Easy copy from website?

trianglekitty · 07-02-2012, 10:23 PM

Is there a way to streamline collecting text from a website to add to calibre? For example, let's say I want to add as an e-book information from a website. I've been copy/pasting into a word document, saving as real text into my Calibre library, then converting. Is there any way to streamline that copy/paste/save? When you're speaking in terms of hundreds of sites, this is very tedious. I've tried just saving the page as html or text, but it randomly seems to strip the text of quotes and other marks

Edit- I seem to have found a fairly simple way of doing this. There's a firefox add-on called text to file. You simply highlight the text you want, right click and choose 'text to file'. You can tell the program where to save the text too.

Which is all well and good, but now I really need a way to shorten the time it takes me to highlight the text. I want to be able to position the cursor, then ideally macro the sequence control+shift+end to highlight all text below that point/right click/select save to text

I'd even just settle for a way to assign the control+shift+end to one keyboard key.

This is something I could do in an eye blink in Office or Access, but I'm struggling in Firefox. Is this even possible to accomplish? The macro add-ons I'm played with don't even register the keyboard sequence or are website specific.

theducks · 07-02-2012, 11:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by trianglekitty

Is there a way to streamline collecting text from a website to add to calibre? For example, let's say I want to add as an e-book information from a website. I've been copy/pasting into a word document, saving as real text into my Calibre library, then converting. Is there any way to streamline that copy/paste/save? When you're speaking in terms of hundreds of sites, this is very tedious. I've tried just saving the page as html or text, but it randomly seems to strip the text of quotes and other marks

This may help:

http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/cli/web2disk.html

davidfor · 07-02-2012, 11:49 PM

It depends on how much of a site/page you want.

If you just want a section of one page, then what you are doing is probably the simplest way.

If you want a whole page, you can save the page to you local disc and add that to calibre. For a set of pages, create an index html file that includes all of them and add that to calibre.

If you want a whole page or collection of and you are using Firefox, have a look at the plugin GrabMyBooks. With that, you click a button on the toolbar when viewing a page to add it to a collection and then later save that collection as an epub. I have only used it enough to see that it works. I'm sure I have sen another plugin like this, but couldn't find it the last time I looked.

If you want a whole website or chunk of one, you can use something like HTTRack to grab it. If the tool you use builds an index file of the pages saved, adding this to calibre should add all the pages as one book. But, you would then need to do a conversion to the format you want.

trianglekitty · 07-04-2012, 08:31 PM

Thank you both for these tips! I tried using grabmybook and while I like how easy it is to use, it seems to have an issue with text justifications or margins- not sure which. Some paragraphs are fine while others have the text end at half the length of the other sentences.

I'll give web2disk a try, though it doesn't seem as simple and straight forward as grabmybook. I mostly just want something very easy since I'm just collecting text- I don't care about images or style so much. And I'm collecting a lot of it, so I want to hit as few buttons as possible

07-02-2012, 10:23 PM	#1
trianglekitty Enthusiast Posts: 28 Karma: 16 Join Date: Jun 2012 Device: Nook Simple Touch	Macroing sequence to save to Calibre? Please? Is there a way to streamline collecting text from a website to add to calibre? For example, let's say I want to add as an e-book information from a website. I've been copy/pasting into a word document, saving as real text into my Calibre library, then converting. Is there any way to streamline that copy/paste/save? When you're speaking in terms of hundreds of sites, this is very tedious. I've tried just saving the page as html or text, but it randomly seems to strip the text of quotes and other marks Edit- I seem to have found a fairly simple way of doing this. There's a firefox add-on called text to file. You simply highlight the text you want, right click and choose 'text to file'. You can tell the program where to save the text too. Which is all well and good, but now I really need a way to shorten the time it takes me to highlight the text. I want to be able to position the cursor, then ideally macro the sequence control+shift+end to highlight all text below that point/right click/select save to text I'd even just settle for a way to assign the control+shift+end to one keyboard key. This is something I could do in an eye blink in Office or Access, but I'm struggling in Firefox. Is this even possible to accomplish? The macro add-ons I'm played with don't even register the keyboard sequence or are website specific. Last edited by trianglekitty; 07-05-2012 at 01:15 AM. Reason: Found one solution/made new problems.

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07-02-2012, 11:49 PM	#3
davidfor Grand Sorcerer Posts: 24,905 Karma: 47303824 Join Date: Jul 2011 Location: Sydney, Australia Device: Kobo:Touch,Glo, AuraH2O, GloHD,AuraONE, ClaraHD, Libra H2O; tolinoepos	It depends on how much of a site/page you want. If you just want a section of one page, then what you are doing is probably the simplest way. If you want a whole page, you can save the page to you local disc and add that to calibre. For a set of pages, create an index html file that includes all of them and add that to calibre. If you want a whole page or collection of and you are using Firefox, have a look at the plugin GrabMyBooks. With that, you click a button on the toolbar when viewing a page to add it to a collection and then later save that collection as an epub. I have only used it enough to see that it works. I'm sure I have sen another plugin like this, but couldn't find it the last time I looked. If you want a whole website or chunk of one, you can use something like HTTRack to grab it. If the tool you use builds an index file of the pages saved, adding this to calibre should add all the pages as one book. But, you would then need to do a conversion to the format you want.

07-04-2012, 08:31 PM	#4
trianglekitty Enthusiast Posts: 28 Karma: 16 Join Date: Jun 2012 Device: Nook Simple Touch	Thank you both for these tips! I tried using grabmybook and while I like how easy it is to use, it seems to have an issue with text justifications or margins- not sure which. Some paragraphs are fine while others have the text end at half the length of the other sentences. I'll give web2disk a try, though it doesn't seem as simple and straight forward as grabmybook. I mostly just want something very easy since I'm just collecting text- I don't care about images or style so much. And I'm collecting a lot of it, so I want to hit as few buttons as possible

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