Auto-generate multiple formats

[Tomte]

Using Calibre .7.14 I can currently download news recipes in the selected default format (for me, mobi.)

However I'd also like to have the news in ePub.

Is there any way to automate the conversion to ePub? I know I can manually convert it. Maybe some command line intervention that I could schedule to run the appropriate time?

The goal is to have the file in the correct format when I access remotely via the content server from either my Kindle 2 or the iPhone iBooks reader.

Any ideas would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

[itimpi]

Originally Posted by Tomte;

The goal is to have the file in the correct format when I access remotely via the content server from either my Kindle 2 or the iPhone iBooks reader.!

As far as I know iBooks cannot access the Calibre content server (although I wish it could). If you want to this you would need to use an alternative ebook reader that understands the OPDS catalog format. The ones that spring to mind for the iPhone are Stanza and QuickReader.

[Tomte]

I can access Calibre on the iPhone using the web browser, then open the file using iBooks.

The real issue is getting Calibre to automatically create an ePub version in addition to my default format of .Mobi.

There doesn't appear to be a way to set Calibre to create two formats automatically. I've done a little bit of investigating into doing a conversion at the command line, but I don't know yet if this is really a viable option.

[kovidgoyal]

You need to use the ebook-convert command line tool to downlaod each news recipe twice, once per output format.

[Tomte]

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction! I have my batch file for Windows XP Home written and working; it may not be the most elegant, but I post it here in case others are interested:

REM --------------------------------------------
REM Set a variable called TODAY with today's date
REM --------------------------------------------
REM
for /f "tokens=2-4 delims=/ " %%a in ('date /T') do set year=%%c
for /f "tokens=2-4 delims=/ " %%a in ('date /T') do set month=%%a
for /f "tokens=2-4 delims=/ " %%a in ('date /T') do set day=%%b
set TODAY=%year%-%month%-%day%
REM
REM --------------------------------------------
REM Change directories
REM --------------------------------------------
REM
cd "C:\Program Files\Calibre2\resources\recipes"
REM
REM --------------------------------------------
REM Grab all the recipes for today
REM --------------------------------------------
REM
start /wait ebook-convert usatoday.recipe "C:\Program Files\Calibre2\resources\mynews\usatoday\%today%.u satoday.mobi"
start /wait ebook-convert usatoday.recipe "C:\Program Files\Calibre2\resources\mynews\usatoday\%today%.u satoday.epub"
REM
REM --------------------------------------------
REM List the Database contents and add new files
REM --------------------------------------------
REM
start /wait calibredb list
start /wait calibredb add -1 -d "C:\Program Files\Calibre2\resources\mynews\usatoday"
REM
REM --------------------------------------------
REM Make a backup and clean working directory
REM --------------------------------------------
REM
copy "C:\Program Files\Calibre2\resources\mynews\usatoday\*.*" "E:\files\eBooks\originals\News\*.*"
del/q "C:\Program Files\Calibre2\resources\mynews\usatoday\*.*"
REM
REM --------------------------------------------
REM Exit Gracefully
REM --------------------------------------------
REM
exit