a devlog on machines & languages

28 rr: An EPUB Reader

I do a lot of reading on my PC in addition to my Kobo and the Xteink. It is mostly web articles and PDFs, and not a lot of EPUBs, because there is a strange lack of nice readers with good support for the format.

Zathura/Okular and other PDF readers provide rudimentary support. The Calibre reader is passable, but I hate it for one specific reason: it modifies the file when reading.1 One other option is KOReader. But it is too complicated on the PC for what I want. There are a few others I have tried over the years but not a single one has worked for me.

This is why rr is a pleasant surprise. I found it when the author submitted it to HN today. It is a completely functional reader with basic theming that runs in your terminal. I read a couple of Sherlock Holmes stories in it today.

  1. I haven't used this in years, so I do not exactly remember where and how Calibre does it. I only remember that file hashes I used to control certain directories no longer matched after I opened them in Calibre. ↩