[MacOS] Help, using shell script and ebook-convert, hazel

[EmilThelonius]

Hi Calibre-Community,

I have a question about using the ebook-convert program from calibre in a shell script – as I am a total noob to shell scrips, maybe someone here can help me? I am eager to learn and would be very thankful!

So I am using hazel on a mac to automate certain folders. Within one of the folders I want to have an automatic conversion from ePub to pdf. I stumbled over a very useful shell script in the internet, which can be used directly in hazel:
https://jake.ch/2013/03/03/hazelbooks/

FULL_PATH="$1"
ORIG_FILE=$(basename "$FULL_PATH")
/Applications/Calibre.app/Contents/MacOS/ebook-convert "$ORIG_FILE" "converted/$(basename "$FULL_PATH" .epub).pdf"

This works pretty well: it makes a pdf and puts it in a "convert" folder. But now I want to tweak the PDF to a certain size, add page numbers, set margins etc...

So I found the commands for the ebook-convert app from calibre:
https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/gen...output-options

But how can I include for example

--custom-size

to the shell script above? And how do I set the hight and the width?

[kovidgoyal]

you simply add options to the end of the command line in the script

and if your want to change page size, IIRC the option is named --pdf-page-size

run ebook-convert file.epub .pdf --help

in terminal.app to get help on all the available options.

[EmilThelonius]

Thank you for your quick reply!

I got this in the log from hazel:

command not found

So I figured I need to install the calibre command line tools in MacOS –*but I cannot figure out, how to do that. I am in MacOsX Mojave –*maybe the system is to protected?

Is it possible to install the arguments without turning Off Rootless System Integrity Protection of MacOsX Mojave?

[EmilThelonius]

Ah, I have got it –*but I am not sure what did the trick.
I downloaded the Xcode Command Line Tools from the apple developers page. Then I used the terminal phrase from this threat:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=264945

Originally Posted by eschwartz

The command-line tools are installed to your system PATH on Windows and linux, but not on OSX -- because OSX uses Bundles, which have no way to trigger post-install commands I believe.

There used to be an option in Preferences to symlink the tools into /usr/bin on OSX (like the linux installer does) but apparently the method used to get root privileges was deprecated a while back.


The solution is to manually symlink them:

sudo ln -sf /Applications/calibre.app/Contents/console.app/Contents/MacOS/* /usr/local/bin/

Note: My auto-upgrade script does this automatically. See here: https://github.com/eli-schwartz/calibre-installer
Note2: I don't use OSX, I experimentally ported it from the linux script which I do use, but I have received confirmation that it works as expected on OSX.


EDIT: Changed to accommodate System Integrity Protection, introduced in El Capitan.

Now I can use the command line tools from calibre – its magic I love calibre!
I will write a full workflow with Hazel and Shell Script this evening in here! Thanks for your help!