Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

babluboy.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 271 posts

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#101

Post by Vaskivo »

haspok wrote: post #82

Maybe I'm old school, but I don't understand the concept of a "library". I have directories on my filesystem(s), files in those directories, and amazingly powerful applications to navigate them (Total Commander / mc / Krusader). Why would an ebook reader even try to do the navigation for me? It should display an ebook, and I'll take care of the rest. If it's showing me the file system, it's redundant. If it's showing…

Absolutely.

I hate library/playlist oriented stuff. I have everything organized in folders and files, with good filenames. Since I have in my collection a lot of unkown, old or rare media, most programs are not able to find out what it it or even tag them wrong!

I still use foobar. On my kodi setup, I navigate almost everything via file browser. I spent a lot of time finding a decent folder oriented audio player for android.

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#102

Post by soapdog »

efiecho wrote: post #13

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

I think your comment even though correct might be less impactful to your computer resources than you wanted. If you're reading books in the epub format, then this app will load a web engine anyway. Epubs are in essence a zipped collection of HTML files, so even though the UI is some snappy non-electron solution, webkit is still loaded and in memory and being used to render the book.

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#104

Post by bayindirh »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #99
bayindirh wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using Calibre 3.35 on Debian Testing and I have all authors, tags, categories, series, everything automatically imported to my library for many books from many sources. Maybe there's a library dependency missing somewhere? Any debug logs? I'm not at my main workstation at home, so I cannot compare now, but it's a very strange situation.

Perhaps you mean you use Calibre to download books from particular sources so Calibre exchanges metadata with the source server directly? I add files manually by dragging them to the Calibre window and expect it to extract metadata (like the book autor, title, ISBN and cover picture) from the file.

No, I download books with my browser, and drag them into the Calibre. It harvests the metadata embedded in the file automatically.

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#106

Post by ascii_only »

bayindirh wrote: post #91
ascii_only wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calibre author have said that despite python2 eol he will not transition to python3 and that he is "perfectly capable of maintaining python2 himself"

However it seems that people are slowly migrating Calibre to Python 3. Also looks like any Python3 patch doesn't break the current Calibre build is welcome indeed.

Yes. I should have been more clear. He is not against python3 but thinks that it is less work to maintain python2 than port calibre to newer version.

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#107

Post by GuB-42 »

haspok wrote: post #82

Maybe I'm old school, but I don't understand the concept of a "library". I have directories on my filesystem(s), files in those directories, and amazingly powerful applications to navigate them (Total Commander / mc / Krusader). Why would an ebook reader even try to do the navigation for me? It should display an ebook, and I'll take care of the rest. If it's showing me the file system, it's redundant. If it's showing…

Call it a database if you wish. In fact it is probably sqlite running behind the scenes. It is a relational model, a different way of organizing things compared to the hierarchical model of the filesystem. There is probably enough literature about that to fill your ebook library ;)

I suppose that the "library" model is what most people prefer since most modern media apps use that in some form or another. Or maybe it is because of Steve Jobs reality distortion field ( https://oleb.net/blog/2012/06/steve-jobs-on-the-file-system/ ). Still, I hate all these apps attempting to hide the filesystem from me.

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#108

Post by rat9988 »

ascii_only wrote: post #81
bayindirh wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Calibre author have said that despite python2 eol he will not transition to python3 and that he is "perfectly capable of maintaining python2 himself"

To be honest, I don't see why would you port it to python 3. Isn't it already working? Are there any python 2 bug hampering its development?

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#109

Post by otabdeveloper1 »

robin_reala wrote: post #68
dartf wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fb2(stands for FictionBook) is an XML-based format, mostly popular in Russia[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FictionBook

Thanks, I’d not heard of it before. I guess EPUB’s got a while to go to cover all niches.

EPUB can't cover this niche.

EPUB is basically just HTML in a zipfile, with all the ugly warts that HTML comes with. (Attempts to enforce "pixel-perfect" design, broken accessibility, ugly fonts forced on you, etc.)

EPUB is good for publishers, I guess, but a crappy ebook format.

FB2 is a different beast, it's an extremely minimal XML dialect that encodes only semantic information and nothing else. (Basically, tags for chapters/sections/headings/verse and that's about it. The extent of the formatting allowed is 'em' and 'b' tags.)

Post reply on HN