Foliate – A simple and modern eBook viewer for Linux desktops • Hacker News Board

Re: Foliate – A simple and modern eBook viewer for Linux desktops

#11

Post by nsonha » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 4:01 PM UTC

paol wrote: post #7

blueflow wrote: post #6

A javascript codebase bundled with a webkit browser - is this like Electron, but lite?

Ebooks are basically HTML, so this is one case where bundling a browser engine is going to be necessary in any case.

does it need a js engine though?

Re: Foliate – A simple and modern eBook viewer for Linux desktops

#12

Post by ognarb » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 4:04 PM UTC

Great app, so great that I have reused an huge part of the code base in Arrianna. A KDE/Qt epub reader: https://invent.kde.org/graphics/arianna (the readme is currently empty as I am polishing the library feature)

Re: Foliate – A simple and modern eBook viewer for Linux desktops

#13

Post by redacted » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 4:27 PM UTC

jdlyga wrote: post #2

Foliate is excellent! I even got it working through WSL on Windows. I use it for O’Reilly books and other epub books. It’s much easier to reach books as an epub than a pdf since the text, etc adapt to your screen. The problem was historically that epub viewers were generally bad on desktop.

If anyone is interested in using Foliate through WSL, https://opticos.github.io/openinwsl/ is great - it lets you double-click a file in Windows, then Foliate in WSL2 launches to view it

Re: Foliate – A simple and modern eBook viewer for Linux desktops

#14

Post by forgotpwd16 » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 4:43 PM UTC

nsonha wrote: post #11

paol wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ebooks are basically HTML, so this is one case where bundling a browser engine is going to be necessary in any case.

does it need a js engine though?

App is written in JS and uses a JS library to render epub in the browser, how else could it work?

Re: Foliate – A simple and modern eBook viewer for Linux desktops

#15

Post by abbe98 » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 4:47 PM UTC

Works great on Linux mobiles/tablets as well.

Re: Foliate – A simple and modern eBook viewer for Linux desktops

#16

Post by abbe98 » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 4:56 PM UTC

blueflow wrote: post #6

A javascript codebase bundled with a webkit browser - is this like Electron, but lite?

GJS would be SpiderMonkey+GTK so no actual browser rendering is available until one pull in something like Webkit.

Re: Foliate – A simple and modern eBook viewer for Linux desktops

#17

Post by INeedMoreRam » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 5:07 PM UTC

I've been using Calibre on all my devices for years and have hundreds of books annotated.

Why would I switch to Foliate?

Re: Foliate – A simple and modern eBook viewer for Linux desktops

#18

Post by intelkishan » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 5:14 PM UTC

Does it support EPUB3?

Re: Foliate – A simple and modern eBook viewer for Linux desktops

#19

Post by teh_klev » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 5:30 PM UTC

intelkishan wrote: post #18

Does it support EPUB3?

Yes. From their repo README:

https://github.com/johnfactotum/foliate

Supported formats:

- EPUB (.epub, .epub3)

- Kindle (.azw, .azw3) and Mobipocket (.mobi)

- FictionBook (.fb2, .fb2.zip)

- Comic book archive (.cbr, .cbz, .cbt, .cb7)

- Plain text (.txt)

Re: Foliate – A simple and modern eBook viewer for Linux desktops

#20

Post by AlanYx » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 5:40 PM UTC

garyfirestorm wrote: post #4

Is there something similar for macOS and iPadOS? All 3rd party epub readers on my iPad are substandard.

For macOS, there's Thorium Reader. I agree that there's no really good 3rd party reader for iOS that's actively maintained.