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I'd like to create a .mobi file from a website like the Python Tutorial, to read on my Kindle.

Is it possible to do it on Ubuntu?

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  • 1
    You mean the whole site, right? Not just a single page.
    – svick
    Dec 18, 2013 at 20:38
  • 1
    @svick right, it would need to follow the links on that table of contents at least.
    – elias
    Dec 18, 2013 at 20:45

7 Answers 7

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Of course you can. The easiest method is

  1. save the whole site into a folder (e.g. mirror it with some command line tool like wget - it is available on Windows too - or Httrack)
  2. zip the folder
  3. send the zip to your device via Amazon e-mail solution.

Here's the official Amazon page documenting this feature.

If it's not what you want, you can use Calibre to convert HTML to various ebook formats, here is the official documentation.

And even more, you can download the official Kindlegen Linux CLI tool from Amazon and hand tailor the downloaded HTML with your favourite editor then convert it.

(And you can download the official Python docs in EPUB format which Amazon happily convert for you (the mailing method), and every other conversion option I had mentioned above will work with the EPUB too.)

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  • I've just tried sending the email, and got an email with error message: A problem with your document(s) sent to <MY_EMAIL_HERE>. :(
    – elias
    Dec 18, 2013 at 21:43
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    I've done this before, but it was not super easy (not super hard either). You'd first need to download the entire tutorial and create a single HTML page out of it (something like MHTML), and then use html2mobi or something. If you don't find a working solution, I can post more details. See also github.com/charlax/Python-Documentation-Kindle (and download the .mobi file)
    – user54
    Dec 18, 2013 at 22:44
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    Amazon does not covert EPUB books when you email them with "convert" in the subject line. You have to send a MOBI file. So the best way to go with an EPUB is to convert it to MOBI using Calibre and then send it to your Kindle account via email.
    – Ramon Suarez
    Oct 16, 2016 at 8:59
  • It was working in the good old days. Anyhow, according to this: the-digital-reader.com/2016/04/27/… (and I just tried it), you can still rename the file.epub to file.zip then send the zip file which get converted.
    – Zsolt Botykai
    Oct 16, 2016 at 20:40
  • It works.. but you cannot put more than 25 html docs in each zip
    – Bhikkhu Subhuti
    Jul 28, 2019 at 23:26
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I prefer Calibre solution. Debian Calibre package come with ebook-convert utility.

Grab HTML files from site by:

$ wget -r -np -nc -k -c http://.../.../..

Locate your main HTML file (usually book.html or index.html) and convert to MOBI:

$ cd dir-with-index
$ ebook-convert index.html book.mobi
$ ebook-convert index.html book.fb2
$ ebook-convert index.html book.epub
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  • 2
    Works fantastic with epub. Just the answer I was looking for. Thanks
    – mythicalcoder
    Oct 30, 2016 at 13:31
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    On Mac need set up the Path to use this command echo 'export PATH=/Applications/calibre.app/Contents/MacOS/:$PATH' >> ~/.profile and source ~/.profile
    – Xin Meng
    Jan 27, 2019 at 6:52
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    Is there a way to use ebook-convert recursively? It gets the index.html in the main directory but not in subdirectories. I have tried giving it a list of paths, but that doesn't seem to work.
    – zadrozny
    Apr 7, 2019 at 14:24
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I had the exact same problem for a long time. You can produce good results with Calibre, but I found the process was a bit involved.

Instead I created a way to do this much more easily. It's a browser extension called EpubPress (https://epub.press).

All you do is:

  1. Open the webpages you want to save in different tabs.
  2. Open EpubPress
  3. Select all the pages you want in your ebook
  4. Download

The content from the pages gets extracted and stitched together into an ebook.

Hope that helps!

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  • 2
    This is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you for creating this!
    – Arthur
    Feb 12, 2018 at 12:03
  • This is a genius project, exactly what I was missing without knowing it. Now I can get rid of the accumulation of tabs I want to read "someday" without cluttering the Kindle with a lot of short articles like before. Works perfectly and you can even select .mobi in the settings. No need for kindlegen or Calibre anymore.
    – Suzana
    May 8, 2020 at 14:17
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One thought is the Sigil e-book-building software. It's available for Linux and I believe it would do what you need although there is some manual manipulation involved.

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  • 1
    Actually, it's available for all current operating systems... ;)
    – e-sushi
    Dec 20, 2013 at 11:10
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I went nuts figuring this out. Developed mile long Xpath strings and what not. Then it turned out to be ridiculously simple. I am ignoring op systems in this answer...

(a) for the conversion to epub use Calibre. It imports as a zip file. No need to make a zip file beforehand. Then you convert the zip to ebook in Calibre.

(b) spider the web site: Cyotek WebCopy or HTTrack Website Copier will do just fine. This will create a browsable mirror of the web site on your local device. (if the web has an index page or site map listing the pages, your job is easy.)

(c) Take the site map or index or whatever page that does the best listing of what's in the web. Copy it, naming it "Table Of Contents". Edit it and change title to Table Of Contents. Change (or make one if there is none) the first header to h1>Table Of Contents. If needed, make your additions to the links in this file. ( I am assuming this file is the parent to all links. If other files refer back to this file, see if you can just use the original parent file without changing its file name as the "Table Of Contents" file. Just change its html title and header and see what happens.)

(d) to set up calibre, go to "preferences" ==> Common Options. Untick everything in the "Heuristic processing" and "Structure detection" pages. On the "Table Of Contents" page tick "Force use of auto generated Table Of Contents and Do not add detected chapters. ToC Level thingies should be blank also. That is it.

(d) Click "add book" button in Calibre and select your "Table Of Contents" file. Calibre will create the book in zip format. Then select your book and click "convert books". You have your ebook!

(e) if you want to make changes in your ToC after making the epub, it is easier with Sigil. Load your book in Sigil. go to tools==>Table Of Contents==> Edit Table Of Contents. Table Of Contents editor probably has what it takes to make the changes.

the tutorial site is very well organized. so here is another way to go about it.

You need to download the web contents with an app like httrack. You can download httrack from https://apps.ubuntu.com/cat/applications/precise/webhttrack/

The best way to go may be to use Calibre to create an epub, and then convert it to mobi again with calibre You can download Calibre for Ubuntu from https://calibre-ebook.com/download_linux or https://apps.ubuntu.com/cat/applications/lucid/calibre/

The tutorial @ https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/index.html is already well organized so it is doable.

Here is one way of going about it...

after you download it set up Calibre click preferences -> common options

select structure detection in Detect Chapters at xpath expression blank paste: //[((name()='h1' or name()='h2' or name()='h3') and re:test(., '\s((chapter|book|section|part)\s+)|((prolog|prologue|epilogue)(\s+|$))', 'i')) or @class = 'chapter']

select Table of Contents check Force use of auto-generatyed table of Contents for ToC level 1 select h1 with magic wand for ToC level 2 select h2 with magic wand for ToC level 3 select h2 with magic wand

That's it for Calibre setup

Now you can click the add books button go to your download folder go all the way in to the tutorial folder and select index.html calibre will create a book in zip format

select the book and click convert books button

you will end up with an epub with an acceptable ToC to clean up the ToC you can click edit book -> select table of contents and edit then you can convert to mobi

sorry about the bold. I could not get rid of it.

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1

Another option is https://dotepub.com, which does not require the installation of any additional programs, works across all platforms and is free.

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-1

In step 1 you can use Website to PDF to save entire website as one HTML file.

  1. The html pages must be merged. That can be done online at http://websitetopdf.net/. The result have to be one large HTML file. At the and just have to close the print program.
  2. If you work in Firefox, you can use PrintEdit addition to remove some menus,advertising banners and more.
  3. You have to save the html file on your computer.
  4. Using a Calibre you can convert the html file into the required e-book format (MOBI).
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