61–70 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
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>one of those rare examples of software where the kitchen-sink approach is absolutely warranted I actually like this approach in general and I often wonder why there's so much animosity towards it. There's something about platform-like software like Calibre, or Emacs or WeChat where it becomes more than the sum of its parts that you just don't get with just a collection of disjointed, individual tools.
It's because it doesn't fit into the modern zeitgeist of extreme testability and pandering to computer illiterates Every time this kind of UI comes up in discussion, I feel like there is always someone groaning about how much extra effort and cost is involved with giving the user too many options. In fact, you could say that modern software seeks to eliminate all noncritical optionality. Combine this with gobs of poi…
Modern apps don't suck. Specific design patterns suck. Not all things modern adhere to those design patterns. Not all the patterns you mention suck.
If I were hiring you to design an interface, your aversion to "humanize pretty much everything" would kick me right off the list. It reeks of tech-saavy elitism.
Calibre is great. There’s a real lack of good quality ebook software and Calibre is an essential do-everything toolkit. The interface, however, is like some incredible piece of outsider art, gloriously free of best practice, convention or accepted wisdom. As a UX designer it gave me some trouble at first, but now I’ve genuinely come to appreciate it. There’s no way the interface could be ‘improved’ by conventional st…
This is the best attitude I’ve ever seen in a rebuke of a poor interface. I wish I treated every criticism this way.
Calibre is great. There’s a real lack of good quality ebook software and Calibre is an essential do-everything toolkit. The interface, however, is like some incredible piece of outsider art, gloriously free of best practice, convention or accepted wisdom. As a UX designer it gave me some trouble at first, but now I’ve genuinely come to appreciate it. There’s no way the interface could be ‘improved’ by conventional st…
Calibre's UI is an artifact from a superior and more civilized time, IMHO Extremely functional and just a little bit incomprehensible. Compared to modern UI/UX which just slaps me with how stupid it thinks I am
Calibre just works and is great, but the user interface needs some work to modernize how it looks and to be less confusing in general. I'd love a fork that follows the Gnome Human Interface guidelines.
> the user interface needs some work to modernize No, it doesn't. Eventually people learn to use it, and everyone is happy that way.
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.
Calibre just works and is great, but the user interface needs some work to modernize how it looks and to be less confusing in general. I'd love a fork that follows the Gnome Human Interface guidelines.
> the user interface needs some work to modernize No, it doesn't. Eventually people learn to use it, and everyone is happy that way.
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…
> Why doesn’t calibre let me store books in my own folder structure?
> ... a search/tagging based interface is superior to folders ...
> ... much more efficient than any possible folder scheme you could come up with ...
Quite opinionated software. That and the quirky UI are reasons why I only use Calibre for a conversion or de-DRM here and there. Jump in, flail around until task done, fast exit.
Calibre just works and is great, but the user interface needs some work to modernize how it looks and to be less confusing in general. I'd love a fork that follows the Gnome Human Interface guidelines.
Yeah it's wild how the use case for 90% of users is "convert epub/mobi/whatever to azw3 and upload to kindle" and doing that is buried in several right click context menus... I'm comfortable doing it now but it seems as easy as having a left pane for books in my "library" and right pane for books on my device
`ebook-convert` does exactly that.
https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/de/generated/de/ebook-conve...
Nice if you're into downloading ebooks illegally or from the few sites that don't do ERP. I used to use it too. However since graduating college and starting to make money I didn't download anything anymore due to lack of time more than lack of funds so I don't use it anymore.
Calibre is great. There’s a real lack of good quality ebook software and Calibre is an essential do-everything toolkit. The interface, however, is like some incredible piece of outsider art, gloriously free of best practice, convention or accepted wisdom. As a UX designer it gave me some trouble at first, but now I’ve genuinely come to appreciate it. There’s no way the interface could be ‘improved’ by conventional st…
That was a wonderful way to put it. Excellent writing.