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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."
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'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. :)
You must master your joystick like a fisherman masters bait! - Gimpy
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
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...
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.
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.
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.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
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.
"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
You have no idea what lock in means, do you?
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).
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.
The GUI didn't change much between 0.9.x and 1.0.0, only a few minor changes.
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.
Will it ever reach 1.0? I need to get to my BBS!
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
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.
Making the possible totally impossible.
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.
You have a rather unusual understanding of the term "lock-in". I don't think that you'll find anyone who agrees with you.
Required reading for internet skeptics
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?
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.
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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.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
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!
~Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, but Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.
It still doesn't support DjVu; although one can use DjVu, Calibre treats it like just like any other unknown file