Live data from Hacker News

Kavita – Self-hosted digital library which supports a vast array of file formats

kavitareader.com

71–80 of 90 posts

Re: Kavita – Self-hosted digital library which supports a vast array of file formats

#71

This looks awesome. Reading behaves a little weird on Firefox - the page seems to shift to the left briefly before showing the next page. I've been a big fan of the Plex approach for curation. Would be awesome to integrate some one-click addition from high-quality ebook sources like Standard Ebooks (does it support upstream OPDS sources?).

Can you elaborate or create an issue on Github? I primarily use Firefox and haven't noticed anything.

We support OPDS for consumption, but not for consuming content. I have some loose plans to support upstream sites/sources, but nothing concrete nor planned.

Re: Kavita – Self-hosted digital library which supports a vast array of file formats

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious how you achieve this? Is it similar to Calibre-web's Send to device? Or did you code the conversions yourself (or are you using an external service) and emailing the file? Are you also providing the reading experience or sending the converted file raw to use in another program's reader?

You use the webapp from your target device, then when you select a book, it's converted on the server (I use mostly Kindle Comic Coverter and Calibre ebook-convert), then served as a regular html download and opened in a native reader. This works particularly well from Kindle, so I never have to connect it to a computer, and I don't have any email size limit which is quite easy to go over with comics

Interesting, I'll have to look into that as well. I have a lot of platforms that I have to support, so utilizing tools can be problematic. I'm sure that's why send to email is so popular (and it's easy to implement).

Re: Kavita – Self-hosted digital library which supports a vast array of file formats

#73

How does this compare to Calibre? I very much appreciate Calibre's extensibility of metadata and make use of it in my own digital library collection, and despite being (seen as) a desktop app, has a nice and well-working server mode which allows me to access my collection from any device I want.

Calibre is a powerhouse of an application. It is built for people that want really in-depth metadata curtailing and exploration. Kavita is not that.

At the moment, in terms of metadata Kavita is pretty limited. The current release is adding more metadata support (local) and attempting at downloading metadata from external sources (nothing else really does this except other tools).

It really depends on you and your library. I personally just want to be able to read my stuff and focus on things like genres and put collections and read lists together (for custom read orders), so Kavita is the best solution. If you want in-depth metadata, then you're better off setting up Calibre-web or Komga.

Re: Kavita – Self-hosted digital library which supports a vast array of file formats

#74
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should def setup a reverse proxy. Our wiki has examples for most of the popular ones: https://wiki.kavitareader.com/en/install/reverse-proxy

An offline reading feature would be great. Start the reader, mark some books for offline access, download them, go offline, read them, sync the page number with the server when back online.

Haha I tried this last week with PWAs, but they weren't able to provide the level of control I needed to achieve literally this idea. So it looks like native-ish code is in my future for iOS and Android :(

But you can download files and use native readers already.

Re: Kavita – Self-hosted digital library which supports a vast array of file formats

#75
Has password format requirements. How I set my passwords on my network is up to me.

Doesn't let you know of this password format requirement in an older Chrome browser. It simply sits there dumbly and doesn't let you register.

Analytics (opt-out rather than opt-in) sent back to server with a pinky promise not to send any other data.

Why do I need Twitter javascript and Twitter cookies included in my e-reader? No, just no. Why do I have to be on-guard against what tracking and additional cruft is included in my own server?!?

Paging through the library 30 books at a time rather than scrolling. The 1990's web called asking for its UI back but I didn't pick up because we text these days.

Messes with the directory contents and formats. That is a hard pass from me.

I'll stick with the sucky broken system I have right now than a shiny new broken system that still sucks but also messes with my directory structure.

Great effort, but your execution lands as wide of the mark as every other solution out there.

Re: Kavita – Self-hosted digital library which supports a vast array of file formats

#76

UI with minimalism, open source and cross-platform (Win, Lin, Mac) -- what's not to like about it?! And a great name too. Kavita means poem or poetry in Sanskrit and pretty much all Indic languages. I'm sure others will point out the pros/cons vis-a-vis Calibre reader. But each serves a different niche. This one seems particularly geared towards comics. So cannot expect all the bells and whistles of Calibre.

[deleted]

Re: Kavita – Self-hosted digital library which supports a vast array of file formats

#77

This looks awesome. Reading behaves a little weird on Firefox - the page seems to shift to the left briefly before showing the next page. I've been a big fan of the Plex approach for curation. Would be awesome to integrate some one-click addition from high-quality ebook sources like Standard Ebooks (does it support upstream OPDS sources?).

Can you elaborate or create an issue on Github? I primarily use Firefox and haven't noticed anything. We support OPDS for consumption, but not for consuming content. I have some loose plans to support upstream sites/sources, but nothing concrete nor planned.

If I can repro this more reliably, I'll definitely report. It's a very subtle flicker where the content appears to the left of where it should be when flipping through pages.

Re: Kavita – Self-hosted digital library which supports a vast array of file formats

#78

Has password format requirements. How I set my passwords on my network is up to me. Doesn't let you know of this password format requirement in an older Chrome browser. It simply sits there dumbly and doesn't let you register. Analytics (opt-out rather than opt-in) sent back to server with a pinky promise not to send any other data. Why do I need Twitter javascript and Twitter cookies included in my e-reader? No, jus…

Entitled random on the Internet isn't impressed. I'm sure the author will be gutted.

Re: Kavita – Self-hosted digital library which supports a vast array of file formats

#79

Has password format requirements. How I set my passwords on my network is up to me. Doesn't let you know of this password format requirement in an older Chrome browser. It simply sits there dumbly and doesn't let you register. Analytics (opt-out rather than opt-in) sent back to server with a pinky promise not to send any other data. Why do I need Twitter javascript and Twitter cookies included in my e-reader? No, jus…

Entitled random on the Internet isn't impressed. I'm sure the author will be gutted.

No, entitled would be me expecting the author to fix it. He can execute his vision however he wants, it just ain't my vision. Also, author promotes on public forum then author should expect feedback, both positive and negative.

Re: Kavita – Self-hosted digital library which supports a vast array of file formats

#80

Has password format requirements. How I set my passwords on my network is up to me. Doesn't let you know of this password format requirement in an older Chrome browser. It simply sits there dumbly and doesn't let you register. Analytics (opt-out rather than opt-in) sent back to server with a pinky promise not to send any other data. Why do I need Twitter javascript and Twitter cookies included in my e-reader? No, jus…

Entitled random on the Internet isn't impressed. I'm sure the author will be gutted.

While they're being a bit of a smart ass about it, the criticisms are totally valid and they're not being entitled for offering them when the project is posted in a public space.

In fact pointing out that it contains telemetry and JS from Twittwr seem pretty important things to point out to people, at least in my book.

Post reply on HN