Calibre – E-Book Management • Hacker News Board

Re: Calibre – E-Book Management

#71

Post by abawany » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 10:33 PM UTC

philips wrote: post #56

stinkytaco wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm genuinely curious to hear any specific changes you might make. I'm a librarian and I can say that Libby was a huge improvement in usability over the Overdrive app and we spend much less time on basic user support now. There are weird quirks for me as well, but I'm always hard pressed to say exactly what I would change.

It is a huge improvement over the low bar set by Overdrive. I use Libby everyday with my children and I think my three complaints are: 1. Filtering and categorization can be confusing: I have a difficult time finding books that are age appropriate for my daughter and available. I end up memorizing favorite authors as that is easier than the filtering. 2. The four buttons at the bottom are… interesting? The “library c…

Re. 2 I just checked: for the currently selected library, it shows you what looks like curated content from the library, to enable you to pick up on things that you might not necessarily do when just interacting with the app with searches and etc.

Re: Calibre – E-Book Management

#72

Post by hackerbrother » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 10:33 PM UTC

tucosan wrote: post #68

curiouser2 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you just want to convert books and then copy them to your device I suggest you have a look at the command line tools installed alongside calibre. `ebook-convert` does exactly that. https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/de/generated/de/ebook-conve...

Yup!

ebook-convert mybook.epub mybook.mobi

Re: Calibre – E-Book Management

#73

Post by AcidBurn » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 10:34 PM UTC

I recently started self hosting calibre-web[0] which consumes a calibre database and provides a basic web interface for viewing and uploading books to it. The killer feature for me is that it can act as a Kobo sync server. It makes getting my entire library onto my e-reader a breeze.

0: https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web

Re: Calibre – E-Book Management

#74

Post by xiconfjs » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 10:37 PM UTC

AcidBurn wrote: post #73

I recently started self hosting calibre-web[0] which consumes a calibre database and provides a basic web interface for viewing and uploading books to it. The killer feature for me is that it can act as a Kobo sync server. It makes getting my entire library onto my e-reader a breeze. 0: https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web

I'm using this for my 80k+ documentation library and couldn't be happier - so easy to share your library with other users.

Kudos for your project.

Re: Calibre – E-Book Management

#75

Post by cogburnd02 » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 10:37 PM UTC

minsc__and__boo wrote: post #53

Does anyone know of any good ebook platforms that compete with Amazon? Getting really sick of the Goodreads/Amazon interfaces and lack of quality recommendations.

Uh, LibGen?

Re: Calibre – E-Book Management

#76

Post by xconverge » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 10:37 PM UTC

AcidBurn wrote: post #73

I recently started self hosting calibre-web[0] which consumes a calibre database and provides a basic web interface for viewing and uploading books to it. The killer feature for me is that it can act as a Kobo sync server. It makes getting my entire library onto my e-reader a breeze. 0: https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web

It does also allow for conversion of EPUB -> MOBI without using the calibre standalone application. calibre-web is now my primary interface to my existing calibre database file. I keep calibre ready/installed but haven't needed it in over a year

Re: Calibre – E-Book Management

#77

Post by Pasorrijer » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 10:41 PM UTC

My favourite eReader for android is and always will be AlReader. Some dudes pet project but it is glorious and wonderful.

Re: Calibre – E-Book Management

#78

Post by Pasorrijer » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 10:43 PM UTC

the_af wrote: post #50

FemmeAndroid wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know. I’ve bounced off it multiple times and just given up.

What do you use instead of Calibre? I haven't found a similar tool that is as useful, is free, runs on Linux, etc. I find Calibre is not a tool to "enjoy" spending time on, but simply a tool to solve something specific so that I can then spend time on my Kindle. There are other tools where I want to enjoy the time I spend using them (say, text editors, paint programs, IDEs) but Calibre is not one of them.

I use AlReader on android... But I don't think there is a Linux equivalent.

Re: Calibre – E-Book Management

#79

Post by aidenn0 » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 10:43 PM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #45

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #24

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…

>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.

I think it's because integrated tools parts are often worse than the non-integrated versions and when people are forced to use them, it means removing choice.

A half-dozen well integrated mediocre tools is better than the sum of its parts, but that doesn't mean it's better than a half-dozen not-at-all integrated excellent tools.

A half-dozen pretty good tools that are well integrated is going to be excellent, but you'll still have some greybeards saying "I have to click through 12 menus to frobnicate the widget in this thing, while my old tool I could do it with a single command"

99% of "Integrated tools" fall more into the first category than the second, which makes sense; N non-integrated tools can have N parallel teams working on them, while an integrated tool cannot. This means each tool will get only a fraction of the effort in the integrated tool; it's a special case of Conway's Law.

Re: Calibre – E-Book Management

#80

Post by paxys » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 10:49 PM UTC

tomc1985 wrote: post #48

mattkevan wrote: post #19

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

> 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.