Calibre Version 1.0 Released After 7 Years of Development

Calibre is a feature-laden, open source e-book manager; many readers mentioned in light of the recently posted news about Barnes & Noble's Nook that they use Calibre to deal with their reading material. Reader Trashcan Romeo writes with some news on its new 1.0 release, summing it up thus: "The new version of the premier e-book management application boasts a completely re-written database backend and PDF output engine as well a new book-cover grid view."

Comments

Thanks Kovid!

[demonlapin]

Don't forget to give the man some money. He updates Calibre frequently - sometimes more than once a week - and doesn't charge a nickel.

Re:Thanks Kovid!

[Colonel Korn]

So what? Nobody held a gun to his head and forced him to work on it.

Sorry to feed the troll, but this one's amusing. I enjoy the implication that only work performed at the barrel of a firearm should be rewarded.

Re:Thanks Kovid!

[Austerity Empowers]

He's analyzed the economic climate and has a very forward looking view of employment conditions in the near future.

Re:Thanks Kovid!

[PhiRo,oRihP]

Must live in America.

Re:Thanks Kovid!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fun fact: "calibre" means "gun" in French ^^

Re:Thanks Kovid!

[Anonymous Coward]

No it doesn't. It means gun in French slang, and even then, falling out of use very quickly.

Re:Thanks Kovid!

[fastest fascist]

What's wrong with asking for voluntary donations?

Re: Thanks Kovid!

[otherniceman]

All I can say is that it better be an open source firearm.

Re:Thanks Kovid!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget to give the man some money. He updates Calibre frequently - sometimes more than once a week - and doesn't charge a nickel.

I donate when I can. Usually just $5, but it's worth a lot more than that.

Re:Thanks Kovid!

[jones_supa]

In Finnish slang there's the word "mutka" for firearm, which translates to "curve".

Re:Thanks Kovid!

[Anonymous Coward]

and paying taxes is voluntary says Harry Reid http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7mRSI8yWwg

Re:Thanks Kovid!

[mad flyer]

Calibre in French refer to the diameter of the gun barrell/size of the shells.
Works for guns, battletanks, howitzer... not sure for self proppelled stuff though.

Re:Thanks Kovid!

[Anonymous Coward]

And "battletanks" aren't self propelled?

Re:Thanks Kovid!

[Immerman]

Why would that be?
Some unrelated third party makes the observations that the developer is actively improving an already great program and giving it away free to the world, and that such generosity is deserving of reward in its own right. ( Incidentally this is the basis of a traditional gift economy - where people don't buy stuff, it's given free as a gift, and whoever gives the best gifts is the most likely to receive good gifts in their turn. )

If that observation discourages you from gifting the creator then I would venture a guess that you were unlikely to give such a gift to begin with, and that someone drawing attention to your selfishness aggravates latent feelings of guilt, which you defend against with hostility.

Re: Thanks Kovid!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Anonymous Coward 2 hours ago

Nothing, it's when someone gets all righteous and entitled about it by saying ridiculous things like:

give the man some money...doesn't charge a nickel.

A direct contradiction like that puts me off from giving anything.
"
Every mind is a world... yours is a fucked world.

Re:Thanks Kovid!

[demonlapin]

No, the fact that you're a cheap douchebag puts you off from giving money. Kovid puts his product up for free. The download page asks for donations. He's doing important work - there is no other ebook management program I know of that has anything like the feature set of Calibre. I'd like him to give up his free time to work on it, so I give him money.

Re:Thanks Kovid!

[bill_mcgonigle]

if the author wanted to be rewarded for his work he should charge be charging a fee for the program. Simple as that.

It's only "simple as that" if one has knowledge of only one economic model and is unaware of the studies showing higher overall revenue via the model Kovid is using (effectively executed, of course).

Re:Thanks Kovid!

[xvan]

bttletanks ammu

Re:Thanks Kovid!

[demonlapin]

The cheapness of whorestains is well known. Starts from the beginning when you put your mama out of a job for 9 months.

Re: Thanks Kovid!

[Anonymous Coward]

and 3D-printed

Re:Thanks Kovid!

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be a Liberatarian.

Re:Thanks Kovid!

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean his mama who gladly gives blowjobs to smelly bums for free all night long but asks for donations to feed her son? No wonder he is sensitive about it.

Re:Thanks Kovid!

[lxs]

Certainly not a Librarian.

Re:Thanks Kovid!

[BasilBrush]

There's nothing effective about Calibre, never mind it's model. It deserves prime position in the user interface hall of shame.

Re:Thanks Kovid!

[c0d3g33k]

I used to think that when I first ran Calibre. It was kind of ugly (no, scratch that - it WAS ugly) to my eyes. It still isn't pretty, but I got over that. Then I stopped looking at it and started using it for its intended purpose: managing ebook libraries and manipulating ebooks. I discovered that the user interface made pretty good sense - I spend a little time learning it, discovered it was quite efficient at what it did, and developed a workflow that fit with what Calibre could do. Now when I sit down and use Calibre, the UI fades away and work gets done. To me that is the hallmark of a good tool - it gets out of your way and lets you get things done.

Calibre may not conform to the "it must look like every other application" model of user interface design, but it is an effective tool nonetheless. It is certainly nowhere near Blender (http://www.blender.org/) in the CUICM (Custom User Interface Confusion Matrix). Give it a chance. It's the best FLOSS tool out there at what it does.

Re:Thanks Kovid!

[MrBigInThePants]

I don't.

But then I don't believe in our current system of labour and government...which is exactly how it works...

Re:Thanks Kovid!

[CoolHnd30]

...so let me get this straight... "Calibre" in French means the same thing as "Caliber" in English.... who'd a thunk it... ;)

Re: Thanks Kovid!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Calibre" in French means "calibre" in English English.

Re:Thanks Kovid!

[demonlapin]

Twelve hours and that's the best you can come up with? When the trolls are so weak, the Internet is lost.

Re:Thanks Kovid!

[cas2000]

that is the tragedy and beauty of Calibre.

it *is* amazingly good at what it does. there really is nothing else that does anything close to what it does.

but Calibre's user interface is shit, and the main programmer thinks his expertise in ebook formats makes him an expert in everything else (including user-interfaces, sending email, how to use http/https proxies, security and more).

he really is an expert in ebook formats. probably one of the world's leading experts in the field.

sadly, he's not an expert - or even competent - in most of the other things he thinks he is.

worse, his initial response to almost every bug report is rude and arrogant, along the lines of "fuck off, you don't know what you're talking about. it's a user error and i'm sick of idiot users reporting bugs in my perfect program". if you persist, you might after 5 or 10 messages going back and forth eventually get him to acknowledge that he might perhaps be just ever-so-slightly wrong about something, and he may even accept the patch that fixes whatever it is you posted the bug report about (but more likely he'll just ignore it and hope you go away).

he's sort of like a dan bernstein but far more arrogant and far less likely to actually be correct in what he says and in his opinions.

i've had this response with three of my own bug reports and seen the same with dozens of others - pretty nearly every calibre bug report i've read. so i've given up reporting bugs in calibre - there's just no point and it's not worth the hassle. i still use calibre, but i'll jump ship as soon as there's an alternative.

Awesome program

[xQuarkDS9x]

I've been using this program for over a year first in Windows XP and now in Lubuntu and it's really really good to manage books on my Kindle Paperwhite. There's even a quality check plugin that has an option titled "Fix ASIN for Kindle Fire" which fixes it so that the book cover actually shows up on my paperwhite instead of a generic one. :)

Re:Awesome program

[BasilBrush]

It has one of the worst user interfaces I've ever seen.

terrible UI

[Anonymous Coward]

7 years and the UI is still shit.

Re:terrible UI

[demon driver]

It may be slightly awkward at first sight, but if someone doesn't perfectly get used to it in seven years, that's probably not the program's fault...

Re:terrible UI

[Jerry Smith]

7 years and the UI is still shit.

UI is confusing, to say the least. But that's not my issue with it, it's UNBELIEVABLY slow to click around. *click* *wait* oops wrong option *click again* *wait* *find the right option* et cetera.

But it's very capable of what it ought to do. It's immensely big though and I prefer smaller apps for smaller tasks.

Re:terrible UI

[Anonymous Coward]

It may be slightly awkward at first sight

...And it is, but the sad fact of the matter is that ebook software is almost entirely complete shit.

Calibre is the sole reason I didn't go to the nearest Apple store and beat people about the head with my iPad Mini.

Re:terrible UI

[Anonymous Coward]

Several annoying things I have noted about Calibre's UI.

Upon installation, it asks for an empty directory for the "Calibre Library". Why? Why can't it use my existing ebook library instead of wasting space by making copies?

Providing aforementioned directory to the installer requires that you manually create and then browse to the directory. Why can't I type in the directory in the *freaking text field* that is *right there*? Why won't it automatically create a directory if it doesn't exist?

The update checker pops-up a window that says a newer version is available and has a *button* that says "get update". When I click the button, it opens my web browser to the Calibre web site. Why doesn't it just update directly in the application itself? Why does a *hyperlink* appear as an application style button instead of a standard underlined piece of text like all other hyperlinks? Why doesn't it warn me that it's going to open my browser?

The preferences comes up as a series of space wasting icons surrounded by a lot of dead space. It's annoying to look through and difficult to navigate.

Why do so many trivial options require an application restart? Change user interface? Needs restart. Choose language? Needs restart. Enable system tray icon? Needs restart. Show cover browser in a separate window? Needs restart. Number of covers to show in browse mode? Needs restart. Yes/No columns have three values? Needs restart. Sigh.

Why does it have to be a converter, library manager and reader in one? This is an application that really should be split into two. A small, simple converter and a library manager/reader.

Re:terrible UI

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah. If you can complain about the UI, I have to wonder what are you bothering to use it in the first place. Most people, or at least for me, spend only a few minutes using the program, and then hours and hours reading the books.

Re:terrible UI

[BrokenHalo]

UI is confusing, to say the least. But that's not my issue with it, it's UNBELIEVABLY slow to click around.

Addressing that second point first: I've been using Calibre for a couple of years, and the new 1.0 release is *much* faster than any of the earlier versions.

As to the "confusing UI", I just don't see how. It seems as straightforward as it can possibly be, unless there's some API I haven't heard about that somehow divines your intentions by reading your subconscious brainwaves.

Re:terrible UI

[BrokenHalo]

Why won't it automatically create a directory if it doesn't exist?

It did for me. (Linux version.)

When I click the button, it opens my web browser to the Calibre web site. Why doesn't it just update directly in the application itself?

You appear to be overlooking the fact that Calibre is a cross-platform application, and the fact that a sensible OS might refuse to let you casually overwrite an application like that.

Why does it have to be a converter, library manager and reader in one?

I think you have to look at the history of the application to answer that. I bought my reader device (a Sony PRS-T1) on the basis that it supports the widest range of formats, but now I generally try to only download ePubs. I usually prefer to use Sigil to edit ePubs, though Calibre copes surprisingly well with a wide variety of CSS input to get a generally acceptable result. (Or you can use it to dismantle ePubs into its components to edit with your default editor if you prefer.) Library management is where it excels for those of us who live outside the Amazon ecosystem.

The Reader function is mostly redundant, but it does provide a quick way of checking that books are formatted more or less correctly before you transfer them to your reader device.

I'm pretty fussy about formatting requirements (especially since so many ePubs are really horribly produced), so I usually do some pre-processing before I transfer a book to my reader. This is why having everything stored on my computer, and treating the reader as a (mostly) offline device makes sense to me. Everything is backed up, and I don't have to worry about vendors (looking at you, Amazon) snatching content back from me because they've changed their minds about their copyright agreements.

Re:terrible UI

[Anonymous Coward]

Asstard. Your mom is a big, stupid, whore, and I can say that despite my own abandonment as a child. It's a fact. Your mother is morbidly obese, questionably literate, and makes chicken wing money by selling her very large ass at a discount on the street.

Re:terrible UI

[Anonymous Coward]

> As to the "confusing UI", I just don't see how. It seems as straightforward as it can possibly be

I told it to import a book, and it added it to my shelf/library/whatever. I then selected it and hit the "View" button. Instead of viewing the book, it added a copy to my shelf/library/whatever. No alerts, dialogs, or explanations. That's just bad UI design.

Re:terrible UI

[jones_supa]

Those are quite heavy words, can you elaborate why you think it is "almost entirely complete shit"?

Re:terrible UI

[Anonymous Coward]

It did for me. (Linux version.)

Doesn't here. The text field isn't even editable, therefore the directory must be created manually and then browsed to through their installer unless you want to use their default, which is ridiculous.

You appear to be overlooking the fact that Calibre is a cross-platform application, and the fact that a sensible OS might refuse to let you casually overwrite an application like that.

BS. Lots of software have an update mechanism built in that works just fine. I don't see why any sensible OS would refuse to "casually" overwrite files installed in a user accessible location that is owned by the very user who is logged in. It's not changing system files or anything so it shouldn't pull up my browser and certainly shouldn't be hiding the fact that it's just a hyperlink behind a button graphic that looks like it's part of the application.

I think you have to look at the history of the application [calibre-ebook.com] to answer that.

That doesn't answer anything. A converter and a library manager/reader should be two or three separate applications.

The rest of what you wrote is completely irrelevant.

Re:terrible UI

[Anonymous Coward]

By your idiotic logic, unless you have personally built a better car than the Ford Pinto, you can't criticize it. Unless you have personally made a better OS than Windows ME, you can't criticize it. Unless you have personally written better songs than Justin Bieber, you can't criticize his music. Unless you have personally made better films than Uwe Boll, you can't criticize his movies.

Sorry, but you fail.

Re:terrible UI

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems as straightforward as it can possibly be

Calibre, as straightforward as can possibly be? Come on. It's powerful and useful but it is not intuitive at all (especially if you use a plugin to deal with DRM, which isn't necessarily Calibre's fault but it is still Calibre's problem).

Re:terrible UI

[Immerman]

> I don't see why any sensible OS would refuse to "casually" overwrite files installed in a user accessible location that is owned by the very user who is logged in
Name a modern OS that stores executable programs in a user-writable location by default. Go ahead - try to go in and modify your Office application directory without administrator privileges. You can't. And for very good reason - that program *does* have security bugs, guaranteed. So if you open a hostile data file, and the application has rights to modify its installation, it can then permanently and silently infect the application. That's virus-propagation 101. And proper use of administrative privileges nips that easiest of attack vectors in the bud.

> Lots of software have an update mechanism built in that works just fine.
Name 3 small, widely cross-platform programs that do so. It's a royal pain in the ass since each OS needs its own custom update implementation. Even major programs such as LibreOffice tend to fall back on the dirt simple web-based "download and run the update" strategy for any major update. And for a small program like calibre a self-update mechanism constitutes a lot of work that could otherwise be spent making the program do it's actual job better. Worse, if the application files were generally user-writable then any security bug in your web browser could be used to directly infect your office application, your financial database, your password vault, etc, etc, etc.

Moreover if you watch the demo video it's obvious from the window decorations that the developer uses Linux, which has a universal application update mechanism built right in to the OS, so you're asking him to go through a bunch of extra tedious and annoying work to get an update mechanism working he won't use, because you're too lazy to make too extra mouse clicks to download and install an update when it's available.

> A converter and a library manager/reader should be two or three separate applications.
Says what authority? Personally I *like* the fact that I can perform all the basic manipulations right from my library interface. I don't care what format it's in - I just want to say "put these books on this device", and have it handle any necessary conversions automatically.

Re:terrible UI

[Immerman]

Gah, last-minute mis-edit - the "Worse..." sentence should be at the end of the first paragraph, not the second.

Re:terrible UI

[Anonymous Coward]

You are an idiot. If you installed Office with your account, of course you can access it with your account because you are the owner of those files.. Go learn computers, kid.

Re:terrible UI

[lxs]

You obviously have never used Adobe Digital Editions.

Re:terrible UI

[Immerman]

Who you calling kid, amateur? I've been programming computers since before Windows existed.

Check again - in order to install Office you need administrative privileges. And if you're using an account with unfettered administrative privileges on a day-to-day basis then you're the idiot. Modern Windows does have the nice feature that lets you temporarily escalate to administrative privileges, which lets you get most of the best of both worlds, but that's not quite the same thing, and introduces it's own nuisances to deal with.

Re: terrible UI

[ncc74656]

You appear to be overlooking the fact that Calibre is a cross-platform application, and the fact that a sensible OS might refuse to let you casually overwrite an application like that.

BS. Lots of software have an update mechanism built in that works just fine. I don't see why any sensible OS would refuse to "casually" overwrite files installed in a user accessible location that is owned by the very user who is logged in.

Umm...since when is /usr/bin writable by ordinary users in "any sensible OS?" (Or C:\Program Files, for that matter. Even Windows disallows the behavior you describe.)

interesting timing

[theheadlessrabbit]

I purchased my first ebook reader just 8 days ago, (Sony PRS-T1 for $50) and installed calibre (0.9.18 is the version currently in the ubuntu repository) this morning, and I am very impressed with this piece of software, but a little intimidated by the interface, so I will look forward to testing out this new version.

Re:interesting timing

[johanw]

The GUI didn't change much between 0.9.x and 1.0.0, only a few minor changes.

pdf-epub

[thereitis]

My main use case is converting PDF -> EPUB. I haven't found the output the greatest, at least on my Kobo. Will have to check the new version out.

Re:pdf-epub

[Anonymous Coward]

My main use case is actually the opposite! I have a Sony PTS-T2 and have found that the epub support is very finicky. Fortunately PDF support works much better, so I've taken to converting my epub files to PDF.

Calibre works great for this, and definitely one of the more user friendly open source programs out there.

Re:pdf-epub

[CaptQuark]

I also tried converting from PDF to EPUB. Sometimes the PDF isn't in a good condition and I get a very poor EPUB. If that happens, I convert PDF -> RTF, clean up and spell check in MS Word, then RTF -> EPUB.

This has let me fix over-large graphics, incorrect page breaks, constant spelling problems from the OCR, and font problems.

~~

Re:pdf-epub

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't PDF effectively lock the text flow and typesetting, making it impossible to change font size or type on the device?

Re:pdf-epub

[Anonymous Coward]

you get a thumbs up on this fix method - thanks!

Re:pdf-epub

[XcepticZP]

Yes, but you can tell it to size the pdf pages exactly to the size of your device's screen. So then the pdf fits perfectly onto the device, and there is no need to alter the flow of the text due to the width of the device.

Re:pdf-epub

[Anonymous Coward]

I usually use pdftotext from poppler. (pdf->txt->epub) Somehow calibre consistently gets the linebreaks messed up, and graphics are shit on the e-ink displays anyhow.

Re:pdf-epub

[Anonymous Coward]

I was hoping someone could recommend a better program for this. I've tried it several times to convert plain text ebooks from pdf to epbub and the process always failed near the end. It might be highly recommended around here but from my own observations it seems pretty useless. I'll give it another shot *again* ...

Re:pdf-epub

[BrokenHalo]

Doesn't PDF effectively lock the text flow and typesetting, making it impossible to change font size or type on the device?

Indeed. If the GP's PRS-T2 copes with that, he's been very lucky in having found publications scaled to minimise wasted space on his display. I have a PRS-T1, and I hate PDFs because they usually have stupid margins that lock me into a display format that strains my eyes. Epubs reflow automatically, and you can change your display fonts in any way you wish.

Re:pdf-epub

[Anonymous Coward]

Except when you want to read on a different device or you get a new reader. No thanks, I'd rather do all of my converting once.

Re:pdf-epub

[fafaforza]

How is ePub support finicky? Sony has been in the ePub business for probably a decade now. Cant imagine they didn't have the format straightened out.

Re:pdf-epub

[Anrego]

I have a Sony PTS as well, and have indeed had bad luck with epub.

The core problem is there is no tolerance for error. One out of place tag or invalid character and it just explodes. This usually isn't a big deal for professionally made ebooks, but a lot of not-so professionally made ebooks have minor mistakes in the markup, and while web browsers have been dealing with these gracefully for years, the Sony ereader seems to just throw it's hands in the air and give up.

I too tried converting to PDF as a way around this, but was disappointed with that as well. Now I just convert to plain text for sources I know to be problematic.

Obviously Sony can't be entirely blamed here, it's being fed garbage data.. but a _little_ tolerance would be nice.

Re:pdf-epub

[fafaforza]

That sucks. I had 2 Sony readers. The PRS-505 would reset itself if it came across errors in an ePub. Hadn't had similar issues on the PRS-650. Figured they took care of it.

Re:pdf-epub

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm currently reading a bought epub where my Sony Reader is replacing all the 'o's in words with question marks. I don't know if it is an error in the epub or the reader itself but it is pretty annoying. PDF isn't a real option for e-readers, the font is always too big or too small.

Re:pdf-epub

[pugugly]

I confess I'm been really pleased with my PRS950. Works great.

Re:pdf-epub

[Anrego]

The epub thing is frustrating because other than that, I love mine as well.

It's the right size, weight, the touch screen is nice and responsive, it's got physical buttons for turning the page, and I love the lack of gimmicks (or at least that they are well hidden).

I've been hoping they'd put out an update to make the parser a bit less fragile, but I think at this point it's a lost cause.

Re:pdf-epub

[Anonymous Coward]

The one I've got now (t2) doesn't outright crash very often, the most common thing I see is it just stops parsing where it runs into an error.

For instance, a certain fanfic site (hey, don't judge me!) I frequent which allows download of epub files has a nasty habit of doing stuff like:

<p><strong>Title line 1</p><p>Title line 2</stong></p>

And the parser will just stop right after Title line 1, rather than implicitly closing the <strong> tag when it's parent <p> is closed and ignoring the next closing </strong> tag (which web browsers have been doing forever).

Re:pdf-epub

[Anonymous Coward]

I've worked a little bit on pdf to epub conversion (not software design, just outsourced drone) for a Canadian company, and my experience is that it can't be entirely automatic, it needs some hand-made finition (a few hours of work for an average book).

Re:pdf-epub

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time a browser enables bad markup, God kills a kitten.

Re:pdf-epub

[Man Eating Duck]

Yes, but you can tell it to size the pdf pages exactly to the size of your device's screen. So then the pdf fits perfectly onto the device, and there is no need to alter the flow of the text due to the width of the device.

Yes, that'll work for your particular current device, and if you're happy with it, fine. I'll note that polishing an epub is really easy with only basic knowledge of CSS, though. Sigil is basically an IDE for epubs, and with it you can reformat an epub in minutes, most epubs only require slight changes to CSS. With an "official" plugin you can launch Sigil directly from calibre.

The epub is then usable as-is on most devices, and it is a very good source format if you want a fixed page format like PDF, or other flowing formats like K8 for Kindle. If anyone's interested I can describe a few "sensible default" modifications to particular CSS classes.

Re:pdf-epub

[fafaforza]

The 'o' must have been from a language character encoding the reader doesn't support. I'd see weird chars replace half the letters of a Polish newspaper source I'd download using Calibre.

Awesome!

[Falkentyne]

I've used Calibre for awhile now and it's an impressive piece of software. I've been meaning to for awhile but I finally went ahead and made a donation.

Full disclosure: I'm drunk and I'm always more generous when I'm drunk.

Also, you should see The World's End - great movie.

Re:Awesome!

[BancBoy]

Full disclosure: I'm drunk and I'm always more generous when I'm drunk.

Same here, but my mod points just expired. Someone want to get this ./er a drink and a +1?

Re:Awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

You got +5 Informative. ...for slashvertizing a movie that has nothing to do with the subject. Or slashvertizing your own drunk self. Either way, good job to the moderators.

I'm informed about:
1) Software = impressive (maybe the drunk has you generously giving good reviews)
2) You = drunk (and are generous when drunk)
3) "The World's End" = great movie (maybe the drunk has you generously giving good reviews)

And you got a fucking +5 for being informative.
CAPTCHA=YAWNING

Does it do custom folders?

[Anonymous Coward]

So far you had to import all of your files into calibre, it can't reference external files. So it is pretty much unusable for importing larger existing libraries, and you get locked in.

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[batdragon]

So far you had to import all of your files into calibre, it can't reference external files. So it is pretty much unusable for importing larger existing libraries, and you get locked in.

For me, I think this is a feature.

It ensures that no matter what plugins / convertors / bugs calbre has at the time, your original files don't get mucked up. So you can merge records, mess about with meta data, and not have to worry about losing anything.

The copies that are imported into calibre's own library folder are just that: plain copies. I don't get your point about "locked in". You're as locked in as you were with your original files. The directory layout may be different, but nothing gets obfuscated.

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[icebike]

So far you had to import all of your files into calibre, it can't reference external files. So it is pretty much unusable for importing larger existing libraries, and you get locked in.

Almost everything you said is NOT true.

Import into Calibre is simply drag and drop, or select from a file browser, and you can keep your existing library. Once in Calibre the file are easily Exported. Further you can use them in place, right out of the Calibre directory, because the files stay in what ever format you wish.
You can even keep your ebooks in multiple formats, because it converts between multiple virtually flawlessly. It fetches covers and metadata and its just a joy to use.

I've dragged and dropped my entire ebook collection into it. Most of them I converted to epub, but in a few cases I retained the existing format as well. It handles it all. It has an export function that will export any given format, all formats, all formats with metadata and covers. Its just a stupendous piece of work. (Yeah, I sent him $50 some years ago).

There is no lock in. Its the most versatile program for ebook management I've ever seen.

And, yes, if you hunt around you will be able to find third party DRM removal plugins, so when your old DRM device dies, or your old format with DRM goes out of use, you can convert to almost any other format and leave the DRM behind.

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[JeffElkins]

Yes, there is a lock-in.

Calibre can't use an existing file structure. All my books are organized into a genre->author directory hierarchy and Calibre will not use it. You're forced into allowing Calibre to manage your books.

Back in the early days at mobileread.com Kovid was asked to to include an file management opt-out feature like iTunes, and he was 'meh, code it yourself'. So yes, importing a large library into Calibre is a daunting task, and you're forced to work the way it wants you to work regarding file-naming, directory structure,etc. Still, It's a must-have conversion tool for ebook users.

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a fucking idiot if you think that's "lock in".

The books in a calibre library are organised into Author->Book folder structure on the disk. Hell, if you want you can use calibre's tags to label books by genre and search/report via calibre.

If you want to manage your book collection as a file system... go ahead... no one is stopping you from managing it yourself. If you have a calibre collection and you want to move your books out... the books are right there (in their format) on the disk in the folder structure described above.

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[JeffElkins]

Import all your books into calibre and you'll be using Kovid's directory structure and file naming conventions unless you want to take the time to manually change everything back. After all that effort, you're pretty much locked in. Just because you can manually back everything out doesn't change that. It would be one hell of a task for a signifcant amount of books.

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[icebike]

He realized tags made way more sense than odd-ball sorting into directories.
Any directory structure is a lock in, as soon as you realize it doesn't work.

So he added tagging with your tags or standard tags.

But For people who insist on organizing in some antiquated way he created Save to Disk settings where you can change the
order used when exporting. You can customize to create any sort of directory structure for your exported files.
So lock-in go Poof, vanished before your very eyes.

Further you can also create the custome structure when sending books to a device (e-reader), and guess what... It can be
different than you use for exporting. So when you find that your eReader doesn't support sorting by Genre, you
can change that back to something sensible.

Tagging is way better than structured directories. You can sort by any tag within Calibre, and output in any order you want.
There is no lock in.

(Its 2013. Tagging is where its at. Obscure Structured directories are so 1999.

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[radarskiy]

"unless you want to take the time to manually change everything back."

Preferences -> Saving Books to Disk -> Save template. The default is {author_sort}/{title}/{title} - {authors}
Select All
Save to disk

I don't know the command line equivalent off the top of my head

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[JeffElkins]

I love calibre for it's tools, but prefer how iTunes or XBMC handle my media collections. With iTunes (OS X) I check a box and it totally leaves management of my files alone, storing only metadata and file location in the database. It doesn't get in my way. XBMC doesn't even offer to manage my files; It builds a database of metadata only, including a link to the file in question.

I'm comfortable with a 1999 file directory hierarchy. It's easier to work with from a command line, I make sure my file/directory names aren't full of embedded spaces and parens that I detest and in general it's much more friendly to a *nix environment and scripting.

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[brainnolo]

Back in the early days at mobileread.com Kovid was asked to to include an file management opt-out feature like iTunes, and he was 'meh, code it yourself'.

That's not a bad response at all, calibre is open source. "Code it yourself" does not meant he would not accept the patch, it just means he does not feel like doing it himself, which is reasonable

Re: Does it do custom folders?

[Anonymous Coward]

You have no idea what lock in means, do you?

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[JeffElkins]

I agree. Kovid's awesome and I wasn't complaining about his response.

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[maxwell demon]

Back in the early days at mobileread.com Kovid was asked to to include an file management opt-out feature like iTunes, and he was 'meh, code it yourself'.

Well, you could have coded it yourself, or you could have paid someone to get it coded.

If he had said "I'll never let that into the code" that would have been different. But since he doesn't take money for it, he is under no obligation to add features he doesn't feel like putting in.

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[Kjella]

Its 2013. Tagging is where its at. Obscure Structured directories are so 1999.

Different needs, different uses. Directories are great for namespacing, foo/README.TXT is different from bar/README.txt. When the entire "work" is contained in a single file with an unique title (artist/title/album/series/season/episode) then I agree, tagging works better. Still, for anything that takes huge amounts of space (anything >10GB at least) I want to know where I keep it, in case I need to clear up my SSD, move HDDs or whatever. But for eBooks.... well the whole collection will fit in a tiny little corner anyway.

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[ThePhilips]

"Larger existing libraries" usually come with their own management software. If your private library has several thousands books, then it is not "large", it is small. "Large" libraries are in tens thousand and more.

Import into Calibre has only the effects: it copies the book into Calibre library (or any library you have configures/selected), it extracts the cover and it extracts the meta-data into OPF file. If you do not have library management software, the cover and meta-data extraction are the steps you need anyway and those are the steps which take the most time.

Copying is a feature too. I also have an enormous external library of books - but due to its size it is on the external hard-drive. I connect the drive, pick the books, import them into Calibre and disconnect the drive. Now I can send the books to my Kindle for reading. Huge bonus: every time I start Calibre, I'm not overwhelmed by the sheer amount of the books in the library; I see only the books which I want to see.

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[XcepticZP]

And this is one of the reasons I read Slashdot.

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[BrokenHalo]

In any case, it just doesn't make sense to use such a rigid directory hierarchy when you can use tags. Especially since your reader device will generally do the same.

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[Jaruzel]

Why is all the good stuff already modded 5, when I have mod points?

This. Pretty much why I don't use my Mod points when I get them any more. I'm a daily /. reader, but even then, everything worth modding is already modded :( It's like the system hands out mod points to EVERYONE all on the SAME day, about ONCE a WEEK...

-Jar

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[Anonymous Coward]

He has indeed said that this will not change:

http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq.html#why-doesn-t-app-let-me-store-books-in-my-own-directory-structure

I have a large archive of books, in a hierarchy, which I've had for many years. I only use calibre for conversion purposes, precisely because I do not wish to have duplicates or change my filing system.

I would significantly prefer to use an application which was solely focussed upon conversion, rather than management. That said calibre works well, from the command line, for performing conversions.

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[Nerdfest]

True, but when it comes right down to it, you can just tag the set with a unique tag that is effectively the full path. To be truly equivalent you also need to tag them with each parent path as well unless you can search by partial tag names.

Re: Does it do custom folders?

[Anonymous Coward]

F e

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[Anonymous Coward]

And it also uses twice the space without considering that the user probably already has backups, either their own or on the service that they bought the books from. That's a real pain when your ebook directory is already full of large books.

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tags are fucking retarded. They will only work with software that are specifically coded to use them in the exact same fashion. Once you need to do any kind of management with anything else, you're screwed.

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[Anonymous Coward]

Import all your books into calibre and you'll be using Kovid's directory structure and file naming conventions unless you want to take the time to manually change everything back. After all that effort, you're pretty much locked in. Just because you can manually back everything out doesn't change that. It would be one hell of a task for a signifcant amount of books.

No sweetie.. You seem to be a little bit confused about what lock in is.

I understand.. You hear the big kids using these funny words you don't really understand, and you copy them to look clever.

Lock in is when you buy a bunch of books with an obscure DRM that nobody but the maker of your e-book reader uses. So you are stuck with either finding a way to strip the DRM, or with using that reader to read the books for ever more.
Lockin is when each file name is given some reference number only understood by the program. And you have to look at each file to figure out what it is.

And no.. you do not have to manually reorganise everything. It is nobody's fault but yours that you don't know how to use the software.

You can if you so desire, set Calibre up to send books to the target device in any hierarchy you choose. Genre, author, series, year, ISBN number order. you name it. and as a directory can also be set as the destination. Fully automated organisation. Even newer books can be added and automatically sent to your nested directory structure if you so desire. Any field in the meta data can be used to sort the books in the list view, or as a directory in the destination when exporting. And it can automatically convert to a given format on export if you so desire.

I'm afraid the only lock in here is your own ignorance.

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[fast turtle]

But for eBooks.... well the whole collection will fit in a tiny little corner anyway.

Then you sure don't have any kind of collection of ebooks to read.

My current collection of ebooks exceeds 15.5Gib and 375K files. Yes I'm bragging and having just installed Calibre, I'm going to see how well it deals with such a large collection.

I'm hoping that the tagging feature works as well as I need due to the sheer number of books I have.

Re: Does it do custom folders?

[Anonymous Coward]

In this case, it means that all files are only accessible through calibre and not through the file system.

Should a better program come along, all you can do is to export all of your files and completely switch to the second program.

As we all know, while this is possible in principle , in reality export of big databases will never work 100%. There will always be the author with special characters in his name, the book with the funny title, the odd case etc. Maybe even a hardware failure.

Compare this to how media players work. You keep all of your mp3s in your file system. Want to try a new media player, just point it to the file system, and it will scan the folders. Want to use two different media players! No problem, all of the files are accessible to both.

So you are clearly locked into calibre.

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's say I have the following existing folder structure

programming books/
        Teach Yourself C++ in 5 minutes/
                  chapter 1.pdf
                  chapter 2.pdf
                  better_scan_of_appendix.pdf
                  code examples.rar
                  README.TXT
                  entire_book.epub
                  image.iso
                  code examples/
                          chapter1/
                                  c1.cpp

It is not possible to add this by 'simple drag and drop' or 'select from file browser'. Actually it is not possible to add such a structure to calibre at all.
Calibre can't do file attachments and it can't maintain the folder structure.
Tagging only helps you if you have a single file.

Make it thousands of folders like this, and it is completely impossible to automatically import anything.

It is clear that the roundtrip folders -> calibre -> folders is going to completely mess up the structure.

I obviously don't want to have an extra copy of all of my files around just for calibre. I don't do that with my music either.

You can even keep your ebooks in multiple formats, because it converts between multiple virtually flawlessly. It fetches covers and metadata

, yes, it does. But for all of this it is not necessary to take control of all of my files and to lock myself in.

Media players don't copy all files either. You can even alternate between them, if they have different features.

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tagging and folders are relatively orthogonal, having tags is no reason not to have folders.

Tags are not better than folders, they are a completely different concept.

You can't put additional files that came with a book (source code, program files and so on) into a tag.
You can easily keep the extra files in a folder with the book.

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[Anonymous Coward]

In addition, folders are a feature of the file system and thus easily accessible to any other program, tags are only accessible by the original application.
You can't use desktop search on your tags. You can use the tags only from within calibre. One more points that locks you in.
I am not saying that having tags is a bad thing, but tags are far from where we are now.

You are storing all of your work in 'Obscure Structured directories', aren't you? You have to, as there is no usable filesystem that has tags instead of folders.

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[zugmeister]

I can think of three possibilities here:
You read lots of BIG picture books.
You have your OS installed on a small SD card and can't spare the space.
The books you read are so large that the text runs to multiple gigs per book and you are working off a small SSD.
The problem you're referencing was solved in the 90s. This design concept has been implemented in much more mainstream programs (iPhoto) and the world seems to be turning just fine so far.

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its 2013. Tagging is where its at. Obscure Structured directories are so 1999.

Different needs, different uses. Directories are great for namespacing, foo/README.TXT is different from bar/README.txt. When the entire "work" is contained in a single file with an unique title (artist/title/album/series/season/episode) then I agree, tagging works better.

Exactly that is the point!
Ebooks are not contained in single files, they come with extra files, videos, source code, scans of different quality, are so huge that they need to be split into 100 individual pdf files,
I just bought a book that came on two full DVDs with thousands of individual pdfs. The files are accessed by a pdf index file (.pdx I think) than opens with Acroread and links to all of the content files.

How do I convert this to tags?

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[zugmeister]

Tagging works fine, but is generally useless once you leave the program you tagged with. For example, I have my HHGTTG folder located under Douglas Adams. Weather I'm hitting the network share from a Mac, PC, iPad, or Fire, regardless what program I'm browsing with, I always know exactly where to find the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Now if I have all my other (thousands) of ebooks in a single folder I need to search to find anything and forget browsing by author entirely. Tags are great if you have the time and energy, but everything / everyone knows what to do with a hierarchally organized directory structure. Note that they are not not mutually exclusive, so if it works for you use both!

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[narcc]

You have a rather unusual understanding of the term "lock-in". I don't think that you'll find anyone who agrees with you.

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[Anonymous Coward]

My ebook folder is over 25GB, filled with textbooks, technical books and full length novels. Why should I double that to 50GB just because Calibre is poorly written?

I'm sorry that you are only capable of reading short story brony fanfics in ASCII format, but some of us have real books.

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[xvan]

epub 2.0 wasn't thought for big picture books... The biggest part of any epub sould be the cover picture. Calibre was thought for ebook managing

Your issue means:
1) You have more epubs you will ever be able to read. Unless you administer a library / bookshop that isn't the case. Ask B&N
2) You have lots of technical pdfs. Those are from 10 to 200 MB. But calibre wasn't thought for that sort of books. Actually those are scanned books not ebooks.

Anyway, you could always delete the original book after it was imported...

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[xvan]

You are doing it wrong... That's what the collection tag is for...
You can then use the web server to find the book. At least that's the calibre way.

Otherwise, you can mount the library directory and look for the book based on the template you originally used. The default is author/book... I don't think Douglas Adams wrote more than 100 books, so you're fine with that.

If all your books are in a single folder, but you have a naming convention, you can just find the book with your proffered OS tool.

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[icebike]

First you realize that you aren't talking about an ebook.
Then you move on from there.

No clue what you just bought, but ebooks don't come on DVDs.

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[icebike]

Now if I have all my other (thousands) of ebooks in a single folder

Really?
The mind boggles!

The discussion here is about people who sort their ebooks into non-standard directory structures, and complain
that Calibre does not work with those odd-ball structures. But it can import those ebooks just the same,
and it can export them back to what ever goofball structure you want.

But within its library it works with its own structure. And this is said to be a lock in.
Its clearly NOT a lock in since it will export back to your structure if you want.

This whole argument is the last gasp of those who painstakingly hand-built built directories upon directories to house their ebooks, only to find their structure didn't work, and re built it yet again. They still can't find anything, but it sure looks organized. Its the same way they organize their music, First by horns, and woodwinds, drums, then below that by genera, then tempo, then by author, and finally by song name. When done, they can't find anything, but they rail at any other software that suggests a reasonable structure with the ability to search. (I suspect these folks also pigeon-hole into their pet categories too.

If anything Calibre actually makes harebrained directory structures MORE possible and sustainable, because you can store it in Calibre, tag it any way you want, (the tagging system is extensible), then export it into a structure that includes directories based on your tagging.

The world is metadata. Get used to that.

Re: Does it do custom folders?

[xvan]

That's not a fair comparison. A fair one would be how a media editor deals with this issue. Generally It does it in the same way or in a more obfuscated.
Calibre stores all the metadata it can on the epub (ID3 equivalent). So you can point any program to your database folder, and as long as it only scans for the files in your preffered format, you're fine. It also keeps a copy of outside the files.

How do you expect calibre to deal with different non equivalent file formats of the same file, if it isn't storing all the files in one folder per title?

Per each title you need to store:
The cover picture (the same as any media player, some store it on the same folder some at other folder).
All the different formats of the same title you chose to export to.
The xml metadata. (where do you propose to save the matadata of a plain text file?)

Re: Does it do custom folders?

[icebike]

In this case, it means that all files are only accessible through calibre and not through the file system.

Nonsense.
The ebooks in the Calibre library are store as common eBook formatted files, and can be accessed by simply looking for them with your file browser. You can search them with your desktop search facility, click them to open them for reading with your favorite ebook reader.

Because the files are simply FILES, you can point your favorite ebook reader at the directory and it works perfectly.
Please stop spreading fud.

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[Anonymous Coward]

For your enlightenment, a quick google search shows plenty of ebooks that come on dvds
https://www.google.com/search?q="ebook+on+dvd"

In my case it was a collection of 20 years worth of articles, two full DVDs.

You can read about.pdx index files here:
http://www.ehow.com/how_5998974_create-index-pdf-files-cd.html

This is fairly common for large multivolume ebooks to come in this format, a DVD with an index file and hundreds or thousands of pdfs. Springer does it for example.

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[lxs]

You're forced into allowing Calibre to manage your books.

Why are you using an ebook manager if you don't want it to manage your ebooks?

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[Anonymous Coward]

None of which addresses the issue, that Calibre's library management was a poor design choice. If it's all tag-based anyway, there's absolutely no reason it couldn't leave the book files in the existing directory structure.

What happened to the idea that the user's data is sacred?

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[s7uar7]

...if you hunt around you will be able to find third party DRM removal plugins, so when your old DRM device dies, or your old format with DRM goes out of use, you can convert to almost any other format and leave the DRM behind.

I would recommend doing this before your device dies or the DRM goes out of use. Some formats require an active DRM server to decode against.

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't make sense to override the user's directory hierarchy when you can use tags, either.

Re: Does it do custom folders?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't say 'can' when you mean 'have to'. I prefer directories thanks, since I don't always remember the names of things, which makes your search idea even more of a pain in the arse than it already is.

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is precisely why nobody uses open source and why all open source software are poor copies of commercial software.

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[cthulhu11]

Ebooks are what, a couple of meg each? My friggin *phone* could store tens of thousands, so I dunno what crack you're smoking.

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[Man Eating Duck]

This is fairly common for large multivolume ebooks to come in this format, a DVD with an index file and hundreds or thousands of pdfs. Springer does it for example.

That is not an "ebook", it's a library comprising thousands of ebooks. You wouldn't call the whole children section of your local library "a book containing thousands of books", would you?

Unless your goal is to confuse the issue (indeed it seems so when reviewing your post), it's generally useful to employ the same terminology everyone else uses.

Re:Does it do custom folders?

[Anonymous Coward]

First you realize that you aren't talking about an ebook.

Then you move on from there.

No clue what you just bought, but ebooks don't come on DVDs.

Ebook isn't a trademark, or a brand, or a particular format or device. An ebook is just an electronic version of a book, which means it can come on any medium capable of holding digital data. I don't know what YOU think an ebook is, but you're almost certainly defining it too narrowly.

My experience with it.

[EnsilZah]

I've been using it for format conversions since I got my Kindle and though I have no need for it the reading and library features I'm sure they are adequate.

The one thing that bothers me, as is often the case with open source software, is the interface is a mess of icons in various colors, styles and questionable relation to the functions they're trying to represent.
I guess it's just another case of a developer not being a designer and making his own icons or accepting a patchwork of contributions from various people, but it would be nice if there was one consistent style throughout.
Hell, I might even consider using it for managing and transferring my ebooks if I felt more comfortable with the interface.

Re:My experience with it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, this, exactly.

Just the fact that you have to go into the preferences to edit toolbar items shows how weird some of the UI decisions are.

Re:My experience with it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you could offer to generate a set of 'consistent' icons, or, if you're not a designer, offer to pay for a designer to create them.

Re:My experience with it.

[icebike]

Give it time, the interface grows on you. And having the same interface on Linux and Windows is worth learning what the icons mean. (hover works)

Nobody has mentioned that it the ability to send ebooks to your android without cabling up, sucking down newspapers or other periodicals and pushing them to your devices so you can read on the plane, or serving ebooks to your whole household for download via a simple web browser. Or managing multiple ebook libraries, so you can keep the kids books out of your books and vise versa.

I think it looks complicated, because it has a lot of power, but if you sit down and play with one feature a day, it becomes second nature.

Re:My experience with it.

[Anonymous Coward]

You will love the newest versions of AtoCAD: hundreds of icons, and all of them are blurry light-blue-grey-ish, without any features or colors that would make any one of them recognisable among its surrounding icons.

Re:My experience with it.

[Anonymous Coward]

>Hell, I might even consider using it for managing and transferring my ebooks if I felt more comfortable with the interface.

Who cares about you? It's not like you will contribute, nor are you a princess.

Re:My experience with it.

[stasike]

I was using Calibre the same way as you - for conversions (and to communicate with my Sony PRS-500 reader), exactly because of that unusual interface.
Nowadays I simply reconfigure the interface, using Preferences -> interface - > Toolbar.
I remove all icons from the toolbar and put the functions I want on the menubar.
Do not saw off the branch you are sitting on and first define the menubar, with a prefferences menu and only then remove the toolbar.

Calibre is extremely configurable and *very* powerfull. It has great support for regular expressions and other advanced things.

Re:My experience with it.

[ThePhilips]

In the right-bottom corner, uncheck all the buttons except the right-most one (with the icon of a tiles).

Here you go - a modern interface! Wasn't that hard to find too.

Re:My experience with it.

[smartin]

Another great feature is that you can share books by email. My Mom is a constant reader and I will hunt down books for her. I use Calibre to reformat them to .mobi and then can right click on the book and mail it to her kindle account. Works great! Calibre even lets me add a column to the main listing so that I can add a flag the lets me record that I sent the book.

Re:My experience with it.

[nashv]

If the icons really bother you so much, just take a peek in "Calibre2InstallDirectory/resources/images". You will find all icons used by Calibre there. Replace them with whatever you wish.

It's a shame because there could easily be a skin-pack applier interface for Calibre, since the icons etc. are individual files and not packed into the executable.

Re:My experience with it.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a terrible attitude to have toward your users, Kovid.

Re:My experience with it.

[BasilBrush]

Calibre is extremely configurable

Some people think that's an excuse for having an appalling UI. "Hey, it might be a pile of shit, but you can choose the details of which bits of shit are displayed."

Re:My experience with it.

[Man Eating Duck]

Calibre is extremely configurable

Some people think that's an excuse for having an appalling UI. "Hey, it might be a pile of shit, but you can choose the details of which bits of shit are displayed."

OK, we get it, you hate the look and feel of calibre. On the other hand I hate the recent trend of giving everything a Web 2.0 look and removing easy access to as much functionality as possible. Let me know if you find some ebook management software which has half the functionality of calibre, half the stability, *and* a beautiful interface, while maintaining usability. I won't hold my breath.

I don't really get what in particular you complain about; if it is "waaaaah ugly" then I frankly can't be bothered to scrounge up a lot of sympathy, if there are tasks you really can't figure out how to do after trying for a few minutes feel free to ask over at the calibre forums. This is not intended facetiously, "simple" (and not so simple) questions crop up all the time from the millions of calibre users, and there are a lot of helpful people to answer them. It is very likely that your particular use case is already covered by calibre.

Furthermore, while the GUI is not beautiful I find it very effective. I'm definitely a "function over form" guy, and calibre is nothing short of brilliant when it comes to ease of doing complicated stuff. calibre is a tool which aims to cater to both power users and casual ones, and few of them seem to have significant difficulties with the GUI. There are a lot of users with little to no technical experience who benefit daily from calibre when managing their book collections.

On a side note: offering "simple" and "advanced" interface options has been brought up several times on the calibre forums, but has been rejected for two main reasons: partly because no-one seems to agree on which subset of the functionality merits inclusion in the simple interface, and partly because maintaining two interfaces adds additional complexity to the development process which no-one wants to take on the responsibility for.

Re:My experience with it.

[BasilBrush]

Design is not about how it looks. It's about how it works. And Calibre is a bag of features without any overarching design. For sure it's ugly and that's a bad thing. But it's not the reason for me criticising it's UI design.

This is not intended facetiously, "simple" (and not so simple) questions crop up all the time from the millions of calibre users, and there are a lot of helpful people to answer them.

You're arguing my case for me.

offering "simple" and "advanced" interface options has been brought up several times on the calibre forums, but has been rejected

And it would be rejected by me too. Optionally hiding UI elements does not make an ill thought out application into a good one. See Azeureus (Vuze) for the mess this gets you into.

Re:My experience with it.

[Man Eating Duck]

Design is not about how it looks. It's about how it works. And Calibre is a bag of features without any overarching design. For sure it's ugly and that's a bad thing. But it's not the reason for me criticising it's UI design.

My troll alarm is ringing its bells off... Oh well.

What do you mean by "overarching design", and how is lack of it a hindrance to you? Please be specific, don't just spout vague criticism. In fact, from your posts on this story you seem very similar to a guy who posted a few times on the forum with extremely vague (but very vocal) complaints about the "bad UX". When asked repeatedly by exasperated forum members, he was not able to communicate what, exactly, his problem with the GUI was. Obviously he didn't have any constructive suggestions either.

I'm still not sure what you want here. The GUI does exactly what I need it to, and it obviously works well for most people, as there are not a lot of complaints about its usability on the forum. Remember that even if you personally are not able to use the software, literally millions of others are getting great value from it daily, many of whom are definitely not techies or even well versed with computers. Maybe it's not the software that is the problem here.

This is not intended facetiously, "simple" (and not so simple) questions crop up all the time from the millions of calibre users, and there are a lot of helpful people to answer them.

You're arguing my case for me.

Uh, what? Is great community support, including for inexperienced users, a minus? Most questions are about relatively complex topics like composing regexes and templates, not "how do I transfer books to my Kindle".

Re:My experience with it.

[BasilBrush]

You clearly know Calibre has a bad UI, as you're not defending it directly. You're making excuses. That you care more about functionality, or that there's support available for people who can't work the UI out. Remember, any poster on a forum looking for advice on how to get an app to do something of which it actually is capable is a failure of the UI.

As to be being a troll. You've admitted that there are people on Calibre's own forums that say that. And I'm not the only one commenting on this Slashdot to say so.

Sorry I'm not going to be specific. The whole thing stinks to high heaven. And there's little to be gained by me downloading the app again to check the details, and then have you deny them here. The denial of someone who already admits to preferring "function over form" is worthless. You simply don't know the topic. I won't waste my time.

Re:My experience with it.

[Man Eating Duck]

Sorry I'm not going to be specific.

Wow, what a surprice. Have a nice day :)

Incredibly Useful Program

[Matt_J_Harris]

I have been using this along with the fanfic downloader plugin. http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=163261. Combined with my ASUS transformer as an e-book reading platform and I have almost given up on paper books.

Proofread much?

[Anonymous Coward]

3 lines is an article now?

Also, it's "its", not "it's". You would think an editor on an English-language website would have at least a rudimentary understanding of English grammar rules.

Re:Proofread much?

[Jerry Smith]

3 lines is an article now?

Also, it's "its", not "it's". You would think an editor on an English-language website would have at least a rudimentary understanding of English grammar rules.

"US-centric" != "rudimentary understanding of English"
I kid, I kid...

Nook Nukem

[Anonymous Coward]

Nook Nukem - 1.0 Calibre

PDF is problematic by design

[demon driver]

PDF is generally problematic. One of the reasons is that PDF is pre-formatted with hard line breaks which have to be eliminated to get dynamically flowed paragraphs, and it is quite impossible for a machine to perfectly know without understanding the context whether a specific re-flow is in order or not.

That said, I find the PRS-T2's built-in PDF reflow feature, while far from perfect, better than the PC based conversion solutions I happened to look at so far. I always try to get a "native" epub version of a book I want to read in the first place, though.

Re:PDF is problematic by design

[xtracto]

The best solution I found to read PDF (in my PRS-950) is to crop their margin with BRISS and read them full-screen on the ebook-reader. When the font is still too small, I can do landscape reading... unfortunately, due to the PRS-900 form, a page is broken in 3 (the PRS-650 breaks it in two, which IMO is better). Or with BRISS it is also possible to split pages in two segments, but I don't like that as much.

7 years in a cave!

[mutherhacker]

He locked himself in a cave for 7 years to build this. Somebody should have told him that apps like these nowadays have a web based front-end. Doh! Back in the cave for another 7 years to make it web-based!

ps. I'm only kidding, kudos to him for making a very feature rich app and releasing it open-source.

Re:7 years in a cave!

[laejoh]

He could have come up with a new religion!

Re:7 years in a cave!

[stasike]

Even if you are just kidding ;-) ... It does have web interface. But only for browsing your collection.
Preferences -> sharing -> sharing over net -> start server.

Re:7 years in a cave!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, Calibre has a read-only web frontend... you can't manage your collection, but your entire library is accessible in a searchable manner.

Excellent! One item of criticism: no library sync

[demon driver]

Library sync is still a major problem, because it becomes virtually impossible once you start adding books to different libraries.

While calibre /can/ run in server mode, which in theory could very much eliminate the need for synchronizing libraries, the web frontend isn't quite as good as the normal calibre UI, so I don't like the option too much.

Right now, I'm keeping my primary calibre library on a netbook, I don't add books in any other library, and I synchronize other libraries by simply copying from the netbook.

That said, calibre is nevertheless THE all-in-one solution for everything I need to do with e-books, and it's truly excellent.

"thus"

[libtek]

*thusly

FTFY

Re:"thus"

[Anonymous Coward]

From the thesaurus on my laptop (see bottom):

thus
adverb
1 the studio handled production, thus cutting its costs: consequently, as a consequence, in consequence, thereby, so, that being so, therefore, ergo, accordingly, hence, as a result, for that reason, ipso facto, because of that, on that account.
2 all decent aristocrats act thus: like that, in that way, so, like so.
PHRASES
thus far thus far, we've avoided any unanticipated expenditures: so far, until now, up until now, up to now, up to this point, hitherto.
USAGE
thus
There is never a need to expand the adverb thus to "thusly.".
Usage notes show additional guidance on finer points of English usage.

Re:"thus"

[PCM2]

Bad Grammar Nazi loses war: http://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=thusly

love it!

[lisabeeren]

i really love calibre, use it all the time... but it's user interface harks back to the bad ol' days of open source user interfaces... not real pretty, not real nice to use.

Re:love it!

[ThePhilips]

Check out the toggle-buttons in right-bottom corner.

Check the "Cover Grid" and uncheck the "Cover Browser", "Tag Browser" and "Book Details". Looks better now?

The last touch: do not use the hideous right-click pop-up menu - but learn to use the buttons on the top. All the functions are there.

Android client?

[shic]

I've used Calibre on my desktop for a few years - it was the best tool I could find, but it was frustratingly slow Version 1.0 seems to have that fixed I'm officially impressed.

What I'd like to do is access my (ever growing) library from my Android tablet (a Nexus 10 which I bought for its near-laser-printer screen resolution). I'm a real tight-arse when it comes to paying for software... but I'd pay for an application that gave me seamless access to read my Calibre library (on my LAN) from my Android device (with limited local storage).

Re:Android client?

[Anonymous Coward]

Like "Calibre Companion" ???

Re:Android client?

[shic]

Quite possibly... I might need to jump through some hoops to get this working on my LAN... but, on the surface, it looks as if it might be exactly what I need. Thanks. :)

Re:Android client?

[BrokenHalo]

You could also try out Aldiko Reader. You'll need to create some symlinks, but I think it should work.

On the other hand, unless you happen to be the Library of Congress, you should be able to copy most of your collection of books to your Nexus device without making much of a dent in your storage capacity.

Re:Android client?

[fast turtle]

Well I'm not up to the level of the Library of Congress but with over 15.5Gib worth of ebooks, I think that's more then my poor Nexus 7 will handle. I've already got 10Gib used for various tv shows I've transfered/converted.

Just installed Calibre so I'll see how it works in regards to the number of files I have (380k+).

Re:Android client?

[BrokenHalo]

Kudos to you. I never knew turtles could read at all, but it would have to be a damn fast turtle that can get though 380,000 books in one lifetime. Unless, of course, you happen to be a turtle. Er... oh.

*headsmack*

Re:Android client?

[Man Eating Duck]

Just installed Calibre so I'll see how it works in regards to the number of files I have (380k+).

I think that might be quite taxing for calibre, in particular the import process *will* take a good many hours. I just tested importing 3930 books (novel length), it took about half an hour, so it seems that you look at at least two days of unsupervised imports. Then again, doing *anything* with 380k files is bound to take time :)

Look at partitioning your library into several libraries if you have logical ways of dividing your collection. calibre also supports something called virtual libraries which I haven't used myself, but it might speed up handling a very large library. As mentioned there are huge performance improvements in the last versions of calibre, but you will surely benefit from an SSD disk and a largish amount of ram in any case.

I hope you have reasonably good metadata, either in the files themselves or in your naming structure, or you will probably face insurmountable problems tidying up your collection afterwards (this is not particular to calibre - GIGO applies here as everywhere else). Reading metadata from path info will probably be faster, as calibre won't have to parse the file on import. Check out the "Control the adding of books" in the Add books dropdown menu, in particular the regular expressions for parsing paths and file names, in that case disable file parsing. Do a few test runs on small subsets to make sure that calibre catches at least author and title correctly. Do your imports in batches (you can use the tag on import feature to connect a book to a particular batch), verify that metadata is sensible as you go along. Some things, like correcting different variations of author names, can be done efficiently after import (if your library is at all usable).

I (and likely others) would very much like to hear about your experiences, feel free to make a thread on the calibre subforum of mobileread. Note that such a large library might seem suspicious to some users, as pirating is frowned upon. In any case, the devs are tuning the performance of the new and more efficient db code (one of the new features in the 1.0 release), and your library will be a good test subject :)

Re:Excellent! One item of criticism: no library sy

[Anonymous Coward]

I have five different libraries, three of which run in server mode with opds access. The total number of books is around 40k.

I use opds to serve books to my tablet and occasionally my phone. I don't bother with syncing at all. Ah, and the fun part, you can filter the libraries to choose what the catalog shows in the first place, or create more filters to help browse the catalog.

Command Line FTW

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about the new Version, but in older versions of Calibre (0.8.38 to be specific) all major functions were available through the command line on Linux systems. Just do a 'apropos calibre' and you'll get a list of manual pages for all major tools that are part of calibre, including ebook-viewer, ebook-convert and ebook-meta.

Personally I think it's wonderful software

[Teknikal69]

I've a PRS-T1 and I use Calibre solely to manage it over Sonys own reader software

I think it's biggest strength is Calibre makes collections easy to manage which makes everything a lot easier for me all my novel series are automatically put into a collections and numbered appropriately. I've also used it for conversions more times than I can count and it's done a pretty good job basically I'd just be much worse off without it and probably wouldn't bother with e-readers at all.

Thanks Kovid if you read this

Okay, what about ZTerm?

[sandbagger]

Will it ever reach 1.0? I need to get to my BBS!

Brilliant App

[locke_00]

Calibre is a completely brilliant app. Consistent across platforms to boot. If you can't figure out the UI, stick to Apple products. If you don't like the UI, write something better.

Yeah right.

[Cammi]

In the last version, 1/2 the features didn't even work ... lets see if he fixed anything this time.

Reputation

[Anonymous Coward]

All I think of when I hear of this project is the heated forum thread that the program author was chastised in. He demonstrated an "interesting" attitude towards security, and receiving constructive criticism from security conscience people.

Annotations, and long-term integrity of ebooks?

[guanxi]

I'd love to use ebooks and get rid of all my paper, but my books contain a lot of valuable knowledge and I always have these two concerns:

1) Annotations: Is there a way to efficiently make annotations (roughly as quickly as a I can using paper), in a way that I'll be able to read 10-50 years from now?

2) Preservation: Will I be able to read and use the ebook at all in 10-50 years?

Obviously, these needs require a widely-accepted standard format and software that strictly observes it (i.e., doesn't subtly corrupt the format). For example, in the world of PDFs, there PDF/A format. Is there anything similar for ebooks?

Re:Annotations, and long-term integrity of ebooks?

[MrNiceguy_KS]

I don't think you quite understand what Calibre really is. Think of whatever program you use to organize your music collection - whether it's Windows Media Player or Amarok or iTunes or whatever. Now substitute "e-book collection" for music collection, and you'll be close. The difference is that Calibre is primarily an organizational tool. You can import ebooks from dozens of different formats, convert from one format to another, and keep them all organized in one library.

So to address your concerns, both really depend on the format of the document. Calibre supports just about any format you could think to throw at it, so if you pick a format that supports annotations, you won't have any trouble. You mention PDF and PDF/A - either one can be imported into your Calibre library.

I make heavy use of Calibre at work. I have imported tons of internally created MS Word documents with different policies and forms we use, PDF manuals for hardware and software, plain text files, just about anything.

Another great feature I haven't seen mentioned much in the thread is Calibre's ability to subscribe to a page and automatically download it for offline reading. Combine that with Dropbox syncing files to my phone, and it's the closest I've found to the now-defunct (and much missed) Newsroom.

You know why?

[Anonymous Coward]

He is a nice (and possibly drunk) person. He's likable. I like him, at least, from the little tidbit he shared.

That all in stark contrast to you. You are not likable. You seem to have a sour outlook on life. And seem to be destined to share that sour disposition. That makes people not like you. Have you noticed in daily life as well?

Quitcher bitchin. Don't take life so serious. Enjoy it. It makes people like you more. You'll be happier.

Re:You know why?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you like alcoholic braggarts, huh?

Re:Excellent! One item of criticism: no library sy

[Anonymous Coward]

I keep my Calibre library in a Dropbox folder. That syncs everything nicely.

Mod App Up

[vomitology]

calibre is one of those apps that I didn't know I needed until I started using it, now it's pretty much indispensible. Mad props to Mr. calibre Developer Dude!

Lots of complains

[Caedite Eos]

Seems a lot of people are critical of Calibre. OK, it's not perfect. However, I also can't help but notice that no one is saying something like "It sucks because of "X" and "Y" and "insert application name here" is a much better choice. Or, better yet "It sucks because of "X" and "Y" and I am days away from releasing my app witch will take care of all the issues and ..." Fucking gimmegimme generation.

still no DjVu support

[Geremia]

It still doesn't support DjVu; although one can use DjVu, Calibre treats it like just like any other unknown file

I make ebooks with it

[Anonymous Coward]

I use it to convert my ebooks from hand-tweeked HTML into both ePub and Kindle formats.

Re:Excellent! One item of criticism: no library sy

[aslagle]

I just put my Calibre library on Dropbox - problem solved.