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New in Calibre 6.0

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Re: New in Calibre 6.0

#82
post #37
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.

They may be "files" but I have thousands of them on my devices. And there is no way in the world I'm managing that through Kindles interface.

Re: New in Calibre 6.0

#83
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

> 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. (...) A python script, A proprietary Kobo app over wine, some bash scripts and a well kept directory achieves this. But calibre doesn't.

I prefer to have an all-in-one application that does all this for me. My ebook workflow is not particularly demanding, so I let Calibre manage everything and don't maintain my own scripts.

Such a definition of "job not well defined" is just "IDE, but for ebooks" when seen from a different angles. People swear by IDEs for all kinds of reasons, convienience and integration first and foremost. You may not need an IDE, but I'll take it over rolling my own tools any day.

Re: New in Calibre 6.0

#84
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

> 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.

That's not how it works. Each device and firmware has its own way of doing things. For example, I would have no idea how to build "ebook groups" on my reader, but I don't have to worry about that because Calibre knows how to do it for me. Creating those by hand would likely involve a third party tool or XML/other structured text format editing, which would be annoying.

> I don’t use different devices

That's your setup. Another person may have three readers, for whatever reason. How would you keep track of it then, and would it not be easier to just hand over things to Calibre for automatic synchronisation?

Re: New in Calibre 6.0

#86
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

You've got a bunch of people here saying "I love Calibre", that should be enough proof that it's doing a good job, however well you understand that job to be defined.

Re: New in Calibre 6.0

#87

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…

> 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

Your sibling comments have not mentioned or alluded to any such flaws. Do you have criticism to share?

Re: New in Calibre 6.0

#88
post #27

Kovid Goyal, the developer of Calibre, is a very responsive, very gentle person. Whenever I needed help, I have gotten help from him. [1] - Calibre is an indispensable tool for me to manage my digital library with close to 800 books. I support him regularly. Consinder doing it as well if you appreciate the app. Go to https://calibre-ebook.com/ , there’s a support link on the top right. [1] This is the forum dedicated…

I interviewed him once. Such a kind and responsive developer. He told me he put 80 hours per week, on average, in Calibre’s development.

Edit: the interview (in Spanish) https://calibre.softonic.com/articulos/entrevista-a-kovid-go...

Re: New in Calibre 6.0

#89
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 m…

> 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. That's not how it works. Each device and firmware has its own way of doing things. For example, I would have no idea how to build "ebook groups" on my reader, but I don't have to worry about that because Calibre knows how to do it for me. Creating those by hand would likely involve a t…

> > 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.

> That's not how it works. Each device and firmware has its own way of doing things. For example, I would have no idea how to build "ebook groups" on my reader

That would be you making it complicated. What are you all doing with your Kindles that needs multiple levels of organization?

> How would you keep track of it then

Keep track of what?

Re: New in Calibre 6.0

#90

Why do people like calibre?

afaik it's the only ebook manager + automatic metadata search + conversion tool between multiple formats that exists. Unfortunately for me, the author refuse to implement a functionality to reuse an existing book repository architecture
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