[Tex/LaTex] How to make a Kindle file from LaTeX

ebookkindle

I've looked around on this site and did some Google searches, but I haven't found an answer. I want to take my TeX document and convert it to a Kindle format that can uploaded to the Kindle Digital Platform. I already have the code written, which is suited for producing a PDF.

Best Answer

You can try tex4ebook. It can output epub, epub3 and mobi formats. It is based on tex4ht and you must have kindlegen app installed in order to generate mobi format for kindle.

Resolution

Tex generates DVI and pdftex generates PDF. Both of these are resolution independent. If you want to convert to a bitmap format, then you can use something like pdf2png (slow) or dvipng (fast).

Margins

The geometry package gives a lot of control of margins.

Figures in grayscale

Figures on the arXiv will be in a huge variety of formats. EPS, PNG, PDF, not to mention metapost code, PSTricks, PSFrag, and the latex picture environment. The standard formats can all be rasterized to a 4-bit PNG at a decent resolution using something like GraphicsMagick, but it will likely need manual intervention or some really clever scripting. Once you've got the bitmap, you need to feed it to latex, dealing with the fact that some submissions use latex (which doesn't understand png) and others use pdflatex (which doesn't understand eps), they will use a combination of packages, such as graphics, graphicx, epsfig and various journal classes with their own twists, so there will need to be some intelligent editing of the latex file. For metapost, PSTricks, PSFrag you will need more extensive editing.

Removing boxes around hyperlinks

This one is relatively easy. In many cases, simply compiling the arXiv tarball will do this already, because the arXiv uses hypertex to add these links, and if you compile with regular tex this won't happen. If the authors used the hyperref you can in many cases remove the \usepackage line, or, more safely since maybe the author used some commands from hyperref, add the colorlinks option to colour the links instead of drawing boxes (you can set the colour to black if you don't even want to see them that way).

[Tex/LaTex] LaTeX options for kindle

Here's a plan:

Create a kindle-friendly preamble (or a document class)

Redefine your page geometry to match your screen ratio (geometry package)
Remove most of the margins (also with geometry)
Remove or resize headers and footers (perhaps with fancyhdr)
Enlarge text until it is readable to you (depends on which TeX friend you are using)
Choose appropriate (legible) fonts (depends on which TeX friend you are using)
Redefine you section titles to smaller spacing (titlesec package)
Reduce other spacing as well (various lenghts like \abovecaptionskip)

Don't use absolute sizes in your documents:

Rescale your figures to fit factor\textwidth
Mathematics should automatically break at the end of the line (breqn package might help)

If you didn't create a document class:

Extract your document content (textbody) to a content-file
\include{content-file} after the \begin{document}

If you created a document class, you will just have to change your class before compiling.

Possible result

Kindle pdf result

The figure is the result of the following code:

\documentclass[10pt]{article}

\usepackage{fontspec}      % font selection
\setmainfont{Cambria}
\usepackage{breqn}         % automatic equation breaking
\usepackage{microtype}     % microtypography, reduces hyphenation
\usepackage{polyglossia}   % language selection
\setmainlanguage{english}

\usepackage{graphicx}      % graphics support

\usepackage[font=small,labelformat=simple,]{caption}   % customizing captions

\usepackage{titlesec}      % customizing section titles
\titleformat{\section}{\itshape\large}{}{0em}{}
\titlespacing{\section}{0pt}{8pt}{4pt}
\titleformat{\subsection}{\itshape}{}{0em}{}
\titlespacing{\subsection}{0pt}{4pt}{2pt}
\titleformat{\subsubsection}[runin]{\bf\scshape}{}{0em}{}
\titlespacing{\subsubsection}{0pt}{5pt}{5pt}

\usepackage[papersize={3.6in,4.8in},hmargin=0.1in,vmargin={0.1in,0.1in}]{geometry}  % page geometry

\usepackage{fancyhdr}   % headers and footers
\pagestyle{fancy}
\fancyhead{}            % clear page header
\fancyfoot{}            % clear page footer

\setlength{\abovecaptionskip}{2pt} % space above captions 
\setlength{\belowcaptionskip}{0pt} % space below captions
\setlength{\textfloatsep}{2pt}     % space between last top float or first bottom float and the text
\setlength{\floatsep}{2pt}         % space left between floats
\setlength{\intextsep}{2pt}        % space left on top and bottom of an in-text float

\begin{document}

In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.

\section{Wonderful section title}

Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look 
\begin{figure}[htb]
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{alice}
\caption{Quite wide picture, resized to fit}
\end{figure}
about her and to wonder what was going to happen next.

\subsection{Tufte-style subsection}

then she looked at the sides of the well

\subsubsection{Saving space running in} and noticed that they were filled with cupboards and book\-shel\-ves. 

\begin{dmath}[label={sna74}]
\frac{1}{6} \left(\sigma(k,h,0) +\frac{3(h-1)}{h}\right)
+\frac{1}{6} \left(\sigma(h,k,0) +\frac{3(k-1)}{k}\right)
=\frac{1}{6} \left(\frac{h}{k} +\frac{k}{h} +\frac{1}{hk}\right)
+\frac{1}{2} -\frac{1}{2h} -\frac{1}{2k},
\end{dmath}

\end{document}

Different font sizes can be easily selected using fontspec.