapi:rw" --entrypoint=rmapi p2r version
```

which should end with output like

```bash
ReMarkable Cloud API Shell
rmapi version: 0.0.5
```

### Usage

Use the container by replacing `p2r` with `docker run --rm -v 
"${HOME}/.rmapi:/home/user/.rmapi:rw" p2r`, e.g.

```
# print help and exit
docker run --rm -v "${HOME}/.rmapi:/home/user/.rmapi:rw" p2r --help

# equivalent to above usage
docker run --rm -v "${HOME}/.rmapi:/home/user/.rmapi:rw" p2r -v https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.11242

# to transfer a local file in the current directory
docker run --rm -v "${HOME}/.rmapi:/home/user/.rmapi:rw" -v "$(pwd):/home/user:r" p2r -v localfile.pdf
```

For transferring local files using the Docker image, you may find [this helper 
function](https://github.com/GjjvdBurg/paper2remarkable/issues/34#issuecomment-610852258) 
useful.

You can also create an [alias](http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/aliases.html) in 
your ``~/.bashrc`` file to abstract away the Docker commands:

```bash
# in ~/.bashrc

alias p2r="docker run --rm -v \"${HOME}/.rmapi:/home/user/.rmapi:rw\" p2r"
```

Then you can use ``paper2remarkable`` from the command line as ``p2r``!

# Notes

License: MIT

If you find a problem or want to suggest a feature, please open an issue [on 
Github][github-url]. You're helping to make this project better for everyone!

[github-url]: https://github.com/GjjvdBurg/paper2remarkable