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Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

babluboy.github.io

231–240 of 271 posts

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#231

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…

Overall, the calibre UX isn't bad, especially given how powerful it is. The UI can be improved quite a bit, check out icon packs like this one: https://github.com/PapirusDevelopmentTeam/papirus-calibre-th... For me, that looks pretty good, comparable to qBitorrent or 7zip.

I'm not talking about icons. I don't even use icons.

Calibres menus, configuration and the general flow is very messy. Partly because calibre is doing so many different things, but partly also because it's just very unpolished.

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#232
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I love about Calibre is I can manage all my books there and open the network library from FBReader on my phone where I do all my reading.

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

Give BookFusion a try. You will be able to read and sync your eBooks, highlights, comments and reading progress not only across Android but also iOS and Desktop via web.

More at https://www.bookfusion.com/reading/cloud-library

PS: Founder of BookFusion. Please let me know if you have any feedback

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#233
post #21
post #7

Ooh, nice. I’ve used Calibre for years, it’s fully featured but god help me it is ugly as sin.

What I love about Calibre is I can manage all my books there and open the network library from FBReader on my phone where I do all my reading.

Have you considered an alternative that allows you to not only manage all your books but to also read then across Android, iOS, Desktop(Web) and have your comments, bookmarks, highlights and reading progress synced?

BookFusion also has a Calibre plugin to allow you to easily sync your library. More at https://www.bookfusion.com/reading/calibre

PS: Founder of BookFusion. Would be happy to hear any feedback that you might have

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#234
post #190

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…

> But they still lack the "alternate view" on your library. Those Walled Garden-Apps that work with librarys are more like a relational database, offering flexible selections and content-optimized views that filemanagers are normally lacking. Thankfully, there are also full-text indexers like spotlight and tracker.

How good does that sync between devices?

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#235
post #34

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

This is exactly what BookFusion does. Your able to read on Desktop(Windows, Linux, OSX) via Web and can read on Android and iOS devices while having your reading progress, bookmarks, and highlights synced across all devices.

You can learn more at https://www.bookfusion.com/reading/cloud-library

PS: Founder of BookFusion

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#236
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, its already there and quite organized in directories. So you do understand the general concept of a library. Then you also understand the limitations of directories and how much work goes in maintaining this system. > Now ebook readers came along and pressed those hierarchical data flat, with long waiting times, because it needs to index first. I don't think Ebook-readers started this. ITunes had this first I…

Maybe I should make myself a bit clearer here: I am not against an index or library in addition to the file hierarchy, but I am against a library or index replacing a directory listing. Both perspectives are very valuable! Also a full text search (grep) or (more or less simple) file search (find) are useful in addition to a library. To reiterate, for me it seems that itunes and ebook reader generation of devices and…

> To reiterate, for me it seems that itunes and ebook reader generation of devices and applications don't seem to value custom directory organization.

Yes, because it's expensive and has little value for the user. A guided application, streamlinend for well defined purpose is always simpler to create and cheaper to maintain. There is a reason why free software is usually more open for user-custimization.

> While the library part of calibre is very good, the reader part is not so great

Indeed. I thinks it's mainly because calibre is mostly used for feeding devices and maintaining and manipulating the library, less for actual reading books on desktop-PCs.

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#237
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They perform comparatively slowly and use more resources and battery power. For example hexchat an irc client seems to use about 50-60MB of ram. Slack by contrast out of the box appears to use 1.2GB of memory. There are at present 12 applications open on my machine. If they all used over a GB each something would be starving given that I only have 8. Note please that most machines still have 8GB or less. Do you reall…

I just wanted to hear what people had to say to be honest. Given the success of Slack, is it really that bad? Why has no resource "friendly" alternatives taken its place?

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#238
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I should make myself a bit clearer here: I am not against an index or library in addition to the file hierarchy, but I am against a library or index replacing a directory listing. Both perspectives are very valuable! Also a full text search (grep) or (more or less simple) file search (find) are useful in addition to a library. To reiterate, for me it seems that itunes and ebook reader generation of devices and…

I am honestly very curious about what file structure you use for your ebooks. After 500 or so, I threw up my hands and just wrote some Perl scripts to flatten the filenames into something meaningful, and threw them into a big git-annex repository. I have at least two dimensions I'm dealing with: title, and file type. Really though, it's nice to also organize by genre, and year. I also dislike most of these walled gar…

I use syncthing for file syncronization between laptop, desktop, nas and mobile phone.

And scripts that 'index' the books and create a directory structure of the metadata (like tags, series, publication date etc.) containing symlinks to the real books.

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#239

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?

Give BookFusion a try and let me know if you have the same issues. BookFusion should also render epub content exactly as intended but also works on iOS, Android and Desktops(via Web). BookFusion not only supports epub2/3 but also MOBI, PDF, FB2, TXT and several other formats

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#240

Which Windows equivalent should I use since it doesn't support Windows? It will help if it is just as much feature rich as Bookworm and just as much easy to use as Bookworm. Calibre, is therefore ruled out.

You can try BookFusion. A cross platform reader for Desktops(via Web) with native apps for Android and iOS devices.

You will be able to read your eBooks on Windows but also on your mobile devices while having your eBook collection, bookmarks, comments and highlights synced.

You can learn more at https://www.bookfusion.com/reading/cloud-library

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