141–150 of 175 posts
Kovid only makes $1,800/m from/for development.[0] More people should support him; Calibre has been extremely high quality for years. https://www.patreon.com/kovidgoyal
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> Compared to modern UI/UX which just slaps me with how stupid it thinks I am Because most average users of any software absolutely fall in that bucket. My mom can use the Facebook app on her phone just fine, but I wouldn't even dare to suggest that she try to convert an eBook on Calibre and transfer it to her Kindle.
Can we have apps for smart people?
Calibre is one of those rare examples of software where the kitchen-sink approach is absolutely warranted. It's a one-stop shop for pretty much everything related to e-book management, conversion, or creation. I spend most of my time in Calibre just managing my library or converting ebooks between formats (particularly if I'm pulling ebooks off my Kindle or Kobo to strip their DRM). When I want to test whether the co…
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I disagree and I hope no effort is wasted on this. Calibre is great and any confusion is solved by googling. If and only if the author(s) feel they have time and energy to spend on this, then that's ok. But no forks and no wasted energy, please! I'd rather they spent time solving bugs and improving/adding features.
UIs that you have to google are like jokes you have to explain...
Completely self explanatory UIs don't exist. In the olden days they required manuals. Now we have online help and google at our fingertips, fortunately.
Unlike jokes, UIs are not an end unto themselves. I'm more than willing to accept a somewhat ugly or cumbersome UI if the underlying tool is as good as Calibre.
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I'm pretty sure it does for me. I think it's probably a package that it uses. I'll check tomorrow and let you know.
Hot dang you're absolutely right - I'd never discovered this package before: okular-extra-backends Includes support for mobi and epub, as well as TIFF, CHM, Markdown etc. Weirdly the .epub and .mobi are quite slow to open compared to PDF, but I'm happier now for the suggestion to go hunting for this - thank you!
> Includes support for mobi and epub
Curious. I didn't know that was there.
> as well as TIFF,
The last time I've tried it didn't seem to support multi-page TIFFs
> CHM
Very curious. Never seen a good alternative CHM viewer (although seen apps advertised as such numerous times).
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What's the benefit over just converting to html and using a browser? As far as I know epub is just html anyway.
Mostly; the structural information is in a mix of XHTML and various XML schemas. Conceptually it's more like that weird "HTML archive" format that IE used to do back when, but considerably more complex, and much less terrible thanks to being a W3C standard and not MIME-encoded. The .epub file itself is just a zip archive. You can open it that way and pull the HTML content out, if you want, although it may be a pain t…
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Can we have apps for smart people?
Yes, why did the world have to stop making apps for power users? Why can't both groups coexist?
- Deliver a minimum viable product, maximally optimized for signups ("growth")
- Work on it until you can brag about a nice, consistent, exponential growth curve
- If you haven't run out of money and burned by this point, you get acquired and win the startup lottery
- The product gets shut down
There's no place in this lifecycle to develop a product to its full potential.
Ok so the interface looks like it was made in the 90s. But I don't know where I'd be without Calibre.
I have no idea what the other 100s of buttons do in Calibre.
Kovid only makes $1,800/m from/for development.[0] More people should support him; Calibre has been extremely high quality for years. https://www.patreon.com/kovidgoyal
Great reminder. Done. I wonder how much extra income he will get just because you thought to mention it.
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Hot dang you're absolutely right - I'd never discovered this package before: okular-extra-backends Includes support for mobi and epub, as well as TIFF, CHM, Markdown etc. Weirdly the .epub and .mobi are quite slow to open compared to PDF, but I'm happier now for the suggestion to go hunting for this - thank you!
> okular-extra-backends > Includes support for mobi and epub Curious. I didn't know that was there. > as well as TIFF, The last time I've tried it didn't seem to support multi-page TIFFs > CHM Very curious. Never seen a good alternative CHM viewer (although seen apps advertised as such numerous times).
Must have been quite a while back, I guess.
On Debian unstable I'm seeing okular-extra-backends (as mentioned) along with packages for ODP and ODT, as well as an okular-mobile package (postscript, dejavu, DVI, comic books, fictionbook, Plucker, etc.
I've just tried this with an Asterix comic in .cbr format - no joy.
Works a treat with a Deadpool .cbz file though.
For CHM, and I've not [ found / been forced to acquire for want of a better format ] any of those since 2008, kchmviewer is pretty fine (I'm a KDE user so it fits nicely, though like most KDE apps it only wants some KDE / QT libraries to run on your preferred DE).