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New in Calibre 6.0

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Re: New in Calibre 6.0

#51

Post by akho »

addicted wrote: post #40
akho wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s there to manage? They are files. Read a book, copy a new book over, delete old book. A file manager does all that, and is simpler and easier.

Most (all commercially available?$ebook readers are not as simple as that. And a file manager doesn’t track which books of mine are synced and which are not. Calibre does. A file manager does not make it easy for me to correct the ebook’s metadata so it appears properly on the ebook reader. Calibre does. Calibre will also automatically download metadata for you from a variety of sources (with many options for the lev…

> Most (all commercially available?$ebook readers are not as simple as that.

Only if you make them. Have been pretty simple for me. I don’t do most of the things you mention, and do not see myself wanting to.

I do use Calibre for conversion (through the command-line ebook-convert tool, wrapped in a script that converts and mails to Kindle in one operation). I don’t use different devices, to “automatically” does not mean much.

Re: New in Calibre 6.0

#52

Post by berkes »

addicted wrote: post #40
akho wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s there to manage? They are files. Read a book, copy a new book over, delete old book. A file manager does all that, and is simpler and easier.

Most (all commercially available?$ebook readers are not as simple as that. And a file manager doesn’t track which books of mine are synced and which are not. Calibre does. A file manager does not make it easy for me to correct the ebook’s metadata so it appears properly on the ebook reader. Calibre does. Calibre will also automatically download metadata for you from a variety of sources (with many options for the lev…

So "it's job is not well defined".

It's a webserver, file manager, sync client, transcoder/converter, RSS reader, metadata manager all in one.

With all possible regards and respect to the author, I find calibre a terrible mess. It does a lot of things, none of which very well. And the one thing that I want it to do, it doesn't. Not reliable or not at all. I want it to give me access to the ebooks I buy online.

This isn't calibres' fault, but the industries'. DRM, incompatible formats pushed by tech giants. But in the end, all I want is a way to see, reference and sync the books that are on my Kobo with my (Linux) desktop.

A python script, A proprietary Kobo app over wine, some bash scripts and a well kept directory achieves this. But calibre doesn't. Though it can read RSS feeds.

Re: New in Calibre 6.0

#53

Post by spondyl »

akho wrote: post #37
blowski wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use it extensively for managing the books on my devices (Kobo Libre, and my wife has an old Kindle).

What’s there to manage? They are files. Read a book, copy a new book over, delete old book. A file manager does all that, and is simpler and easier.

There's a lot of nutty stuff under the hood like ensuring that covers are sized optimally for each device, which often have their own aspect ratios, DPIs and what not.

It also does a lot of database management ie; for Kobo, inserting things into the Kobo database, where schemas have varied over time etc etc.

You can of course just copy paste files as a baseline and it'll work.

Re: New in Calibre 6.0

#54

Post by berkes »

blowski wrote: post #49
goosedragons wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's iTunes for eBooks. If you're someone that has 19 different readers, wants to keep them synced to the same page, make the metadata perfect, rate books, write notes about them etc. it makes a lot of sense. For me it's basically a way to use two plugins and occasionally fix a book cover. It's a bit bloated IMO.

With iTunes, you were forced to use it to manage an iPod, iPhone, and any media bought from Apple. With Calibre, you can use it or not use it to manage your ebooks as much as you like. That's a very important distinction.

Also, as an avid reader (average five books a month), I also cannot see the need for calibre.

Contrary to music, I consume my ebooks on one device: my e-reader. My laptop, phone and tablet are terrible for reading. Why would I need my ebooks on my phone or tablet.

The only thing I do want, is to process my annotations on my computer. Which calibre cannot do (but a python and bash hack does provide me).

Re: New in Calibre 6.0

#57

Post by patrick91 »

kbd wrote: post #47
em500 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OT, but he also happens to be the developer of kitty, my favorite terminal emulator on Linux: https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty

Yeah kitty is amazing. I've been meaning to donate as a thank you. It's made so many things possible. In fact, because of it's flexibility, today I wrote a vscode extension that can use some of kitty's remote control features so I can execute things in my terminal of choice straight from my editor of choice.

uh, that's interesting! what's the name of the extension?

Re: New in Calibre 6.0

#58

Post by frameset »

I pretty much have to use it for some things, but as sibling commenters have pointed out, there are some serious flaws with both it and its maintainer. I've mostly moved to using [Calibre Web](https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web) which is a software intended as a companion, but I use it almost exclusively.

It has a web interface, and you can deploy it using a container. The killer feature for me that Calibre itself lacks is that has over the internet syncing with the native Kobo firmware. You essentially trick the Kobo into thinking it's calling home to get ebooks from their servers, but you're accessing your own instance of Calibre-web.

This makes my workflow of adding a new ebook as simple as uploading it to my hosted instance of calibre-web, and then next time I pick up my kobo it will automatically download it.

Re: New in Calibre 6.0

#59

Post by nicoco »

frameset wrote: post #58

I pretty much have to use it for some things, but as sibling commenters have pointed out, there are some serious flaws with both it and its maintainer. I've mostly moved to using [Calibre Web]( https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web ) which is a software intended as a companion, but I use it almost exclusively. It has a web interface, and you can deploy it using a container. The killer feature for me that Calibre it…

>as simple as uploading it to my hosted instance of calibre-web, and then next time I pick up my kobo it will automatically download it.

Wow, sounds really nice, you got my attention! My stack to achieve the same result is a bit more complicated: I installed KOreader on my device, and it can read calibre's OPDS catalog feed. KOreader has some other niceties that I enjoy, mostly wallabag support.

How do you trick the native kodo firmware? Does it work outside your home network?

Re: New in Calibre 6.0

#60

Post by nicoco »

bebna wrote: post #3
oxff wrote: post #2

Magical piece of software. I don't know how Android has couple of good e-readers but desktop only has Calibre.

there is koreader for android. That even got a sync with calibre server feature or access web library feature if I remember right. I prefer it on my android phone, because it is one of the few that does true black as standard.

koreader is great and also works on (some?) kobo devices.
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