4 ms·

Entrepreneur Manual: Paul Graham's Essays in ePub Format

57 points by dy 15y ago

dy 15y ago
I was reading the Startup Bible in PDF that I had on my iPhone and decided that such great writing deserved better presentation. There are some formatting gotcha's, I put this together rather quickly so it uses some libraries that aren't too gentle with pg's circa 2001 HTML formatting. I hope this doesn't violate pg's sense of copyright of his works, if so, will take down immediately.
seiji 15y ago
Warning: don't click on the epub file expecting to see anything useful. Your browser will gobble all your available memory to show you a binary zip file.
- dy 15y ago
  Yes, you should Save Link As or something similar.
- StavrosK 15y ago
  I rejected your warning because I am a naturally inquisitive person, so I wanted to see exactly what would happen. I shouldn't have.
- icco 15y ago
  Did you file a bug on github? Because it sounds like one.
- odiroot 15y ago
  Yeah, thanks, already too late :/
- jpr 15y ago
  Out of curiosity, what OS and browser? Opera on Ubuntu just displayed a big ass box of non-readable text but didn't gobble all my memory or anything.
dreeves 15y ago
Seems to be missing one of my favorites: Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule. I've been thinking about making a tool based on that idea: http://makerscheduler.com http://makerscheduler.com aka http://msched.com http://msched.com
dy 15y ago
icco Added a mobi version (Thanks!) and I put in an updated version that had a few bugs. There are definitely spacing issues etc but you can pretty easily understand the original meaning. Here's the main loop of code that extracts the text, if anyone has a better idea let me know: source = open(link['href']).read text = Readability::Document.new(source, :tags => %w[div p br font]).content xhtml_text = Sanitize.clean(text, :elements => ['a', 'div', 'pre', 'br', 'font', 'p', 'img', 'table', 'tr', 'td'], :attributes => {:all => ['class', 'id', 'src', 'href']}) xhtml_text = Mustache.render(xhtml_template, :title => link.text, :content => xhtml_text) where ePub formats expect something like xhtml_template = <<XHTML <?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml> <head> <title>{{title}}</title> </head> <body> <h2>{{title}}</h2> {{{content}}} </body> </html> XHTML
- dpapathanasiou 15y ago
  Instead of using this xhtml_template, you should pass the content through tidy with the -asxhtml switch on. This will produce a valid xhtml file that passes epub validation (http://code.google.com/p/epubcheck/ http://code.google.com/p/epubcheck/).
  - dy 15y ago
    Awesome - exactly the information I was looking for, will set it up later tonight and post both a new ePub and the source.
taylorbuley 15y ago
Was hoping to see "republished with permission" somewhere before downloading. Does PG give open license to reproduce/distribute?
- sfk 15y ago
  Well, he funds scribd, which has a substantial amount of illegal content. I don't think he should complain.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - wazoox 15y ago
    Hum, you could as well have said:"he's an internet entrepreneur, and internet is choke full of illegal content, so he shouldn't complain".
  - icco 15y ago
    Just because he funds a website that doesn't tightly monitor what is submitted does not mean it is ok to freely distribute his work without permission. That being said, the articles are already available for free on his website, but I do not see a license on them.
    - dy 15y ago
      Agreed - I have no desire to piss off pg considering the value his ideas have provided to me over the years. I considered keeping the collection private because of the copyright issue but one of his essays mentions that they're looking for people for their YC companies who are willing to push the envelope a bit :) Also, I thought about emailing him first but he says he's not responding to emails until September. (All not excuses I know). That being said, I do wonder where the line is and will be drawn in the coming years. The ePub artifact itself may be controversial (not really sure) but I'm pretty sure I could distribute the code that generates the ePub or create a page that says "click this button to generate the ePub download" and have legal precedent on my side (from the VCR cases and since there isn't any DMCA workaround I'd have to get through for the content). I recently saw on startuplessonslearned that they're selling their blog content for 29.99 (more than worth it IMO) but at the same time, their target audience could easily circumvent the need to do it either through instapaper, writing their own script or any other myriad of ways.
wazoox 15y ago
Something isn't right. It doesn't work in Epub reader (FF extension), it doesn't open in Calibre, and it doesn't open on my PRS-505.

57 points by dy 15y ago

dy 15y ago

I was reading the Startup Bible in PDF that I had on my iPhone and decided that such great writing deserved better presentation. There are some formatting gotcha's, I put this together rather quickly so it uses some libraries that aren't too gentle with pg's circa 2001 HTML formatting. I hope this doesn't violate pg's sense of copyright of his works, if so, will take down immediately.

seiji 15y ago

Warning: don't click on the epub file expecting to see anything useful. Your browser will gobble all your available memory to show you a binary zip file.

dy 15y ago
Yes, you should Save Link As or something similar.
StavrosK 15y ago
I rejected your warning because I am a naturally inquisitive person, so I wanted to see exactly what would happen. I shouldn't have.
icco 15y ago
Did you file a bug on github? Because it sounds like one.
odiroot 15y ago
Yeah, thanks, already too late :/
jpr 15y ago
Out of curiosity, what OS and browser? Opera on Ubuntu just displayed a big ass box of non-readable text but didn't gobble all my memory or anything.

dreeves 15y ago

Seems to be missing one of my favorites: Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule. I've been thinking about making a tool based on that idea: http://makerscheduler.com http://makerscheduler.com aka http://msched.com http://msched.com

dy 15y ago

icco Added a mobi version (Thanks!) and I put in an updated version that had a few bugs. There are definitely spacing issues etc but you can pretty easily understand the original meaning. Here's the main loop of code that extracts the text, if anyone has a better idea let me know: source = open(link['href']).read text = Readability::Document.new(source, :tags => %w[div p br font]).content xhtml_text = Sanitize.clean(text, :elements => ['a', 'div', 'pre', 'br', 'font', 'p', 'img', 'table', 'tr', 'td'], :attributes => {:all => ['class', 'id', 'src', 'href']}) xhtml_text = Mustache.render(xhtml_template, :title => link.text, :content => xhtml_text) where ePub formats expect something like xhtml_template = <<XHTML <?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml> <head> <title>{{title}}</title> </head> <body> <h2>{{title}}</h2> {{{content}}} </body> </html> XHTML

dpapathanasiou 15y ago
Instead of using this xhtml_template, you should pass the content through tidy with the -asxhtml switch on. This will produce a valid xhtml file that passes epub validation (http://code.google.com/p/epubcheck/ http://code.google.com/p/epubcheck/).
- dy 15y ago
  Awesome - exactly the information I was looking for, will set it up later tonight and post both a new ePub and the source.

taylorbuley 15y ago

Was hoping to see "republished with permission" somewhere before downloading. Does PG give open license to reproduce/distribute?

sfk 15y ago
Well, he funds scribd, which has a substantial amount of illegal content. I don't think he should complain.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- wazoox 15y ago
  Hum, you could as well have said:"he's an internet entrepreneur, and internet is choke full of illegal content, so he shouldn't complain".
- icco 15y ago
  Just because he funds a website that doesn't tightly monitor what is submitted does not mean it is ok to freely distribute his work without permission. That being said, the articles are already available for free on his website, but I do not see a license on them.
  - dy 15y ago
    Agreed - I have no desire to piss off pg considering the value his ideas have provided to me over the years. I considered keeping the collection private because of the copyright issue but one of his essays mentions that they're looking for people for their YC companies who are willing to push the envelope a bit :) Also, I thought about emailing him first but he says he's not responding to emails until September. (All not excuses I know). That being said, I do wonder where the line is and will be drawn in the coming years. The ePub artifact itself may be controversial (not really sure) but I'm pretty sure I could distribute the code that generates the ePub or create a page that says "click this button to generate the ePub download" and have legal precedent on my side (from the VCR cases and since there isn't any DMCA workaround I'd have to get through for the content). I recently saw on startuplessonslearned that they're selling their blog content for 29.99 (more than worth it IMO) but at the same time, their target audience could easily circumvent the need to do it either through instapaper, writing their own script or any other myriad of ways.

wazoox 15y ago

Something isn't right. It doesn't work in Epub reader (FF extension), it doesn't open in Calibre, and it doesn't open on my PRS-505.