Kindled

Kindled is a simple command line tool that controls the production of Kindle MOBI files from Calibre recipes.

Installation

Kindled is now available on PyPI. You can install Kindled via easy_install as follows:

sudo easy_install kindled

If you do not have easy_install installed, it can be installed using your package manager. For example, using Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo aptitude install python-setuptools

The Calibre ebook conversion suite is required for Kindled to operate. However, Kindled is designed to run headless without a GUI as it uses the ebook-convert command line tool that is supplied with Calibre.

To install Calibre on Ubuntu, you can simply install the package from the official repositories:

sudo aptitude install calibre

To install Kindled manually, simply copy the bin/kindled script somewhere on your configured PATH and run it.

Configuration

Configuration of Kindled involves specifying various different components within the configuration file. Kindled will automatically generate a default example configuration file when first run. It is usually located in ~/.config/kindled/kindled.ini. You will need to modify the configuration file before running again as Kindled will detect the example configuration and will exit.

Apart from the general configuration parameters and the email server configuration, Kindled comprises of four main items:

• Recipes
• Recipients
• Groups
• Subscriptions

Recipes

You can add your favourite Calibre recipes within the configuration file by simply adding the path and filename to it (along with a friendly unique identifier).

Examples:

the_times = ~/recipes/TheTimes.recipe
the_guardian = ~/recipes/TheGuardian.recipe

Recipients

Recipients are basically people (or destinations). A recipient would primarily be a Kindle "free" email address (e.g. user@free.kindle.com). As with other items, you will need to give each recipient a friendly unique identifer.

Examples:

me = me@free.kindle.com
brother = my_brother@free.kindle.com
best_friend = best_friend@free.kindle.com

Groups

Groups are one or more recipients. If you only want to publish to a single recipient, you will still need to define a group and simply add the single recipient to it. Groups are simply comma delimited lists of recipient friendly names (not the email address). Groups also require a friendly unique identifier.

Examples:

me = me
family = brother
friends = best_friend
everyone = me,brother,best_friend

Subscriptions

A subscription combines recipes with groups. It consists of a comma delimited list of recipe friendly names, followed by a semi-colon and then a comma delimited list of groups.

Examples:

guardian_family = the_guardian;family
times_friends_and_me = the_times;me,friends
everything = the_guardian,the_times;everyone

Usage

By default, if you just run Kindled as normal, it will process all configured subscriptions. However, if you only want to process specific subscriptions, you can simply add the friendly names of the subscriptions you want to process as arguments (separated by a space).

Processed all subscriptions:

kindled

Processes only guardian_family and times_friends_and_me subscriptions:

kindled guardian_family times_friends_and_me

Specifying certain subscriptions is useful for scheduled (cron) tasks. For example, you can have Kindled appear in your crontab more than once on different schedules, but processing different subscriptions.

By default, Kindled will cache all produced content in the configured cache folder, which is by default ~/.cache/kindled. If you want to override the cache, you can either clear the contents of the cache folder or run Kindled with the -f or --force` option.

If you want to test Kindled and not actually send any emails to your recipients, run Kindled with the -t or --test option. Also, if you want to see the output of the Calibre conversion process, run Kindled with the -d or --debug option. All options and arguments can be obtained by using the --help option.