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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
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.
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.
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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.
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
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.
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.