PySheng downloads a book from Google Books and saves a PNG image for each page or a single PDF. It can be run either from the command-line or using a simple GUI (graphical interface). It should work out-of-the box for Unix systems (GNU/Linux, BSD) and (hopefully) for Windows.

Install

For UNIX systems:

$ wget http://pysheng.googlecode.com/files/pysheng-VERSION.tgz
$ tar xvzf pysheng-VERSION.tgz
$ cd pysheng-VERSION
$ sudo python setup.py install

Usage

GUI

Note that in order to save a PDF you need ReportLab installed.

$ pysheng-gui

Command line

• Download a whole book:

$ pysheng "http://books.google.com/books?id=2TowtKyI27wC"

• Download a whole book using the command-line and convert the images into a single PDF (requires Imagemagick). Notice that you can use the Book ID only.

$ convert $(pysheng "2TowtKyI27wC") book.pdf

Note: If you are both an experienced Python programmer and a Windows user you can help other users packaging pysheng. Contact me for further details.