I just stumbled on Zenreader. Has anyone used this application? What are your thoughts?

https://zenreader.co.uk

Thanks for sharing, looks interesting to me.

This is also available for Windows.

There's a free tier.
I've signed up and downloaded it.

Hoping to at least get some new ideas by poking around on it.

This looks like very useful, well-coded software.

I particularly value the ability to drag notes, snippets, and other content from the "repository" on the right into the outline on the left.

Does anyone know of other Windows software with this "drag content into outline" feature?

It only imports web pages and PDFs. I could see this being useful for many grad students, but I work primarily with ePubs, sometimes even converting PDFs to ePub, because of the better viewing experience with font and text size choice. So this wouldn't really replace my current workflow.

The outliner component does looks interesting.

The Video Tutorials section is dead, which is disappointing, as I'd wanted to see it a bit more in-depth.

It's a wrapper app around a service, presumably an Electron app, so I'd like to see how fast or slow it is. I can't use some Electron apps, mostly because of slowness, sometimes because of strange cross-platform UI conventions employed.

Hi all,

I am one of the developers behind Zenreader, thank you very much for the comments. We are working hard to improve on the product and feedback is very appreciated.

We initially started this for grads/postgrads but are looking at bringing this technology to professionals.

We'll take some time over this holiday break to work on our video section!

As a note, we have built it using Qt and C++ rather than Electron for performance reasons. It isn't native, but allows our team to distribute on various platforms faster.

Right now, Zenreader does not support table-of-content hyperlinks in PDF files; and navigating PDF files is a bit cumbersome (you can only PgUp and PgDn and jump to the first or last page but not to a particular page). However, Carlo was very responsive, when I contacted support and promised TOC hyperlinks for one of the January releases and considers a "Goto page" command für PDF files.

So far, I am impressed. For me, reading and annotating Kindle ebooks and getting my annotations and out is much easier in Zenreader than in the Kindle software on Windows or my iPad.

Speaking of Kindle ebooks: Converting them to PDF files can be a real PITA. At least the ebooks with Amazon's DRM protection.

Calibre usually works when it comes to converting DRM-free ebooks. But the newer Calibre versions do not work with Calibre's DeDRM plugin. So I tried Epubor, a commercial tool that promised to convert DRM-protected Kindle ebooks to PDF. But you need the Windows Kindle software installed - but not the current Kindle software but an older version. That did the trick (at least for almost all my DRM-protected files).

Disclaimer: I do not know about the US and UK but in Germany you are permitted to make copies of DRM-protected ebooks for personal use (only).

DeDRM 7 will work with Python 3, and thus Calibre 5. It is currently in beta. Version 7.00b4 is now available from the DeDRM GitHub repository.

In the meantime, the best way to use DeDRM 6.x with Calibre is to install the portable version of Calibre 4.23 on an external drive or in a separate folder on an internal drive. Calibre portable is completely self-contained and will not interfere with an existing Calibre 5 installation. All previous versions are available from the Calibre web site.

Whether DRM can be removed from purchased ebooks for one’s personal use is somewhat of a grey area in the US. Publishers and book sellers like Amazon will tell you that the DMCA forbids it but have been careful not to test this in court for fear of an explicit adverse ruling.

xtabber wrote:

DeDRM 7 will work with Python 3, and thus Calibre 5. It is currently in
beta. Version 7.00b4 is now available from the DeDRM GitHub repository.

In the meantime, the best way to use DeDRM 6.x with Calibre is to
install the portable version of Calibre 4.23 on an external drive or in
a separate folder on an internal drive. Calibre portable is completely
self-contained and will not interfere with an existing Calibre 5
installation.

Yes, I forgot to mention that I first installed Calibre 5 and later on the portable version 4.xxx
Nevertheless, most of my DRM-protected Kindle ebooks could not be converted to PDF. That's why I purchased a license for the Epubor software.