Convert html tables to images for ebook reader

[Brendan Kidwell]

I'm taking a class this term and when I saw the size of the two
textbooks (about 2100 pages total, 6"x9") I decided I really wanted to
try going with ebooks instead of paperback. One was available as a PDF
from the publisher (Apress) and the other as a Kindle edition. I
bought these.

So, I noticed that the Kindle edition has all complicated figures, and
tables, delivered as flat images. Perhaps the ebook artist judged
Kindle's table support to be inadequate. The trick works, and you can
easily pan and zoom all the embedded tables-as-images.

I want to start building an ebook library of (mostly) free texts I
find on the Internet. I'll carefully convert all my aquisitions to
Markdown format and from there I can convert using Pandoc to whatever
format is best for my chosen reader at the time I want to read it. I
happen to have an old Rocket Ebook 1100 which has no table support.
(The FOSS converter for REB unwraps tables into a series of
blockquotes which isn't too bad really for small tables.)

After all that rambling, my question for the group is this: does
anyone know of a good solution do perform Apress's HTML table trick,
so I could do that for my REB? I want a conversion pipeline step that
takes in HTML in one end and puts out HTML with tables rendered down
as images on the other end.

Brendan Kidwell

P.S. I recommend you do NOT buy Apress books as Kindle editions! The
index in mine is plain text with no page numbers (they'd be
irrelevant) and ... No hyperlinks! The Kindle edition's TOC is fine,
as are the TOC and index of the PDF of the other book -- entries are
hyperlinked.

... And just my personal opinion: don't buy a Kindle edition of
anything unless you're prepared to "liberate" your file right away to
unencrypted Mobipocket format. :^)