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Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

babluboy.github.io

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Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#71

Post by unionpivo »

Causality1 wrote: post #9

The last time I read ebooks on an x86 device was before Pocket PCs got color displays. Are there people who really want to do that?

I do sometimes. I love my Kindle, and use it almost daily, for fiction and literature.

But for work and hobbies I am flooded with PDF's (some spec sheets, but a lot of actual technical books). I tried different eBook readers, tablets etc. And I have found out I prefer reading them on my hires desktop monitor, where I can google details etc. And it's there that I usually need them.

Also comics. For some reason I prefer to look at them on my monitor than on tablet. Not sure why, because tablets seem like tailor made for this.

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#72

Post by bayindirh »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #67
bayindirh wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first reaction was also the same: "That's a nice reader, but I use Calibre, and can read my eBooks from it too". If I didn't have an eReader and didn't manage it with Calibre, I'd build and it use it happily. While Calibre has a full management, editing and authoring suite, it also has a nice internal reader with reading features. It's not like the Photoshop, but rather the ACDSee suite, which comes with a full fl…

Yet Calibre is full of quirks, seemingly lacks some reasonable features (like importing metadata from book files themselves) and stuck with Python 2. I wish there were alternatives...

When I add books to Calibre, it reads and lists all the metadata correctly. I never added metadata to a book manually if the book has it. Strange.

I can't comment on the Python2.x dependencies though.

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#73

Post by jplayer01 »

dewey wrote: post #52

I’m not sure why people compare it to Calibre here. Calibre is an insanely full featured management, editing and metadata filling software for ebooks and not build as a minimal reader. I guess the main use case is to send ebooks to your reader device from Calibre (Like a Kindle) and it’s doing that very well especially if you invest time in setting it up and using the right plugins for your use case. You also don’t u…

You can entirely ignore the main Calibre program. Associate epubs with the Calibre reader and it only opens that. You never need to interact with the management suite.

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#74

Post by michaelmrose »

aceperry wrote: post #43
philonoist wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bookworm is available as a PPA for Ubuntu (16.04 upwards) and other Ubuntu based systems. Open Terminal and run the following comands for installation sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bookworm-team/bookworm sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install com.github.babluboy.bookworm In case of issues related to missing libgranite package, add the Elementary PPA as shown below and re-try. The Elementary PPA can be removed after B…

I use the ppa, but doing that opens you up to security concerns. I've tried to build from source, but there are too many dependencies and I couldn't build it due to conflicting libraries.

Security is a spectrum not an on off switch.

The question is whats the risk profile/benefit.

The ppa like many other is hosted on launchpad.net owned by canonical.

If Canonical is compromised you are probably boned any way you slice it. If the developer is compromised you are probably boned. This leaves the fact that the devs account on launchpad could be taken over and used as an attack vector which quite frankly seems like the lessor risk.

You have already undertaken the greater risk that the dev or whomever inherits/acquires access to their account is or becomes malicious or incompetent especially given that is not now or will it be audited unless it becomes an official part of the Ubuntu repos.

This means that if the bookworm software in version 17 starts to come with a crypto miner you will only become aware of this if it hits hacker news and you happen to read the story whereas were it part of the Ubuntu repos Canonical would be apt to publish this warning via official channels.

If you have 835 packages you have 835 potential sources of issues but if they are all vetted by canonical then you have 1 source of fixes/warnings. If you add 17 ppas you now have 18 channels and 17 may be less diligent than canonical is. This situation isn't much improved if you have 17 github repos that you periodically pull from unless you have both the skill and the time to audit the result in depth.

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#75

Post by johnchristopher »

julianwachholz wrote: post #62

I've been trying out a couple ebook readers on linux. What stands out to me that so far only Calibre renders epub book contents exacty the way they were intended. Both Bookworm and FBReader struggle with variable font formatting, especially syntax highlighted code in books from e.g. PragProg. I wonder if there's just an ebook reader with Calibre's rendering library?

I don't understand why epub rendering quality varies so wildly between devices. Isn't it just basic HTML or is there more to it ?

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#76

Post by dingaling »

radicalbyte wrote: post #38
SECProto wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FBReader was my go-to eReader app for a long time, but in the last few years (since they went closed source) they haven't added any useful (-to-me) features, but have added several advertisements (in the form of popups and in the menu). Still looking for an alternative

It is being sold for what, $5 and is actively being supported. I assume that it's being developed by a single developer in their own time. If charging for it lets them make a living from their clearly valuable work then what's the problem? Working on open source is fantastic but most realistic projects are sponsored in some way or form. I doubt that sponsorship works works for an eReader app, so this is a good soluti…

> our fellow developer deserves to get paid for their clearly awesome work

I agree, but it highlights the many-small-cuts problem

$5 for an eReader, then a mapping app, file manager, photo editor, mail client... the list of developers deserving support is longer than most people can afford. Eventually a choice has to be made to prioritise. For many people that will mean that a less-used category of app can be fulfilled from F-Droid instead of paying for a more-polished one.

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#77

Post by chrisseaton »

johnchristopher wrote: post #75
julianwachholz wrote: post #62

I've been trying out a couple ebook readers on linux. What stands out to me that so far only Calibre renders epub book contents exacty the way they were intended. Both Bookworm and FBReader struggle with variable font formatting, especially syntax highlighted code in books from e.g. PragProg. I wonder if there's just an ebook reader with Calibre's rendering library?

I don't understand why epub rendering quality varies so wildly between devices. Isn't it just basic HTML or is there more to it ?

Doesn’t the fact that it’s just HTML explain why it varies? All the rendering quality is up to the device.

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#78

Post by bayindirh »

jasano wrote: post #37
efiecho wrote: post #13

Very nice design and best thing, it's not an Electron app. I will definitely try this reader.

Just out of curiosity, may I ask what your bias is against electron?

With electron, you're running a full chromium at the back end for any task. This increases memory and CPU consumption a lot. Atom consumes as much as RAM as Eclipse for example. Also it's slow due to this load it creates.

For simple tasks, a full fledged, programming capable text editor can fit into ~60MBs. Atom needs 660 just at the start. With that amount of RAM usage, I even cannot open large files as reliably as vim for example.

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#79

Post by r3bl »

favadi wrote: post #34

Anyone knows if there is a ebook reader that supports Android/Linux and can sync book/progress between machines?

A stupid workaround I use:

I copy-paste some sentence from a book into my note taking app, and search for that same text on my other device. Note-taking is easier to sync than reading positions themselves.

Calibre saves the reading position inside the metadata of the book, so you'd need a way to re-download the book every time you open it.

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