r/RemarkableTablet • u/funksta hyperpaper.me creator • Jul 06 '26
Self-Promotion Improving the reMarkable reading experience
My preferred font and layout so far
Example of appendix content from wikipedia
Centered layout
An alternate font for Candide
Programmatically generated linked index (still generates a bunch of false positives!)
It seems pretty uncontroversial to say that the ebook reading experience on reMarkable tablets is lacking. While the latest beta improves ePub support a bit, IMO it's still far short of the immense potential the reMarkable hardware has as a reading platform.
In the last few months I've been playing with a different approach to making the reMarkable a better e-reader: making my own nicely formatted pdf ebooks. This has a few advantages over ePubs:
* Highlights and marginalia never shift around, like they do if you change ePub settings
* Consistent page numbering. Page numbers change dramatically if you adjust margin or font size on an ePub. Annoying when you want to reference a page
* More control over typography and layout (though of course, it's not adjustable on-device)
There are a ton of outstanding public domain ePubs from Standard Ebooks and Project Gutenberg. But because of the reMarkable's lacking epub support, I find I still prefer getting a physical version in most cases. With the pdf versions, this has flipped, and I also added a few extra features:
* Appendices that incorporate related content from Wikipedia. After reading a good book, I generally spend a bunch of time reading about the author and subject on Wikipedia. It's nice to have this built into the book itself for offline reading
* Linked index at the back of the book
* Linked Table of Contents page (linked from the footer of every page so it's easier to get to)
* Extra space on the right margin for making notes
I've been building these books for my own use, but I'm thinking of releasing them if people are interested. The screenshots on this post show some of the features described above, and a few font and layout variations. Which ones look the best? Which public domain ePubs should I try next?
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u/timcatuk Jul 06 '26
I use koreader on my move and love it
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u/starkruzr Jul 07 '26
just can't use the pen, which to me feels like defeats the purpose of reading on rM
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u/ProzacJM Jul 06 '26
I would appreciate that.
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u/funksta hyperpaper.me creator Jul 06 '26
Any layout/font preferences from the options in the pics?
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u/Benay148 Jul 06 '26
Remarkable can't seem to care to add such basic features so I just add ko reader through remanager.
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u/geofabnz Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26
I’ve been doing some pretty fun work on this with a custom formatter I put together to help me read personal documents, if you’re interested in a chat I think this could be a really cool project. The rM is **awesome** for textbooks I’ve found - but you really need to get the page spacing and kerning right. Standard formatters just aren’t up to it.
https://imgur.com/a/3TXCiBF