[HN Gopher] Kavita - Self-hosted digital library which supports ...
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Kavita - Self-hosted digital library which supports a vast array of
file formats
Author : thunderbong
Score : 280 points
Date : 2021-11-29 08:06 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.kavitareader.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.kavitareader.com)
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| > supports disabling Authentication
|
| Could it then be used as a public library of one's own works?
| majora2007 wrote:
| I mean, I guess so. It'd still be weird because progress would
| be tracked when people logged in. User accounts would still be
| there. (Although you could just reset it nightly or do some
| clever tricks with a reverse proxy to force everything to be
| read in incognito mode)
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| this looks very slick. I have a very weird requirement when it
| comes to reading digital content. It has to be 100% distraction
| free because otherwise I end up getting sucked into Netflix or HN
| which is a lot less mental effort than getting into the flow of a
| new book. I don't trust myself not to open another tab and start
| researching about some things in the book, which leads to quickly
| checking slack or something else. This rules out anything that
| runs in a browser which I use to access all my other things. I
| also turn off the network on my other devices and on my laptop
| when it's reading time, not just to avoid notifications but to
| create a higher barrier for myself in case I "feel like" changing
| my mind after 3 pages.
|
| If all this feels a bit sad it's because it is.
|
| What I love about Kavita is that it seems to be much more social
| because I can lend books to a friend. I haven't checked if this
| is supported but the killer feature for me (for which I'd adjust
| my above rules/behavior and switch to Kavita) would be
| collaborative reading where we can put books on each others
| reading list, share notes or comments, or view each others
| progress. Like Netflix guest accounts with the difference that
| you can actually do things together (so way beyond Netflix today)
|
| The "sharing" sounds a bit intrusive but it would help me a great
| deal in keeping up with my daily reading goals knowing that it's
| public to friends. It would be cool for book clubs too. Kavita is
| the first software where such features would/could make sense (if
| not then maybe in a fork?)
|
| Right now I convert all my formats (epub etc) into pdf and then
| after disabling my network, use zathura with a dark theme to
| read. I keep notes with markdown files and once I've finished the
| book I reneame the pdf from book_title to read-book_title.
| Reading it a second time the filename becomes read2-book_title
| and so on ... When I share a book I send the file to a friend
| (only if they ask) who put it on their reading list and (10/10)
| forget about it forever.
|
| It's a dumb approach for single user where the goal is to read as
| much as I did as a child without distraction. It's actually worse
| an experience than having the physical book in my hand which I
| can smell and then put on a shelf like a trophy and be proud of
| or lend it to a friend who will only ask for it if genuinely
| curious because they know once they return it they probably need
| to say a word or 3 about what they thought of it (or admit they
| didn't read it). With digital books I often finish a book and
| still don't know the author because the only time I've seen the
| cover was when I was at page one. And even the title I forget
| quickly regardless how good it was because of the same reason.
|
| Kavita makes me a tiny bit excited, ... if not about it's current
| state, then about the potential it could have.
| eightails wrote:
| > I have a very weird requirement when it comes to reading
| digital content. It has to be 100% distraction free because
| otherwise I end up getting sucked into Netflix or HN
|
| Not exactly a radical recommendation or anything, but have you
| tried a dedicated e-reader? No distractions possible that way,
| and you get the all the usual benefits -- e-ink screen, weeks-
| long battery, etc. I enjoy mine.
|
| > With digital books I often finish a book and still don't know
| the author because the only time I've seen the cover was when I
| was at page one
|
| Kobos (maybe Kindles as well?) can display the cover of the
| current novel while they're sleeping.
| Bayart wrote:
| Kindles do it, although it's disabled by default (which I
| appreciated, I don't want people to know the trash I'm
| reading).
| gravypod wrote:
| I'd love to have something like this if I ever bought a
| https://onyxboox.com/boox_nova3color
|
| If it could download "to-read" books/manga onto local storage and
| then sync page numbers when you connect to wifi that would be
| amazing.
| majora2007 wrote:
| We have download support and "To Read" might be a collection or
| a readlist, so you could just download those series onto your
| device of choice if you don't want to user our web reader. If
| you use the web reader, of course, progress is tracked for you.
|
| If you're talking more like how Plex does sync, I literally
| just tried that with a Progressive Web App last week, but it
| didn't pan out. There wasn't enough control with a PWA (which
| means I'm going to have to write something native-ish in the
| future).
| gravypod wrote:
| It seems like there's an API so I'm assuming it is possible
| to do.
| synergy20 wrote:
| how is this different from calibre?
|
| a quick check seems like this is a docker(running ubuntu inside,
| code is in CSharp) with a web interface, while calibre is a
| binary to install directly.
| colecut wrote:
| Because it is web based, it is meant for sharing your library
| with users on other computers, or accessing your library
| remotely, while calibre is not geared for that purpose.
| nikprasad wrote:
| Sorry guys, but I genuinely don't understand what's the point of
| this. Is it an e-reader like the kindle reader for browser?
| necovek wrote:
| It's a web server software to serve your e-book and e-comic
| collection.
|
| It shows the catalogue of your titles and allows reading inline
| (in the browser) as well.
| nikprasad wrote:
| Gotcha. Thanks for clearing that up.
| mmastrac wrote:
| This looks awesome. Reading behaves a little weird on Firefox -
| the page seems to shift to the left briefly before showing the
| next page.
|
| I've been a big fan of the Plex approach for curation.
|
| Would be awesome to integrate some one-click addition from high-
| quality ebook sources like Standard Ebooks (does it support
| upstream OPDS sources?).
| majora2007 wrote:
| Can you elaborate or create an issue on Github? I primarily use
| Firefox and haven't noticed anything.
|
| We support OPDS for consumption, but not for consuming content.
| I have some loose plans to support upstream sites/sources, but
| nothing concrete nor planned.
| mmastrac wrote:
| If I can repro this more reliably, I'll definitely report.
| It's a very subtle flicker where the content appears to the
| left of where it should be when flipping through pages.
| thunderbong wrote:
| Comparison with similar software -
|
| https://wiki.kavitareader.com/en/faq/compare-to-competition
| d33 wrote:
| Speaking of libraries, does anyone know a minimalist amateur
| library software a hackerspace could use? We currently only have
| a few books, but the list could as well grow and it would be nice
| to have a webpage that would help us track who brought / borrowed
| what.
| pvillano wrote:
| a spreadsheet. no really. until you have >1000s of books, a
| spreadsheet will have all you need
| michaelmior wrote:
| This is assuming you have a trusted editor who can make
| updates (or that you trust everyone who needs access to make
| reasonable edits).
| severine wrote:
| A search for "minimalist amateur library software" got me this:
|
| https://www.goodfirms.co/blog/best-free-open-source-library-...
|
| Good luck!
| gigglesupstairs wrote:
| Looks like a Plex for all kinds of books? Neat idea by the looks
| of it.
| kubb wrote:
| So you can only read while at home, unless I misunderstood
| something.
| majora2007 wrote:
| You should def setup a reverse proxy. Our wiki has examples
| for most of the popular ones:
| https://wiki.kavitareader.com/en/install/reverse-proxy
| justinlloyd wrote:
| Setting up a reverse proxy is a good way to access the
| server or container but I would recommend that nobody do
| this. I did a quick look through of the code on github and
| I would strongly advocate against exposing this server to
| the internet at this time even if it were situated behind a
| reverse proxy with an encrypted connection. The code is
| immature and not particularly well hardended, many error
| messages just spew out to Console and catch clauses are
| empty/non-logging and don't handle the error. There were
| several places in the repository pattern that gave me
| pause, and whilst there was only a limited number of
| ExecuteCommand invocations wrapped in a helper function,
| that is not to say there isn't a way to ExecuteCommand or
| perform other attacks. A malformed PDF, CBR or epub could
| easily fuzz this server. A VPN connecting to the server, or
| at the very least, symmetric challenge/response HTTPS with
| a client key requirement on the reverse proxy, with the
| server running in an isolated Docker container is the only
| way I'd expose this service.
|
| P.S. I know you are the author of the code and not trying
| to state anything about the code, but merely that I would
| be careful exposing it to the internet at this time.
| pmontra wrote:
| An offline reading feature would be great. Start the
| reader, mark some books for offline access, download them,
| go offline, read them, sync the page number with the server
| when back online.
| majora2007 wrote:
| Haha I tried this last week with PWAs, but they weren't
| able to provide the level of control I needed to achieve
| literally this idea. So it looks like native-ish code is
| in my future for iOS and Android :(
|
| But you can download files and use native readers
| already.
| luke2m wrote:
| Boringproxy if you're like me and don't want to port forward
| or use a vpn.
| perakojotgenije wrote:
| You can make an ssh tunnel to it using http://sshreach.me and
| open it when you want to access it while you're away from
| home.
| necovek wrote:
| One can always set up a VPN into their home, or make their
| server public. It's not for the faint of heart, though.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| I do have a 'public' homeserver for two years now, so far
| so good.
|
| Lets see if this jinxes it!
| omnicognate wrote:
| Wireguard to your home network is a must if you're into
| homelab/self-hosting, and no harder to set up than any one
| of the services you'll have set up on your home network. I
| love having direct access to my home network from my phone.
| coldacid wrote:
| How does this compare to Calibre? I very much appreciate
| Calibre's extensibility of metadata and make use of it in my own
| digital library collection, and despite being (seen as) a desktop
| app, has a nice and well-working server mode which allows me to
| access my collection from any device I want.
| majora2007 wrote:
| Calibre is a powerhouse of an application. It is built for
| people that want really in-depth metadata curtailing and
| exploration. Kavita is not that.
|
| At the moment, in terms of metadata Kavita is pretty limited.
| The current release is adding more metadata support (local) and
| attempting at downloading metadata from external sources
| (nothing else really does this except other tools).
|
| It really depends on you and your library. I personally just
| want to be able to read my stuff and focus on things like
| genres and put collections and read lists together (for custom
| read orders), so Kavita is the best solution. If you want in-
| depth metadata, then you're better off setting up Calibre-web
| or Komga.
| agluszak wrote:
| "a rocket fueled self-hosted digital library" - what does it mean
| that it's rocket fueled...?
| ohlookabird wrote:
| Maybe a play on "batteries included"?
| majora2007 wrote:
| It just means that it is fast :)
| joekrill wrote:
| Maybe they are big fans of Newsradio (one of my all-time
| favorite shows) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JpwjnMFlJI
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Does this work with any real eink readers as a "store" and sync
| service? I checked it out but they only mention mobile apps, not
| devices
| majora2007 wrote:
| This requires having a web reader (edit: or OPDS), so I'm not
| sure about that.
| RealStickman_ wrote:
| Any OPDS-capable reader can access the media on the server
| and they also have their own API afaik, though I haven't
| really found any 3rd party client apps yet.
| reacharavindh wrote:
| Looks neat. I would love for such a tool that also has full text
| search on the books. I tried searching for "JSON" which is indeed
| in one of the books in the library and it did not find that book.
| majora2007 wrote:
| Our search only currently works on the series titles. It's
| getting an overhaul in 2 releases time though, but Full text
| search within books is not going to be supported. It's a very
| complicated task and there are better softwares out there to
| support that.
| justinlloyd wrote:
| Has password format requirements. How I set my passwords on my
| network is up to me.
|
| Doesn't let you know of this password format requirement in an
| older Chrome browser. It simply sits there dumbly and doesn't let
| you register.
|
| Analytics (opt-out rather than opt-in) sent back to server with a
| pinky promise not to send any other data.
|
| Why do I need Twitter javascript and Twitter cookies included in
| my e-reader? No, just no. Why do I have to be on-guard against
| what tracking and additional cruft is included in my own
| server?!?
|
| Paging through the library 30 books at a time rather than
| scrolling. The 1990's web called asking for its UI back but I
| didn't pick up because we text these days.
|
| Messes with the directory contents and formats. That is a hard
| pass from me.
|
| I'll stick with the sucky broken system I have right now than a
| shiny new broken system that still sucks but also messes with my
| directory structure.
|
| Great effort, but your execution lands as wide of the mark as
| every other solution out there.
| nprateem wrote:
| Entitled random on the Internet isn't impressed. I'm sure the
| author will be gutted.
| justinlloyd wrote:
| No, entitled would be me expecting the author to fix it. He
| can execute his vision however he wants, it just ain't my
| vision. Also, author promotes on public forum then author
| should expect feedback, both positive and negative.
| SuperNinKenDo wrote:
| While they're being a bit of a smart ass about it, the
| criticisms are totally valid and they're not being entitled
| for offering them when the project is posted in a public
| space.
|
| In fact pointing out that it contains telemetry and JS from
| Twittwr seem pretty important things to point out to people,
| at least in my book.
| satish-setty wrote:
| UI with minimalism, open source and cross-platform (Win, Lin,
| Mac) -- what's not to like about it?!
|
| And a great name too. Kavita means poem or poetry in Sanskrit and
| pretty much all Indic languages.
|
| I'm sure others will point out the pros/cons vis-a-vis Calibre
| reader. But each serves a different niche. This one seems
| particularly geared towards comics. So cannot expect all the
| bells and whistles of Calibre.
| mijoharas wrote:
| > Kavita means poem or poetry in Sanskrit and pretty much all
| Indic languages.
|
| Thanks for posting this. They don't seem to have that in their
| FAQs, and I find that's a very common thing. I often wonder
| about the naming of a project, and too often it's far too hard
| to find out. (In this case, it is simple enough to google
| "kavita meaning" and find out, but I feel like I find myself
| unable to find out for lots of projects)
| dotancohen wrote:
| > Kavita means poem or poetry in Sanskrit and pretty much all
| Indic languages.
|
| Interestingly, in Semitic languages Kavita means writing or
| written things.
| tasn wrote:
| In case anyone else is confused: in Sanskrit it's Ka-vi-ta
| (it seems), in Semitic (at least Hebrew), it's k-ti-va. So
| quite different.
| LegitShady wrote:
| if you take the K as a ch throat sound, it means omelette
| in hebrew.
| [deleted]
| Sephiroth87 wrote:
| Looks nice, I've been rolling my own simple version of something
| similar because none of the existing solutions supported my main
| use case, which is to convert format on the fly for the target
| device (a la Plex)
|
| In case you need ideas for future features :)
| majora2007 wrote:
| I'm curious how you achieve this? Is it similar to Calibre-
| web's Send to device? Or did you code the conversions yourself
| (or are you using an external service) and emailing the file?
|
| Are you also providing the reading experience or sending the
| converted file raw to use in another program's reader?
| Sephiroth87 wrote:
| You use the webapp from your target device, then when you
| select a book, it's converted on the server (I use mostly
| Kindle Comic Coverter and Calibre ebook-convert), then served
| as a regular html download and opened in a native reader.
|
| This works particularly well from Kindle, so I never have to
| connect it to a computer, and I don't have any email size
| limit which is quite easy to go over with comics
| majora2007 wrote:
| Interesting, I'll have to look into that as well. I have a
| lot of platforms that I have to support, so utilizing tools
| can be problematic. I'm sure that's why send to email is so
| popular (and it's easy to implement).
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| usrme wrote:
| Would love to give the demo a try, but am getting "Your
| credentials aren't correct" unfortunately.
| majora2007 wrote:
| That just means someone changed it because they are bullies.
| Let me change it back. :)
| dotancohen wrote:
| Are you the dev? The `img/hero/example.png` image is way too
| big, I watched it slowly load over the course of maybe 5
| seconds.
| majora2007 wrote:
| I am. I probably just need to compress it (and write some
| media queries too). Thanks for the note.
| jiriro wrote:
| Same here.
| Darmody wrote:
| Yes, no way to try it.
| Terretta wrote:
| > _Kavita is a rocket fueled self-hosted digital library which
| supports a vast array of file formats._
|
| Doesn't sound very ESG. What is rocket fuel in digital library
| contexts, and why is rocketing desirable to feature in a digital
| bookshelf's heading blurb?
| billfruit wrote:
| Is there any Document Management System with good search/indexing
| capabilities, versioning and format conversation features that is
| targeted for personal use by individuals?
|
| This and Calibre seems focused on ebooks, rather than on
| documents.
| majora2007 wrote:
| I think you're looking for something like paperless-ng.
| https://github.com/jonaswinkler/paperless-ng
| billfruit wrote:
| Not exactly the same as that. I'm had in mind something more
| focused on working documents in one's PC, not just scanned
| paper documents. For the working documents, versioning,
| diffing etc that a DMS will provide could be really useful.
|
| Something like Xerox Docushare but only for ones own private
| documents.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Dunno.
|
| My hack for reading Manga is to pack them up into a PDF and
| download them to a tablet where I can read them unconnected.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Most manga/book servers support a protocol called OPDS that
| saves you from jockeying files around by hand, and there are
| good cbr/cbz readers for every tablet out there which integrate
| nicely with OPDS.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It ain't hard to get a bunch of image files for a manga and
| then pack them into a PDF with a Python script. I am going to
| use the PDF reader on the tablet anyway to read other
| documents, why install another (probably) badly written app.
|
| (e.g. there is a word that starts with "cr" and ends with
| "ap" and it's no accident. I had to try about 6 different QR
| code reader apps to find one that didn't crash on launch on
| my Samsung tablet.)
| jrm4 wrote:
| I'm still looking for the library solution that doesn't mess with
| whatever file/folder arrangement _I choose._ I find it very odd
| that this seems to be such a difficult deal to do in the ebook
| space, considering the vast array of picture /video and music
| managers that seem to have no problem with this.
| majora2007 wrote:
| I think Ubooquity is probably your best bet. But it's no longer
| maintained and has some issues with larger libraries due to how
| the library scan is implemented.
| captn3m0 wrote:
| Ubooquity does offer this.
|
| Edit: Setup Kavita using Docker, and the directory structure
| isn't maintained.
|
| I'm very tempted to write a Caddy plugin for OPDS to solve for
| this.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Did a little more looking around. It also appears "Komga"
| might do this as well? Will be trying both.
|
| https://komga.org/
| ThermalCube wrote:
| If you can download the files, why can't you upload as well?
| majora2007 wrote:
| Kavita is at the moment, aimed to be more like Plex.
| Theoretically you could upload files, but the main aim is
| exploring and consuming your content. Different people have
| very different schemes for where files should go.
|
| One user does everything by genres, so /comics/romance/series,
| another does it by publisher and years. The problem with
| uploading is that there is no right answer. It's better to just
| inform Kavita that new files are on the disk and let the scan
| pick them up than try to build a complicated solution that is
| going to meet everyone's niche needs.
| yumraj wrote:
| First of all, great work and name. I hadn't even realized that I
| was looking for this. Installed it on my NAS under docker.
|
| Also got interested in competitors so tried a couple. Here are my
| notes:
|
| 1) docker works well. UI is fine, was able to figure out without
| much effort.
|
| 2) not sure what is the difference manga and comics? For some
| reason it didn't scan some Pdfs as manga but did as comics.
|
| 3) wasn't able to make caliber-web docker work, but tried
| ubooquity. For some reasons PDFs render sharper with ubooquity
| than with Kavita. It is fairly obvious and checked with a few.
| All settings are default. ubooquity was also faster, but I prefer
| the UI of Kavita.
| Isthatablackgsd wrote:
| > wasn't able to make caliber-web docker work
|
| I done through this route before. From the best of my crappy
| memory, you need to make sure that you create calibre library
| before starting the web part. You would have to do it through
| the standalone app.
|
| And for docker, it kinda a fickle from I remember. you have to
| bind the calibre-web to your local calibre library folder. You
| need to enable the docker to access to that folder. It took me
| multiple guides to understand how to make this works.
| chheplo wrote:
| Nice. I have been waiting for something like this. I will be
| monitoring closely, and once it has highlight and notes feature,
| I will move my books from iCloud.
| surajs wrote:
| not to be a spoilsport but no annotations?
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(page generated 2021-11-29 23:01 UTC)