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The Calibre Content Server

manual.calibre-ebook.com

61–70 of 145 posts

Re: The Calibre Content Server

#61

Related but slightly off topic: Am I the only one who is turned off to calibre due to how "heavy" and clunky it feels? I suspect this is due to the program being written in Java. I think the author does great work maintaining the project but frankly wish it was more modern. Perhaps this is a good side project for me to delve into ;) EDIT: thanks to users who clarified that Calibre is written in python.

Calibre is written in Python

Re: The Calibre Content Server

#62

Related but slightly off topic: Am I the only one who is turned off to calibre due to how "heavy" and clunky it feels? I suspect this is due to the program being written in Java. I think the author does great work maintaining the project but frankly wish it was more modern. Perhaps this is a good side project for me to delve into ;) EDIT: thanks to users who clarified that Calibre is written in python.

I've used it for years and love its features but yeah the UI and processing always felt heavy like a java app but as someone else noted it's not java - it's python so I suspect the laggy of slowness in the UI might be a side effect of python's single threaded / GIL performance issues. Python can be fast, especially for scientific work but in my experience - I get annoyed by python apps more than other interpreted languages such as Ruby as it often seems to peg a single core to 100% whenever I'm waiting for something to finish processing - again I'm sure it's the way things are written more than the language itself as such but it seems it makes it hard to write python applications that make efficient use of modern multi core CPUs. (I host a lot of Python, Ruby and web apps written in various other languages).

Re: The Calibre Content Server

#63

Related but slightly off topic: Am I the only one who is turned off to calibre due to how "heavy" and clunky it feels? I suspect this is due to the program being written in Java. I think the author does great work maintaining the project but frankly wish it was more modern. Perhaps this is a good side project for me to delve into ;) EDIT: thanks to users who clarified that Calibre is written in python.

Much as I love pyGTK, apps written in it feel pretty chunky :/

Here's looking at you, Mint Menu

(not nearly as bad as Electron though)

Re: The Calibre Content Server

#64
post #21

They have also made Calibre look a little less crappy on high definition screens, and added a conversion to .docx: https://calibre-ebook.com/new-in/twelve

So glad about this, it always looked terrible on any Macs as it wasn't really designed with 2.5K-5K screens in mind.

Re: The Calibre Content Server

#65
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are going to pirate the book, you might as well just go straight to something like Pirates Bay. It's much easier.

Very many books are not available on torrent sites.

Very many are available on library genesis among others. The pirate bay is a bad place for books.

Re: The Calibre Content Server

#66
post #4

I've always just used Calibre because it's a nice way for me to strip DRM and then archive my books. I've never really used it any kind of active way. Since I buy pretty much everything from Amazon, I already effectively have a content server. Does anybody have a link to an online server (with public domain books)? I'm curious to see what the presentation is like. What's the typography like? Does the screen dim after…

My response is to avoid buying ebooks from Amazon if possible. Most of my purchases are from Weightless Books [1] which sells only DRM free books and magazines. Granted, this is a limited and small market (SF related stuff) but if I have a choice of getting a book DRM free from a vendor or getting it from Amazon, I would avoid Amazon, even if its price was cheaper. [1] https://weightlessbooks.com/

I agree. I've purchased a lot of things from Angry Robot[1]. It's a similar story: smaller market and mostly SF, but I've enjoyed a large number of their offerings. You purchase in UKP via Paypal (no need for Paypal account), but the conversion has never seemed to have been a problem.

[1] https://www.angryrobotbooks.com/

Re: The Calibre Content Server

#67

Related but slightly off topic: Am I the only one who is turned off to calibre due to how "heavy" and clunky it feels? I suspect this is due to the program being written in Java. I think the author does great work maintaining the project but frankly wish it was more modern. Perhaps this is a good side project for me to delve into ;) EDIT: thanks to users who clarified that Calibre is written in python.

Much as I love pyGTK, apps written in it feel pretty chunky :/ Here's looking at you, Mint Menu (not nearly as bad as Electron though)

I disagree, while Electron apps have trade offs, I never experience the experience of clunkiness I find with Calibre.

Re: The Calibre Content Server

#68

Related but slightly off topic: Am I the only one who is turned off to calibre due to how "heavy" and clunky it feels? I suspect this is due to the program being written in Java. I think the author does great work maintaining the project but frankly wish it was more modern. Perhaps this is a good side project for me to delve into ;) EDIT: thanks to users who clarified that Calibre is written in python.

First things first its python and qt. To me it feels quite responsive. I also have no idea what "modern" means in this context unless you mean flat with few buttons or options. Calibre can be styled by choosing a qt5 style for your system. If your default is ugly you ought to change it. Such styles can be chosen in your gui configuration menu or via qt5ct at least under linux.

This is what it looks like for me. http://imgur.com/a/px8zF

That said I don't want to start up a whole app just to open a book I usually just open books via a script that wraps calibredb a cli interface to calibre's ebook library. If more than one result is available in response to a query it shows them via rofi. https://davedavenport.github.io/rofi/

It also remembers the last n books that have been opened whether they have been opened in the gui, a script, or otherwise and when called without arguments it returns the list of recent reads which can be selected via rofi. Since I often return to the same several books repeatedly on multiple sessions this is a more pleasant way to access my books.

My script is a bunch of not so awsome shell script. If you want to improve something a better cli experience out of the box for calibre would be nice.

Re: The Calibre Content Server

#69

Related but slightly off topic: Am I the only one who is turned off to calibre due to how "heavy" and clunky it feels? I suspect this is due to the program being written in Java. I think the author does great work maintaining the project but frankly wish it was more modern. Perhaps this is a good side project for me to delve into ;) EDIT: thanks to users who clarified that Calibre is written in python.

Much as I love pyGTK, apps written in it feel pretty chunky :/ Here's looking at you, Mint Menu (not nearly as bad as Electron though)

its qt

Re: The Calibre Content Server

#70
post #3

I love it in principle but, considering how small most books are relatively to storage space offered by modern devices, even mobile ones, what is the upside of storing content centrally instead of just carrying a copy with you?

I have 11gb of books and less than 11gb free on my device. Although I don't use the content server I do use calibre companion to wirelessly connect and sync select books based on author or tag. Even if I were syncing the entire library calibre is a nice way to manage metadata and sync and calibre companion is a nice search interface.

Also a single central location + backup ensures that your books are unlikely to be lost.

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