Fetch an academic paper or web article and send it to the reMarkable tablet with a single command
paper2remarkableis a command line program for quickly and easily transferring an academic paper to your reMarkable:
$ p2r https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.11242
There is also support for transferring an article from a website:
$ p2r https://hbr.org/2019/11/getting-your-team-to-do-more-than-meet-deadlines
The script can be run through the
p2rcommand line program or via Docker (see below). If you're using MacOS, you might be interested in the Alfred workflow or Printing to p2r. On Linux, a background terminal such as Guake can be very handy. Note that even without a reMarkable, this program can make downloading papers easier (just use the
-nflag).
paper2remarkablemakes it as easy as possible to get a PDF on your reMarkable from any of the following sources:
The program aims to be flexible to the exact source URL, so for many of the academic sources you can either provide a URL to the abstract page or to the PDF file. If you have a source that you would like to see added to the list, let me know!
paper2remarkabletakes the source URL and:
Optionally, you can:
-nswitch.
-bswitch (useful for note taking!)
-c) or right-align (
-r) the pdf on the reMarkable (default is left-aligned), or disable cropping altogether (
-k).
--filenameparameter
/)
Here's an example with verbose mode enabled that shows everything the script does by default:
$ p2r -v https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.11242 2019-05-30 00:38:27 - INFO - Starting ArxivProvider 2019-05-30 00:38:27 - INFO - Getting paper info from arXiv 2019-05-30 00:38:27 - INFO - Downloading url: https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.11242 2019-05-30 00:38:27 - INFO - Generating output filename 2019-05-30 00:38:27 - INFO - Created filename: Burg_Nazabal_Sutton_-_Wrangling_Messy_CSV_Files_by_Detecting_Row_and_Type_Patterns_2018.pdf 2019-05-30 00:38:27 - INFO - Downloading file at url: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1811.11242.pdf 2019-05-30 00:38:32 - INFO - Downloading url: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1811.11242.pdf 2019-05-30 00:38:32 - INFO - Removing arXiv timestamp 2019-05-30 00:38:34 - INFO - Cropping pdf file 2019-05-30 00:38:37 - INFO - Shrinking pdf file 2019-05-30 00:38:38 - INFO - Starting upload to reMarkable 2019-05-30 00:38:42 - INFO - Upload successful.
The script requires the following external programs to be available:
Specifically:
First install rMAPI, using
$ go get -u github.com/juruen/rmapi
Then install system dependencies:
pacman -S pdftk ghostscript poppler
apt-get install pdftk ghostscript poppler-utils. Replace
pdftkwith
qpdfif your distribution doesn't package
pdftk.
brew install pdftk-java ghostscript poppler(using HomeBrew).
Finally, install
paper2remarkable:
$ pip install paper2remarkablethis installs the
p2rcommand line program.
Optionally, you can install:
pdftoppm (recommended for speed). Usually part of a Poppler installation.
the ReadabiliPy package with Node.js support, to allow using Readability.js for HTML articles. This is known to improve the output of certain web articles.
If any of the dependencies (such as rmapi or ghostscript) are not available on the
PATHvariable, you can supply them with the relevant options to the script (for instance
p2r --rmapi /path/to/rmapi). If you run into trouble with the installation, please let me know by opening an issue on Github.
The full help of the script is as follows. Hopefully the various command line flags are self-explanatory, but if you'd like more information see the man page (
man p2r) or open an issue on GitHub.
usage: p2r [-h] [-b] [-c] [-d] [-e] [-n] [-p REMARKABLE_DIR] [-r] [-k] [-v] [-V] [-f FILENAME] [--gs GS] [--pdftoppm PDFTOPPM] [--pdftk PDFTK] [--qpdf QPDF] [--rmapi RMAPI] [--css CSS] [--font-urls FONT_URLS] [-C CONFIG] input [input ...]Paper2reMarkable version 0.8.6
positional arguments: input One or more URLs to a paper or paths to local PDF files
optional arguments: -h, --help show this help message and exit -b, --blank Add a blank page after every page of the PDF -c, --center Center the PDF on the page, instead of left align -d, --debug debug mode, doesn't upload to reMarkable -e, --experimental enable experimental features -n, --no-upload don't upload to reMarkable, save the output in current directory -p REMARKABLE_DIR, --remarkable-path REMARKABLE_DIR directory on reMarkable to put the file (created if missing, default: /) -r, --right Right align so the menu doesn't cover it -k, --no-crop Don't crop the pdf file -v, --verbose be verbose -V, --version Show version and exit -f FILENAME, --filename FILENAME Filename to use for the file on reMarkable --gs GS path to gs executable (default: gs) --pdftoppm PDFTOPPM path to pdftoppm executable (default: pdftoppm) --pdftk PDFTK path to pdftk executable (default: pdftk) --qpdf QPDF path to qpdf executable (default: qpdf) --rmapi RMAPI path to rmapi executable (default: rmapi) --css CSS path to custom CSS file for HTML output --font-urls FONT_URLS path to custom font urls file for HTML output -C CONFIG, --config CONFIG path to config file (default: ~/.paper2remarkable.yml)
By default
paper2remarkablemakes a PDF fit better on the reMarkable by changing the page size and removing unnecessary whitespace. Some tools for exporting a PDF with annotations do not handle different page sizes properly, causing annotations to be misplaced (see discussion). If this is an issue for you, you can disable cropping using the
-k/
--no-cropoption to
p2r.
For HTML sources (i.e. web articles) you can specify custom styling using the
--cssand
--font-urlsoptions. The default style in the HTML provider can serve as a starting point.
A configuration file can be used to provide commonly-used command line options. By default the configuration file at
~/.paper2remarkable.ymlis used if it exists, but an alternative location can be provided with the
-C/--configflag. Command line flags override the settings in the configuration file. See the config.example.yml file for an example configuration file and an overview of supported options.
On MacOS, you can optionally install this Alfred workflow. Alfred is a launcher for MacOS.
Once installed, you can then use
rmcommand and
rmb(for the
--blankpages to insert blank pages between pages for notes) with a URL passed. The global shortcut
Alt-Pwill send the current selection to
p2r. Note that by default
--rightis passed and
p2ris executed in your
bashenvironment. You can edit the Workflow in Alfred if this doesn't work for your setup.
Printing to
p2rallows printing prompts to save directly to your reMarkable tablet, passing through
p2rfor processing.
For MacOS, you can follow the guide for printing with
rmapi, but for the bash script, instead use this script:
for f in "[email protected]" do bash -c -l "p2r --right '$f'" done
If you'd like to avoid installing the dependencies directly on your machine, you can use the Dockerfile. To make this work you will need
gitand
dockerinstalled.
First clone this repository with
git cloneand
cdinside of it, then build the container:
docker build -t p2r .
paper2remarkableuses rMapi to sync documents to the reMarkable. The first time you run
paper2remarkableyou will have to authenticate rMapi using a one-time code provided by reMarkable. By default, rMapi uses the
${HOME}/.rmapifile as a configuration file to store the credentials, and so this is the location we will use in the commands below. If you'd like to use a different location for the configuration (for instance,
${HOME}/.config/rmapi/rmapi.conf), make sure to change the commands below accordingly.
If you already have a
~/.rmapifile with the authentication details, you can skip this section. Otherwise we'll create it and run
rmapiin the docker container for authentication:
$ touch ${HOME}/.rmapi $ docker run --rm -i -t -v "${HOME}/.rmapi:/home/user/.rmapi:rw" --entrypoint=rmapi p2r version
This command will print a link where you can obtain a one-time code to authenticate rMapi and afterwards print the rMapi version (the version number may be different):
ReMarkable Cloud API Shell rmapi version: 0.0.12
Use the container by replacing
p2rwith
docker run --rm -v "${HOME}/.rmapi:/home/user/.rmapi:rw" p2r, e.g.
# print help and exit docker run --rm -v "${HOME}/.rmapi:/home/user/.rmapi:rw" p2r --helpequivalent to above usage
docker run --rm -v "${HOME}/.rmapi:/home/user/.rmapi:rw" p2r -v https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.11242
to transfer a local file in the current directory
docker run --rm -v "${HOME}/.rmapi:/home/user/.rmapi:rw" -v "$(pwd):/home/user:ro" p2r -v localfile.pdf
For transferring local files using the Docker image, you may find this helper function useful.
You can also create an alias in your
~/.bashrcfile to abstract away the Docker commands:
# in ~/.bashrcalias p2r="docker run --rm -v "${HOME}/.rmapi:/home/user/.rmapi:rw" p2r"
After running
source ~/.bashrcto activate the alias, you can then use
paper2remarkablethrough Docker by calling
p2rfrom the command line.
License: MIT
If you find a problem or want to suggest a feature, please open an issue on Github. You're helping to make this project better for everyone!