paper2remarkable

paper2remarkable is 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 p2r command 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 -n flag).

paper2remarkable makes it as easy as possible to get a PDF on your reMarkable from any of the following sources:

• arXiv
• ACM Digital Library
• CiteSeerX
• JMLR
• NBER
• NeurIPS
• OpenReview
• PMLR
• PubMed Central
• SpringerLink
• A generic URL to a PDF file
• A local PDF file
• Any article on a website

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 an source that you would like to see added to the list, let me know!

paper2remarkable takes the source URL and:

1. Downloads the pdf
2. Removes the arXiv timestamp (for arXiv sources)
3. Crops the pdf to remove unnecessary borders
4. Shrinks the pdf file to reduce the filesize
5. Generates a nice filename based on author/title/year of the paper
6. Uploads it to your reMarkable using rMapi.

Optionally, you can:

• Download a paper but not upload to the reMarkable using the -n switch.
• Insert a blank page after each page using the -b switch (useful for note taking!)
• Center (-c) or right-align (-r) the pdf on the reMarkable (default is left-aligned), or disable cropping altogether (-k).
• Provide an explicit filename using the --filename parameter
• Specify the location on the reMarkable to place the file (default /)

Here's the full help of the script:

usage: p2r [-h] [-b] [-c] [-d] [-n] [-p REMARKABLE_DIR] [-r] [-k] [-v] [-V]
           [--filename FILENAME] [--gs GS] [--pdftoppm PDFTOPPM]
           [--pdftk PDFTK] [--qpdf QPDF] [--rmapi RMAPI]
           input

Paper2reMarkable version 0.6.5

positional arguments:
  input                 URL to a paper or the path of a local PDF file

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
  -n, --no-upload       don't upload to the reMarkable, save the output in
                        current working dir
  -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
  --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)

And 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.

Installation

The script requires the following external programs to be available:

• pdftk, qpdf, or pdftk-java, whichever your package manager provides.
• GhostScript
• rMAPI
• Optional: pdftoppm (recommended for speed). Usually part of a Poppler installation.

Specifically:

1. First install rMAPI, using

   $ go get -u github.com/juruen/rmapi
   

2. Then install system dependencies:

   • Arch Linux: pacman -S pdftk ghostscript poppler
   • Ubuntu: apt-get install pdftk ghostscript poppler-utils. Replace pdftk with qpdf if your distribution doesn't package pdftk.
   • MacOs: brew install pdftk-java ghostscript poppler (using HomeBrew).

3. Finally, install paper2remarkable:

   $ pip install paper2remarkable
   

   this installs the p2r command line program.

If any of the dependencies are not available on the PATH variable, 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!

Alfred

On MacOS, you can optionally install this Alfred workflow. Alfred is a launcher for MacOS.

Once installed, you can then use rm command and rmb (for the --blank pages to insert blank pages between pages for notes) with a URL passed. The global shortcut Alt-P will send the current selection to p2r. Note that by default --right is passed and p2r is executed in your bash environment. You can edit the Workflow in Alfred if this doesn't work for your setup.

Printing

Printing to p2r allows printing prompts to save directly to your reMarkable tablet, passing through p2r for processing.

For MacOS, you can follow the guide for printing with rmapi, but for the bash script, instead use this script:

for f in "$@"
do
	bash -c -l "p2r --right '$f'" 
done

Docker

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 git and docker installed.

First clone this repository with git clone and cd inside of it, then build the container:

docker build -t p2r .

Authorization

If you already have a ~/.rmapi file, you can skip this section. Otherwise we'll use rmapi to create it.

touch ${HOME}/.rmapi
docker run --rm -i -t -v "${HOME}/.rmapi:/home/user/.rmapi:rw" --entrypoint=rmapi p2r version

which should end with output like

ReMarkable Cloud API Shell
rmapi version: 0.0.5

Usage

Use the container by replacing p2r with 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 --help

# equivalent 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:r" 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 ~/.bashrc file to abstract away the Docker commands:

# in ~/.bashrc

alias p2r="docker run --rm -v \"${HOME}/.rmapi:/home/user/.rmapi:rw\" p2r"

Then you can use paper2remarkable from the command line as p2r!

Notes

License: MIT

If you find a problem or want to suggest a feature, please let us know! You're helping to make this project better!