Creating a periodical

[hiperlink]

Hi All!

I'd like to create a mobi (prc) file mainly for Kindle (3), in the periodical format (if that's what Instapaper use...). With the header, etc.

The source files are HTML (properly formatted), but how does one create a periodical? I've searched through these forums, but wasn't able to find useful information

Thanks in advance for any help!

[kovidgoyal]

you have to write a recipe. It's quite possible to write a recipe that parses local HTML files. Details on writing recipes are in the User Manual

[hiperlink]

I just came to that conclusion as well (that I can do it with calibre), but where can I learn about how to do that without calibre (if I ever want to), and if there are any specific possibility on changing the header/footer image, etc...

Anyway, thanks for your answer (and work)!

[kovidgoyal]

Nowhere, the Kindle periodical format was reverse engineered (by GRiker) for calibre, there is no other source of information on it, other than the calibre source code.

[hiperlink]

That's what I had assumed. I'll dive into... Thanks again.

[MLEbooks]

You can't make one from scratch, but with a little patience and tweaking, you can create one by making a dedicated blog (something quick and dirty on wordpress.com is good, since it's free, fast, and has a decent amount of customization), playing with post order/tags, and then using wordpress.com's 'hacks' for feeds of tags and categories. http://en.support.wordpress.com/feeds/

For example, if you wanted a periodical about movie reviews, post the basic contents as posts, tag as, say, Horror, Comedy, Drama. They show up most recent first, so keep that in mind when posting.

Then create a custom feed, title it, like, "My Movie Reviews"

Then add the RSS feed for, like, Horror tags, for Comedy tags, etc.

Have your thingy settings (I forget where) set for mobi, then fetch the news for that feed.

If it all goes right, you should have a periodical with sections labeled however you labeled the feeds (horror reviews, comedy reviews) that you can click through just like instapaper. You can decide how much you want in terms of showing the date/author/etc of the posts (whoever is the username for that post shows as the author, which is again tweakable), and try running it a few times to see what shows up where.

You can then go in and tweak your metadata to put in a pretty cover if you want, put in a summary, etc, so forth. Then download to your kindle and test.

If you want to fix/tweak things, just go back to the blog and tweak things in the posts/post order/etc. Delete your fetched news from Calibre & device, then refetch the news. Repeat until you have it how you like.

Note: I don't know how to get around the fact that the blog is public while you're tweaking this info, but you can uncheck your 'publicize/add to directories' choices on the blog, and name it something obscure so people are less likely to stumble across it.

This wouldn't work for things you needed to be secure, but as a jury rigged work around, I've found it can create a decent periodical-shaped file. Just remind people to select 'keep' on their kindles so it doesn't get bumped off. I think the first few go rounds you'll have a lot of learning curve about what shows up well/what doesn't on a feed->mobi file, but once you figure out a format template, the workflow can speed up nicely.

[Hurda]

Does anyone have "cookbook" that can serve as starting point for me?

[Et Melius]

This guy figured it out - look at the answer to this question:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5...iodical-format

I tried it, it works. Note that Kindlegen will not show you that it is working, it will treat the file like any other book. But if you load it on an actual Kindle, then you will get your articles and sections in the periodical style. This guy is my hero.

And I created an account so I could let you guys know about it. Hi.

[janvanmaar]

Welcome and thanks It is a useful information indeed.