uniread

Uniread is Spritz like CLI fast reading software.

Content

• Supported ebook types
• Installation / update
• Usage
  • Controls
  • Resuming and recent books
• Developers guide
  • Yarn package manager
  • Getting sample books for testing
  • Coding Style
    • Linting
  • Testing
• Authors
• Contributors
• Backers
• Sponsors

Supported ebook types

We try to support as much as possible of ebook formats. If you have any kind of requests, feel free to create feature request in issues.

• epub (thanks to julien-c/epub library)
• text (thanks to pzmarzly and PR #25)
• pdf (thanks to Mozilla pdf.js library)
• markdown, .md / .markdown (thanks to marked library)
• html, .html / .htm / .xhtml
• mobi, .mobi / .prc / .azw
• docx (thanks to mammoth library)
• fb2, FictionBook

Where a format says how it is divided up, uniread follows it: epub uses its spine, pdf its bookmarks, fb2 its sections, and markdown, html, docx and mobi their top two heading levels. Everything else is read as a single chapter.

Anything else that reads like text is treated as plain text, so a file with no extension or an unfamiliar one still opens.

Mobi books using HUFF/CDIC compression, and any DRM protected book, cannot be read.

Installation / update

sudo npm install -g uniread

Usage

uniread ~/Books/somebook.epub

Run it without a book to pick one from your recently read books:

uniread

Text can be piped in, which is handy for reading a web page through a tool that extracts its text:

get-current-page-text | uniread

To start stopped, rather than having to catch up with a book that is already running:

uniread --paused ~/Books/somebook.epub

Controls

Key	Action
space	Pause / resume
j / k (or arrows)	Next / previous chapter
+ / -	Speed up / slow down
h / l (or arrows)	Rewind / forward one word
f	Flash the word on and off, or leave it on screen
s	Style words, or show them plain
ctrl+k	Open a recently read book
q / escape	Quit

Uniread blanks the screen briefly between words, so each word is read rather than half remembered from the pixels the last one left behind. Press f if you would rather each word simply replaced the one before it.

Colours

Uniread is drawn in the Dracula palette, and the styling below takes its colours from the same place. On a terminal that only knows sixteen colours, each is shown as the nearest shade it has.

Styled words

Uniread reads a little meaning out of each word and shows it: a word that names a colour appears in that colour, a quotation is underlined, and a sentence ending in an exclamation mark is emboldened. Press s for plain words instead.

A word that has already been said, in the same sentence or in the last ten words, is coloured too, so repetition blindness does not carry you past it. The words that always repeat, the and and and so on, are left alone.

Underline stands in for italic, which terminals do not reliably offer, and a colour outside the sixteen a terminal knows is shown as the nearest shade it has.

Resuming and recent books

Uniread remembers where you left off in every book you open. Reopening a book picks up from that word, and ctrl+k switches to another recent book without leaving the reader — each book keeps its own position.

Progress is written while you read, when you pause, and when you quit. The library lives at $XDG_DATA_HOME/uniread/library.json (by default ~/.local/share/uniread/library.json) and holds the last 50 books. Delete that file to forget everything; books that have since been moved or deleted are dropped from the list automatically.

Developers guide

Yarn package manager

For this project development, we are using faster, yarn package manager.

To install it, run:

sudo npm install -g yarn

After that, you need to install dependencies, using:

yarn

Getting sample books for testing

Books source: https://pressbooks.com/sample-books/

To download books, run

yarn get-books

Coding Style

Coding style of this project is defined inside .editorconfig and to use it, download Editor Config plugin for your text editor.

Linting

For linting, we are using eslint (configured in eslint.config.js) and to run it, you can just use:

yarn lint

To let eslint fix what it can:

yarn lint-fix

Testing

To run tests, we use mocha.

To run it, simply:

yarn test

Authors

• Nemanja Nedeljković

Also, huge thanks to these people.

Contributors

This project exists thanks to all the people who contribute. [Contribute].

Backers

Thank you to all our backers! 🙏 [Become a backer]

Sponsors

Support this project by becoming a sponsor. Your logo will show up here with a link to your website. [Become a sponsor]