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Announcing Calibre 2.0

blog.calibre-ebook.com

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Re: Announcing Calibre 2.0

#51

Post by gareim »

droopyEyelids wrote: post #45
skant wrote: post #43

The author of Calibre claims: In my opinion, calibre’s graphic interface is damn good [1] I don't think the author is going to make any strides towards improving/changing the UI [1] http://features.en.softonic.com/interview-kovid-goyal-creato...

I agree with him. It's usable, and easy to understand. It doesn't follow the fads of our time, and thats fine. I struggle to understand why such a superficial demand is at the top of hacker news. Asking every useful software project to hire designers so it fits the Apple Guidelines (yes I'm exaggerating) seems both unproductive and more likely to drive the programming endeavor further out of the apartments of inventi…

I found I had the exact opposite experience. There were just so many options everywhere that when I tried to change a few settings or edit book tags, I quickly got lost. I'd like it to be cleaned up a bit and streamlined, not necessarily conform to Apple/Microsoft/Google design guidelines.

Re: Announcing Calibre 2.0

#52

Post by smithzvk »

kemayo wrote: post #49
DanBC wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Toxic maintainer. Kovid Goyal is known to be abrasive. I'm looking for good examples. But maybe I've just seen the other end of the arguments and he's okay? I'm guessing the best bits are hidden here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/calibre/+bug/ Like eg this one: https://bugs.launchpad.net/calibre/+bug/853934

I remember reporting a bug, a few years ago, though I can't find it now. It was about the weird glitches in the green icons next to the search bar in the toolbar. These: https://www.dropbox.com/s/9umwphlisjy4uzd/Screenshot%202014-... I included screenshots at the time. I got brushed off with a "this doesn't happen for me, it's probably your system being messed up" and my bug closed as invalid. It's still there, acros…

Yeah, happens for me too but I never noticed until now. I guess I just always thought that this was the way it was designed to look. The UI is more than a little bit jumbled/ugly.

Re: Announcing Calibre 2.0

#53

Post by x0x0 »

josu wrote: post #44
x0x0 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing that's a very hard problem, but I'd love to hear otherwise. If you go the standard route: write in latex then pdflatex, you have no information in the pdf as to what those symbols are, right? So this is pretty close to mathematical ocr, with all of the weird symbols that math alone uses and the various meanings of different lengths of underbar or overbar in the article. Am I wrong? Is there more informat…

I think that the solution is much more simple. Print formula > Convert formula to image (screencap) > Paste image

the whole point is to have vector math, not raster, particularly to well support zooming in and out on small devices

Re: Announcing Calibre 2.0

#54

Post by jrvarela56 »

Does anyone have a decent webapp to replace this? Interested in building one since I haven't found a viable option. As of now I use Calibre and set my folder to Dropbox so I can access books.

Re: Announcing Calibre 2.0

#55

Post by ahknight »

droopyEyelids wrote: post #45
skant wrote: post #43

The author of Calibre claims: In my opinion, calibre’s graphic interface is damn good [1] I don't think the author is going to make any strides towards improving/changing the UI [1] http://features.en.softonic.com/interview-kovid-goyal-creato...

I agree with him. It's usable, and easy to understand. It doesn't follow the fads of our time, and thats fine. I struggle to understand why such a superficial demand is at the top of hacker news. Asking every useful software project to hire designers so it fits the Apple Guidelines (yes I'm exaggerating) seems both unproductive and more likely to drive the programming endeavor further out of the apartments of inventi…

There's a place between hot as hell and cold as a witch's tit that we call Earth. Let's not forget that.

The interface is an unmitigated disaster from tip to toe. There's too much going on. It doesn't need to get hit with the iBooks stick to make it better; it just needs someone with half a clue to delete half the buttons, tabs, modals, windows, panes, lists, checkboxes, and other crap.

Put another way: Eclipse is not the program you want to base your design on.

Re: Announcing Calibre 2.0

#56

Post by akerl_ »

nebulous1 wrote: post #37

I don't suppose he's backtracked on his awful position on auto-updates?

For those of us missing context, care to share?

I'm definitely not a fan of every launch of Calibre showing me a prompt to update, but I'm also not sold on apps that upgrade without my express consent.

Re: Announcing Calibre 2.0

#57

Post by fineIllregister »

nebulous1 wrote: post #37

I don't suppose he's backtracked on his awful position on auto-updates?

Someone has packaged it for Windows using the Chocolatey NuGet package manager:

http://chocolatey.org/packages/calibre

I'm sure OS X has something similar, but I wouldn't know where to find it.

Re: Announcing Calibre 2.0

#58

Post by Touche »

publicfig wrote: post #26
vj44 wrote: post #6

I'm sure calibre 2.0 is a great technical feat, and kudos for all the work put into this product, but judging by the screenshot the user interface is equally clunky as in 1.0. This software does mostly everything I need it for to convert ebooks... but can you, the authors, please improve the UI?

I was so excited to see this headline specifically because I hoped they would be doing a UI overhaul. Unfortunately, that just seems to not be the case or even on the horizon. I'd definitely consider dedicating time with it, but I've heard nothing but bad things about trying to work with the maintainers of the code.

Calibre makes it dead simple to manage a library of ebooks and allows you to do just about anything that can be done with them. That's the definition of a good UI. Whether it follows modern design trends is irrelevant. A UI overhaul would be a terrible idea.

Re: Announcing Calibre 2.0

#59

Post by kemayo »

smithzvk wrote: post #52
kemayo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember reporting a bug, a few years ago, though I can't find it now. It was about the weird glitches in the green icons next to the search bar in the toolbar. These: https://www.dropbox.com/s/9umwphlisjy4uzd/Screenshot%202014-... I included screenshots at the time. I got brushed off with a "this doesn't happen for me, it's probably your system being messed up" and my bug closed as invalid. It's still there, acros…

Yeah, happens for me too but I never noticed until now. I guess I just always thought that this was the way it was designed to look. The UI is more than a little bit jumbled/ugly.

I could see where the intention might come from. The buttons relate to search functionality, and there's binoculars in the background.

But then... they don't line up. If it was intentional, I'd expect them to be on the same level.

Re: Announcing Calibre 2.0

#60

Post by audreyt »

x0x0 wrote: post #53
josu wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the solution is much more simple. Print formula > Convert formula to image (screencap) > Paste image

the whole point is to have vector math, not raster, particularly to well support zooming in and out on small devices

Rasterize at 900dpi, then? Even on small devices that would support a ~3x zoom without compromising visual quality versus vector.

In EPUB3 readers with full support one can translate the paint primitives via pdf.js into JS, too.

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