[HN Gopher] Calibre - E-Book Management
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Calibre - E-Book Management
Author : soarfourmore
Score : 254 points
Date : 2021-04-27 20:18 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (calibre-ebook.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (calibre-ebook.com)
| david_allison wrote:
| Kovid only makes $1,800/m from/for development.[0]
|
| More people should support him; Calibre has been extremely high
| quality for years.
|
| https://www.patreon.com/kovidgoyal
| witherk wrote:
| Is he the sole creator? That is a sadly small sum for this
| work.
| stinkytaco wrote:
| I think there are other contributors, but he rubs lots of
| people the wrong way, so probably not as many as there could
| be.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| Great reminder. Done. I wonder how much extra income he will
| get just because you thought to mention it.
| fencepost wrote:
| Seems to me that he might do better if he put in a few tiers of
| "You get absolutely nothing extra for this except the thanks of
| Kovid and the Calibre community for supporting ongoing
| development." Right now all support is custom donations.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Calibre is one of those rare examples of software where the
| kitchen-sink approach is absolutely warranted. It's a one-stop
| shop for pretty much everything related to e-book management,
| conversion, or creation.
|
| I spend most of my time in Calibre just managing my library or
| converting ebooks between formats (particularly if I'm pulling
| ebooks off my Kindle or Kobo to strip their DRM). When I want to
| test whether the conversion was successful, the built-in ebook
| viewer is there. It's not _great_ , and I wouldn't use it over
| some dedicated programs to read an entire book, but it gets the
| job done.
|
| Then there's that rare occasion in which I might actually need to
| _edit_ an ebook, because the ToC is broken or I spotted an
| annoying typo that I feel compelled to fix. And for that, the
| e-book editor tool is more than capable. Again, maybe it 's not
| ideal (I've never tried producing an e-book start-to-finish
| through it), but for some quick edits, it just works.
|
| There's alot to be said for UNIX philosophy and fighting bloat,
| but sometimes having everything you could conceivably need for a
| given purpose in one well-maintained program is comforting.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >one of those rare examples of software where the kitchen-sink
| approach is absolutely warranted
|
| I actually like this approach in general and I often wonder why
| there's so much animosity towards it. There's something about
| platform-like software like Calibre, or Emacs or WeChat where
| it becomes more than the sum of its parts that you just don't
| get with just a collection of disjointed, individual tools.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| It's because it doesn't fit into the modern zeitgeist of
| extreme testability and pandering to computer illiterates
|
| Every time this kind of UI comes up in discussion, I feel
| like there is always someone groaning about how much extra
| effort and cost is involved with giving the user too many
| options. In fact, you could say that modern software seeks to
| eliminate all noncritical optionality. Combine this with gobs
| of pointless whitespace, an inexplicable need to humanize
| pretty much everything, and smother the user in unnecessary
| feelgood emotions...
|
| And then people wonder why modern apps suck so much...
| zapzupnz wrote:
| That chip on your shoulder against everything post-2007-ish
| must be pretty heavy.
|
| Modern apps don't suck. Specific design patterns suck. Not
| all things modern adhere to those design patterns. Not all
| the patterns you mention suck.
|
| If I were hiring you to design an interface, your aversion
| to "humanize pretty much everything" would kick me right
| off the list. It reeks of tech-saavy elitism.
| neolog wrote:
| > Not all things modern adhere to those design patterns.
|
| Could you give some examples?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I think it's because integrated tools parts are often worse
| than the non-integrated versions _and_ when people are forced
| to use them, it means removing choice.
|
| A half-dozen well integrated mediocre tools is better than
| the sum of its parts, but that doesn't mean it's better than
| a half-dozen not-at-all integrated excellent tools.
|
| A half-dozen pretty good tools that are well integrated is
| going to be excellent, but you'll still have some greybeards
| saying "I have to click through 12 menus to frobnicate the
| widget in this thing, while my old tool I could do it with a
| single command"
|
| 99% of "Integrated tools" fall more into the first category
| than the second, which makes sense; N non-integrated tools
| can have N parallel teams working on them, while an
| integrated tool cannot. This means each tool will get only a
| fraction of the effort in the integrated tool; it's a special
| case of Conway's Law.
| umvi wrote:
| Calibre has a great CLI too for automating ebook generation
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| The only thing I have against calibre is that the scroll speed on
| books is _really_ fast. It 's easy to flick 20 pages forward or
| backward on accident. Makes me miss smooth scroll on other
| interfaces.
| IThoughtYouGNU wrote:
| Great piece of software.
| dsr_ wrote:
| Invaluable for the command-line tool ebook-convert; I rarely use
| any other part of it.
| fireattack wrote:
| Similarly, I primarily use calibre-debug CLI to extract
| resources from ebook.
| yazantapuz wrote:
| I love Calibre, and I _love_ its user interface. Maybe a little
| arcane, but free of modern ux nonsense.
| [deleted]
| timwaagh wrote:
| Nice if you're into downloading ebooks illegally or from the few
| sites that don't do ERP. I used to use it too. However since
| graduating college and starting to make money I didn't download
| anything anymore due to lack of time more than lack of funds so I
| don't use it anymore.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| This implies that the only use for Calibre has to do with
| illegally downloaded ebooks... and i'm not sure how that has
| anything to do with it though.
|
| Personally the only times i have used Calibre is the opposite
| of that: i used it with books i bought on Amazon to remove the
| DRM and convert them to epub so that i can read them on my
| mobile phone using my favorite ebook reader app (and also keep
| my own offline copies of course).
| paxys wrote:
| Unlike other kinds of content most books ever written are out
| of copyright and completely free today. Publishers and
| distributors, however, have every incentive in the world to
| keep charging you for them. Efforts like Project Gutenberg and
| Calibre are going a long way towards taking back control from
| Amazon & co. for things that shouldn't be owned and controlled
| by them in the first place.
| AcidBurn wrote:
| I recently started self hosting calibre-web[0] which consumes a
| calibre database and provides a basic web interface for viewing
| and uploading books to it. The killer feature for me is that it
| can act as a Kobo sync server. It makes getting my entire library
| onto my e-reader a breeze.
|
| 0: https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web
| xiconfjs wrote:
| I'm using this for my 80k+ documentation library and couldn't
| be happier - so easy to share your library with other users.
|
| Kudos for your project.
| xconverge wrote:
| It does also allow for conversion of EPUB -> MOBI without using
| the calibre standalone application. calibre-web is now my
| primary interface to my existing calibre database file. I keep
| calibre ready/installed but haven't needed it in over a year
| muhammadusman wrote:
| I've been using Calibre for years to manage my ebooks, convert
| them, and sync them. This is one of those pieces of software that
| just works.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| it seems like every time I open Calibre it wants to autoupdate.
| curiouser2 wrote:
| nah it's worse, prompts for a manual download and update.
| [deleted]
| purplecats wrote:
| I use Calibre to manage my Kindle pdfs and books. It is one of
| the oldest pieces of software I use, and it works really well.
| brutal_chaos_ wrote:
| Just a nit/aside: I'm sure the OS you are using has much older
| software built in. Iif on Windows, imagine the legacy that's
| stuck there for backwards compatibility. If on Linux, most of
| that is really old, updated recently perhaps, but created a
| long time ago. macOS is similar to Linux, though arguably worse
| as they dont update software that changed from gpl2 to gpl3,
| iirc.
|
| There's a lot of really old software you probably use anytime
| you are on a computer. can't forget all of that!
|
| as an avid calibre user myself, yay there are dozens of us! :)
| minsc__and__boo wrote:
| Does anyone know of any good ebook platforms that compete with
| Amazon?
|
| Getting really sick of the Goodreads/Amazon interfaces and lack
| of quality recommendations.
| cogburnd02 wrote:
| Uh, LibGen?
| michaelmcdonald wrote:
| Obligatory link to the terminal emulator that Kovid also created
| / maintains that is super nice:
|
| https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/
| LibertyBeta wrote:
| Wait, I didn't know they where the same person. Neat.
| Pasorrijer wrote:
| My favourite eReader for android is and always will be AlReader.
| Some dudes pet project but it is glorious and wonderful.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| I just wish it wasn't so ugly and felt like 1990s software.
| thrower123 wrote:
| The one thing I really don't like about Calibre is how it will
| copy all of my ebooks into its own file organization. There is
| probably a way to disable this, but that is the default.
|
| Kind of irritating when you have Calibre in a cloud-storage
| folder and your books are also in the cloud storage, and it uses
| up your space with duplicates.
| m463 wrote:
| ...and rewrites/truncates the file titles
| jpindar wrote:
| Once I put a book into Calibre, and make sure the metadata is
| correct, I delete the original. If there's any important info
| in the original filename I put it in the metadata. Is there a
| reason I need to save the originals?
| neilsimp1 wrote:
| I was surprised by this on my first use too. I just decided to
| give up and store my ebooks in the format that it wants, rather
| than just the media/books folder I already had.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| "There is probably a way to disable this"
|
| No, there is not, and never will be:
|
| https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq.html#why-doesn-t-calibr...
|
| Calibre's library is meant to be _the_ place where you store
| your books.
|
| I'm curious why you want to store a second copy outside
| Calibre. Is it because:
|
| 1. Calibre doesn't allow you to find books the way you want?
| (e.g. tagging doesn't have the all metadata you want)
|
| 2. You have other software (e.g. ebook reader software) that
| needs to read ebook files, and it's impossible/inconvenient to
| use Calibre's OPDS server for that purpose?
|
| 3. Some other reason?
| thrower123 wrote:
| I've already got them organized. At this point some of these
| PDFs and CHM and LIT files could get drafted, they're so old.
| TomatoDash wrote:
| From the linked Calibre FAQ:
|
| > Why doesn't calibre let me store books in my own folder
| structure?
|
| > ... a search/tagging based interface is superior to folders
| ...
|
| > ... much more efficient than any possible folder scheme you
| could come up with ...
|
| Quite opinionated software. That and the quirky UI are
| reasons why I only use Calibre for a conversion or de-DRM
| here and there. Jump in, flail around until task done, fast
| exit.
| mattkevan wrote:
| Calibre is great. There's a real lack of good quality ebook
| software and Calibre is an essential do-everything toolkit.
|
| The interface, however, is like some incredible piece of outsider
| art, gloriously free of best practice, convention or accepted
| wisdom.
|
| As a UX designer it gave me some trouble at first, but now I've
| genuinely come to appreciate it. There's no way the interface
| could be 'improved' by conventional standards of aesthetics or
| usability without losing the thing that makes it special in the
| first place.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Calibre's UI is an artifact from a superior and more civilized
| time, IMHO
|
| Extremely functional and just a little bit incomprehensible.
| Compared to modern UI/UX which just slaps me with how stupid it
| thinks I am
| paxys wrote:
| > Compared to modern UI/UX which just slaps me with how
| stupid it thinks I am
|
| Because most average users of any software absolutely fall in
| that bucket. My mom can use the Facebook app on her phone
| just fine, but I wouldn't even dare to suggest that she try
| to convert an eBook on Calibre and transfer it to her Kindle.
| colechristensen wrote:
| It reminds me a bit of something you would find running on
| solaris in the 90s.
| the_af wrote:
| I agree the UI is confusing. However, I'm glad Calibre exists,
| solves my needs, and is so versatile. And in the end, I decided
| the confusing UI didn't matter all that much. I'd rather they*
| spent their efforts in improving stability and features rather
| than making a fancy intuitive UI -- assuming of course you
| can't have both. If you can have both, all the better!
|
| *I'm never sure if Calibre is a one-person effort. If it is,
| more kudos to the author.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| The UI is not the only weird part of it, probably the least
| weird one.
|
| What I miss are first-class attachments (i.e. code archives and
| CD/floppy images) support, raw file naming (without automatic
| romanization of non-ASCII alphabets), flat storage (without
| creating a separate folder for every book). Using a Calibre-
| managed library from outside of Calibre (i.e. on a PocketBook
| reader) feels quite unnatural.
|
| Another thing I always wanted is a simple viewer app without
| library management features. Like Adobe Acrobat Reader but for
| ePub and other book formats. The Linux app closest to this
| concept also comes with Calibre (Sumatra does the job on
| Windows). All the other book viewers I've seen insist on
| maintaining your library.
| secstate wrote:
| If you're on linux, check out Foliate. It's everything you're
| asking for :D
| imwillofficial wrote:
| This is the best attitude I've ever seen in a rebuke of a poor
| interface. I wish I treated every criticism this way.
| m463 wrote:
| It's obviously a labor of love. Sort of like a house that was
| built by someone's grandfather ... also subject to
| grandfathered building codes. :)
| dmix wrote:
| > The interface, however, is like some incredible piece of
| outsider art, gloriously free of best practice, convention or
| accepted wisdom.
|
| That was a wonderful way to put it. Excellent writing.
| webwielder2 wrote:
| This is how I feel about the Libby app for iPhone. What is it
| with book apps?
| https://twitter.com/bendansby/status/1334717731925417986?s=2...
| stinkytaco wrote:
| I'm genuinely curious to hear any specific changes you might
| make. I'm a librarian and I can say that Libby was a _huge_
| improvement in usability over the Overdrive app and we spend
| much less time on basic user support now. There are weird
| quirks for me as well, but I 'm always hard pressed to say
| exactly what I would change.
| philips wrote:
| It is a huge improvement over the low bar set by Overdrive.
| I use Libby everyday with my children and I think my three
| complaints are:
|
| 1. Filtering and categorization can be confusing: I have a
| difficult time finding books that are age appropriate for
| my daughter and available. I end up memorizing favorite
| authors as that is easier than the filtering.
|
| 2. The four buttons at the bottom are... interesting? The
| "library card" button the second from the left does... what
| exactly? I have never really understood the purpose of that
| button or why it is shaped like a card.
|
| 3. Figuring out how to exit a children's book that is read
| "within" the libby app is inconsistent. I can never figure
| out how to reliably call up the UX to exit or change books.
| abawany wrote:
| Re. 2 I just checked: for the currently selected library,
| it shows you what looks like curated content from the
| library, to enable you to pick up on things that you
| might not necessarily do when just interacting with the
| app with searches and etc.
| synergy20 wrote:
| Essential OSS for me, I wish the new update can be more user
| friendly though, something like "downloading at the backend and
| prompt you to update when you feel like it"
| VonGuard wrote:
| Calibre is great, but if you just want to throw a directory at an
| ebook server and be done, Ubooquity is GREAT!
| https://vaemendis.net/ubooquity/
| pmlnr wrote:
| > Ubooquity server requires Java 8 (Oracle version).
|
| That is rather limiting in 2021.
| dsr_ wrote:
| It's perfectly happy to use OpenJDK 11.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Yeah and Mac OS will bitch about Java 8 as well.
| stinkytaco wrote:
| I prefer calibre-web[1] and it is under active development.
|
| [1]:https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web
| rrdharan wrote:
| Seconding calibre-web; I rarely interact with calibre itself
| anymore since calibre-web handles the bulk of the tasks I'm
| trying to accomplish.
| asoneth wrote:
| Calibre is great once you get the hang of the interface. The one
| thing I haven't yet figured out is how to stop it from butchering
| Kobo (kepub) ebooks downloaded from Standard Ebooks:
|
| _" Important: Don't use Calibre to transfer the kepub file!
| Calibre will apply its own conversion on top of our own
| conversion, making for strange results"_ from
| https://standardebooks.org/help/how-to-use-our-ebooks
| johnchristopher wrote:
| Calibre's interface isn't to my liking but since they added the
| possibility to manage collections/bookshelves ~two years ago for
| my almost ten year old kobo I love it a lot ^^. Managing
| collections/bookshelves on the Kobo is a major PITA.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Added support for Kobo's "series" organization feature as well.
| Apparently requires some janky 2-stage process because it's not
| done with the book's built-in metadata; you have to sync the
| books to the Kobo, then sync again for it to poke the special
| series sauce after the files are on the device.
|
| Seems like a needlessly complicated way to do it when the books
| have series metadata, so props to Calibre for the extra work to
| support that!
| gnull wrote:
| Agreed, I'm very happy with their Kobo support.
|
| A great discovery for me was that Calibre can convert to KEPUB
| (subset of EPUB tailored for Kobo readers).
| La1n wrote:
| Check out koreader for Kobo devices. I've been using it for a
| quite some time and it adds some nice Calibre features such as
| wireless sync. Besides that the PDF support is leaps ahead of
| stock Kobo
|
| https://github.com/koreader/koreader
| lobstrosity420 wrote:
| Calibre just works and is great, but the user interface needs
| some work to modernize how it looks and to be less confusing in
| general. I'd love a fork that follows the Gnome Human Interface
| guidelines.
| pmlnr wrote:
| > the user interface needs some work to modernize
|
| No, it doesn't. Eventually people learn to use it, and everyone
| is happy that way.
| mishac wrote:
| Not everyone is happy, which is why many of us wish it had a
| better UI.
| turtlebits wrote:
| There are some huge UI warts, so I only use it to convert
| e-books.
|
| 1. I can't figure out how to change the styling of the book
| viewer. 2. Whenever I search, then try to hit backspace to
| modify my search terms, it tries to delete the first search
| result.
| FemmeAndroid wrote:
| I don't know. I've bounced off it multiple times and just
| given up.
| the_af wrote:
| What do you use instead of Calibre? I haven't found a
| similar tool that is as useful, is free, runs on Linux,
| etc.
|
| I find Calibre is not a tool to "enjoy" spending time on,
| but simply a tool to solve something specific so that I can
| then spend time on my Kindle.
|
| There are other tools where I want to enjoy the time I
| spend using them (say, text editors, paint programs, IDEs)
| but Calibre is not one of them.
| Pasorrijer wrote:
| I use AlReader on android... But I don't think there is a
| Linux equivalent.
| zapzupnz wrote:
| People shouldn't _have_ to learn how to use its complicated
| interface. The killer feature is managing eBooks, not rocket
| science.
|
| There is nothing at all about the Calibre interface that
| needs to be the way it is. What's so interesting is the way
| it apes an old version of iTunes, one which nobody would've
| considered the pinnacle of UX, and _still_ manages to
| complicate and bury things in unexpected places.
| paxys wrote:
| Considering that it is an amazing piece of software but 90%
| of the comments on this thread (made up of mostly technical
| users) are about its user interface, it should be obvious
| that there are some problems.
| the_af wrote:
| I disagree and I hope no effort is wasted on this. Calibre is
| great and any confusion is solved by googling.
|
| If and only if the author(s) feel they have time and energy to
| spend on this, then that's ok. But no forks and no wasted
| energy, please!
|
| I'd rather they spent time solving bugs and improving/adding
| features.
| curiouser2 wrote:
| Yeah it's wild how the use case for 90% of users is "convert
| epub/mobi/whatever to azw3 and upload to kindle" and doing that
| is buried in several right click context menus... I'm
| comfortable doing it now but it seems as easy as having a left
| pane for books in my "library" and right pane for books on my
| device
| tucosan wrote:
| If you just want to convert books and then copy them to your
| device I suggest you have a look at the command line tools
| installed alongside calibre.
|
| `ebook-convert` does exactly that.
|
| https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/de/generated/de/ebook-
| conve...
| hackerbrother wrote:
| Yup!
|
| ebook-convert mybook.epub mybook.mobi
| Elora wrote:
| I'm afraid that attempts to change it will ruin it, like many
| other things. Calibre _just works_ and once you 've learned how
| to use it, it's great that it doesn't change on you for no
| particular reason. I personally wish it remain unchanged.
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(page generated 2021-04-27 23:00 UTC)