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Calibre – E-Book Management

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Re: Calibre – E-Book Management

#161

Post by lnl »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #36
thrower123 wrote: post #16

The one thing I really don't like about Calibre is how it will copy all of my ebooks into its own file organization. There is probably a way to disable this, but that is the default. Kind of irritating when you have Calibre in a cloud-storage folder and your books are also in the cloud storage, and it uses up your space with duplicates.

"There is probably a way to disable this" No, there is not, and never will be: https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq.html#why-doesn-t-calibr... Calibre's library is meant to be the place where you store your books. I'm curious why you want to store a second copy outside Calibre. Is it because: 1. Calibre doesn't allow you to find books the way you want? (e.g. tagging doesn't have the all metadata you want) 2. You have…

I just dislike library software in general. I like files, I like keeping files neatly in folders and subfolders (and adding tags in filenames if necessary), so that I can easily use whatever software I like at the time on whatever platform to view or edit them, without ever being dependent on any. I organize all my movies, music, photos, documents, etc. this way, and I didn't want to hand over my ebooks to some software to keep it organized in its own way.

I don't even like it if a program scans my existing files to form a database without affecting them; but as long as it's not too in-my-face I guess I don't mind it so much; as I can get rid of the software and its database whenever I like, and I wouldn't notice anything was different. But Calibre decidedly takes the opposite approach, so, as the link says, I decided it's not for me. There are many parts of Calibre that I thought I might find useful, but it would be tiring to fight against a software that actively tries to work fundamentally differently than the way I like. (And I did try it, but using it felt almost as frustrating as using much of Apple software; it's an agony unless you use it exactly the way they want.) That's why I don't have Calibre installed on my computer even just for those useful parts; I just found other software to do things I like. Which is sad, because as an ebook user I really tried to like Calibre, and I really thought I would because I tend to love software that people criticize as "ugly/not modern" and "too cluttered/bloated". If only those things came with a package that didn't make it its "mission" to get me "to stop storing metadata in filenames and stop using the filesystem to find things".

Re: Calibre – E-Book Management

#164

Post by [deleted] »

dang wrote: post #134

This counts as a dupe because the most recent discussion was less than a year ago. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html . Calibre 5.0 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24586455 - Sept 2020 (267 comments) Calibre 4.0 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21156482 - Oct 2019 (302 comments) The Calibre Content Server - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14568146 - June 2017 (140 comments) Announc…

[deleted]

Re: Calibre – E-Book Management

#165

Post by asoneth »

Shorel wrote: post #113
asoneth wrote: post #58

Calibre is great once you get the hang of the interface. The one thing I haven't yet figured out is how to stop it from butchering Kobo (kepub) ebooks downloaded from Standard Ebooks: "Important: Don’t use Calibre to transfer the kepub file! Calibre will apply its own conversion on top of our own conversion, making for strange results" from https://standardebooks.org/help/how-to-use-our-ebooks

Your comment is interesting and relevant. I always used Calibre to convert normal epub files to kepub format, to be able to zoom images and other things that the Kobo doesn't do with epubs. I didn't know I could also get kepub files from somewhere else.

Thanks, I've found the Standard Ebooks (both kepubs and epubs) quite good and would recommend them if you're looking for something in the public domain. The downside is that their kepubs did not play well with Calibre.

By default Calibre didn't recognize Standard Ebook kepub files as anything other than a regular epub which caused it to reformat it (poorly) when sending to a Kobo eReader. It also prevented me from storing both the kepub and epub versions in my library.

There may be a better way but the workaround I use for now is to rename the kepub book files from .kepub.epub to .kepub which the Kobo eReader handles equally well. The downsides are that I have to remember to explicitly send the kepub format when I'm sending to a Kobo and I occasionally get notifications that there are duplicate book files in my library.

Re: Calibre – E-Book Management

#166

Post by tomc1985 »

dbtc wrote: post #142
mitchdoogle wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we have apps for smart people?

Sure, emacs or CLI?

Or Blender, or the GIMP, or FLStudio, or AutoCAD, or Visual Studio, or Lightroom (Classic), or Filezilla, or Photoshop, or or or or...

And while you might think that the above obviates my argument, when was the last time something new came out? All the best software we have nowadays is old, designed before current standards

Re: Calibre – E-Book Management

#167

Post by zapzupnz »

pmlnr wrote: post #155
zapzupnz wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People shouldn't have to learn how to use its complicated interface. The killer feature is managing eBooks, not rocket science. There is nothing at all about the Calibre interface that needs to be the way it is. What's so interesting is the way it apes an old version of iTunes, one which nobody would've considered the pinnacle of UX, and still manages to complicate and bury things in unexpected places.

EVERY user interface needs to be learnt. Ask anyone: they hate it when it changes.

Yes, they all need to be learnt. How odd that an excuse for failing to reduce complexity?

There are well-documented user interface design guidelines to follow, both vendor specific and general ones made by experts like Jakob Nielsen.

Well-designed user interfaces lend themselves to user experiences where the learning curve is low, not steep, sometimes coming close to flat.

The only excuse I can fathom for those who prefer the learning curve be as high as possible or never be lowered is resentment that their own efforts to scale the same mountain of learning the UI themselves.

I call that technical elitism. It says “I worked hard to learn how complicated interfaces work, everybody else should be held to the same expectation”. No, they should not.

Re: Calibre – E-Book Management

#168

Post by havernator »

tpmx wrote: post #117

So few tweaks would be needed to make Calibre actually user-friendly to the average consumer. Instead people here are falling over themselves in declaring their love for a weirdo UI. Just because it's unusual?

They like real buttons, lacking flat nonsense, and densely-presented functionality. I do too, so I get the impulse to resist calls for change, but agree with you that a light-touch reorganization of some of the buttons & menus, and some filing-off of wholly-unhelpful behavioral rough edges would go a long way. It’s one of those pieces of software I’m constantly nervous using, because I’ve seen it do weird, destructive things for no other reason than some piece of the UI is “quirky”.

Re: Calibre – E-Book Management

#169

Post by birksherty »

tym0 wrote: post #156
secstate wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're on linux, check out Foliate. It's everything you're asking for :D

Any recommendation for a similar tool for Windows? The integrated Calibre reader is... Special...

Sumatra can open many formats including epub, but some epubs may not look as good, also check Adobe Digital Edition.

Re: Calibre – E-Book Management

#170

Post by tpmx »

havernator wrote: post #168
tpmx wrote: post #117

So few tweaks would be needed to make Calibre actually user-friendly to the average consumer. Instead people here are falling over themselves in declaring their love for a weirdo UI. Just because it's unusual?

They like real buttons, lacking flat nonsense, and densely-presented functionality. I do too, so I get the impulse to resist calls for change, but agree with you that a light-touch reorganization of some of the buttons & menus, and some filing-off of wholly-unhelpful behavioral rough edges would go a long way. It’s one of those pieces of software I’m constantly nervous using, because I’ve seen it do weird, destructiv…

Well, Blender managed to pull it off and "everyone" loved that change. They have 24 salaried employees, though.
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