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Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

babluboy.github.io

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Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#151

Post by GrinningFool »

ohithereyou wrote: post #131
kirion25 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a file manager, you'll probably only be able to find a book from its author, and title. If you have a small collection, this is fine. When your collection grows though, issues start to show up. Being able to sort, and find a book based on other information becomes much more useful: date of publication, genre, custom tags, etc... While you could always integrate these in your filename/directory structure, with th…

>it's very cumbersome to manage and use Maybe if you just dump a large number of unsorted files in place and do nothing with them. With a decent file manager and an hour or so, you can add many books and symlink them to the metadata directory with no issue.

> aybe if you just dump a large number of unsorted files in place and do nothing with them. With a decent file manager and an hour or so, you can add many books and symlink them to the metadata directory with no issue.

Alternatively you can use a program's built-in library with no time cost to yourself...

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#152

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#153

Post by _JamesA_ »

deanebarker wrote: post #143

The problem is not the ebook reader. The problem is trying to buy a commercial ebook from anywhere other than Amazon, and having to use someone's stupid DRM scheme. I tried once to not buy a Kindle book, and I just had to end up installing someone's other app just to decrypt the book so I could read it. You can make all the ebook readers you want. Until we find an easier way to make non-Amazon ebooks easier to read,…

I recently ran into this issue with ebooks.com [0] which is the only way outside of Amazon Kindle to get Jan Axelson's USB Complete and Serial Port Complete references.

The only choices are proprietary Kindle format or PDF and EPUB with a very restrictive Adobe DRM scheme.

[0]: https://www.ebooks.com/SearchApp/SearchResults.net?term=jan+...

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#154

Post by el_cujo »

chme wrote: post #124
PurpleRamen wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have directories on my filesystem(s), files in those directories Your library. > powerful applications to navigate them (Total Commander / mc / Krusader). Not powerful enough. Filemanagers are optimized for hierachical views and don't integrate well with filetypes. Namely, they usually don't extract data from files, like metadata, covers or previews. Though, filemanagers have started to do that to some degree. Bu…

>> I have directories on my filesystem(s), files in those directories > Your library. Yes, its already there and quite organized in directories. Now ebook readers came along and pressed those hierarchical data flat, with long waiting times, because it needs to index first. >> powerful applications to navigate them (Total Commander / mc / Krusader). > Not powerful enough. Filemanagers are optimized for hierachical vie…

I agree with your point about the library. Maybe I'm just weird, but typically I'll read one, MAYBE two books at a time before moving on to another. Because of this, I really don't need the app to show me my library like this every time because its not like I'll be hopping around between books several times within an hour. I can see how this library setup makes sense for a music player or some sort of gaming platform, but it feels like for books they're just bringing the feature along without considering whether or not it makes sense. I guess it is nice to be able to gaze upon your library and think "wow I've read a lot" or "wow I have a lot of options to read", but I"m not sure I'd say that's worth the start up time.

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#155

Post by bayindirh »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #115
qwerty456127 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

...and it needs a huge amount of dependencies. And RAM.

It's a convoluted piece of software, which does a lot of things, but with ~160MB of RAM usage, I wouldn't call it a heavyweight.

Its RAM requirement is more than the capacity of my first hard drive, but it's not in the league of Chrome, Slack or Atom. There are many wasteful applications out there doing much much less with much more resources.

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#156

Post by bayindirh »

pmontra wrote: post #146
bayindirh wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand you. However, libraries are hard to understand until managing your collection creates a lot of overhead. A good library can find something from a sizeable collection in a second or two. Calibre is perfectly capable in this regard. Also metadata is something really powerful. However, you need a lot of it (in this case books) to reap its benefits. Calibre doesn't obfuscate / embed the book files. They…

I can't say I have a large collection of ebooks (just checked: 54) but I won't use a file manager to handle it. I use Calibre because it's much easier to convert between formats, edit metadata, edit the ebook, add a cover page. Basically that's it and Calibre has many more features that I don't use (the reader among the others). I'm sure there are separate programs that do all I use Calibre for, but it's much easier…

> BTW, I don't understand the use case of reading ebooks on a desktop or laptop instead of on a phone or tablet (or eink reader).

Unfortunately, not everyone has all the screens, and not all phone screens are big enough to read novels and such. I'd rather read a book in my bed on my laptop screen and take notes quickly rather than an older phone and try to write on its keyboard.

Also, e-ink readers' screen refresh rate prevents taking extensive notes on the books. You can underline just fine, but longer notes are a bit hard.

Last but not the least, comic books in CBZ/CBR format really begs for a quality color display, since colored comics is half the fun in the comics. :D

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#157

Post by nebulous1 »

deanebarker wrote: post #143

The problem is not the ebook reader. The problem is trying to buy a commercial ebook from anywhere other than Amazon, and having to use someone's stupid DRM scheme. I tried once to not buy a Kindle book, and I just had to end up installing someone's other app just to decrypt the book so I could read it. You can make all the ebook readers you want. Until we find an easier way to make non-Amazon ebooks easier to read,…

You know Kindle books have DRM too, right? So you need an app that supports that DRM in order to read them (the mobi format doesn't have to have DRM, much like epub).

So this is mostly in people's head, because when they have to get something that supports Adobe Digital Editions they're thinking that they're being put out "because DRM", whereas when they have to get something from Amazon to read a Kindle book they're thinking "because Kindle", which is just giving Amazon a pass for no good reason.

To be clear I'm against all DRM, I just want the comparison to be correct.

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#158

Post by bloopernova »

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…

You and I almost certainly aren't the intended users of such a feature.

My mother in law knows that, conceptually and practically, when she taps the Kindle icon on her tablet she will open her collection of books. Within that full-screen app, she is intending to do one of several things: find a book to read, then read that book.

She doesn't really like the filesystem on her imac. She much prefers that all the files associated with a given activity are readily available when she is doing that particular activity. Gallery -> Photos. Library -> Kindle. TV Shows -> Netflix. She doesn't really think about how each of those search and organization functions act differently between apps.

We all do the same, to a great or lesser degree. Orgzly has my org-mode files right there. Microsoft RDP client beta has a group of all the RDP sessions I use right there. Outlook has all emails and calendar items.

I absolutely suffer when my filesystem is chaotic, which it often is: but then again so is my job, doing systems admin, devops, code builds, puppet/ansible/chef stuff, etc etc. Being able to quickly find things in a freeform manner is very, very useful. (I use 'fzf' and zsh for commands and directories, and 'mdfind' (on mac) for its faster-than-grep file search)

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#159

Post by criddell »

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…

A file system isn't a good fit for a library of books IMHO, at least not as a view.

What directory would I put my copy of Stephen King's It in? My Stephen King folder? My horror folder? 1986? Fiction?

The underlying file system view really doesn't matter. It's the abstraction on top of that where all the interesting things happen.

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#160

Post by taude »

dsr_ wrote: post #148
deanebarker wrote: post #143

The problem is not the ebook reader. The problem is trying to buy a commercial ebook from anywhere other than Amazon, and having to use someone's stupid DRM scheme. I tried once to not buy a Kindle book, and I just had to end up installing someone's other app just to decrypt the book so I could read it. You can make all the ebook readers you want. Until we find an easier way to make non-Amazon ebooks easier to read,…

I buy from Google, no DRM, plain epub. Big selection. I buy from Kobo, no DRM, plain epub. Big selection. I buy from a bunch of authors' own websites or small publishing platforms (like bookviewcafe.com) because an even higher percentage of the price goes to the author, and nobody ever pays to put DRM on their own book.

Is there any good third-party non-google/amazon reading apps for iPhone/iPad that will sync my places where I'm at in my books?
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