Calibre – E-Book Management

by soarfourmore • 5 years ago

340 167 5 years ago

I've been using Calibre for years to manage my ebooks, convert them, and sync them. This is one of those pieces of software that just works.

purplecats• 5 years ago

I use Calibre to manage my Kindle pdfs and books. It is one of the oldest pieces of software I use, and it works really well.

brutal_chaos_• 5 years ago

Just a nit/aside: I'm sure the OS you are using has much older software built in. Iif on Windows, imagine the legacy that's stuck there for backwards compatibility. If on Linux, most of that is really old, updated recently perhaps, but created a long time ago. macOS is similar to Linux, though arguably worse as they dont update software that changed from gpl2 to gpl3, iirc.

There's a lot of really old software you probably use anytime you are on a computer. can't forget all of that!

as an avid calibre user myself, yay there are dozens of us! :)

jhgb• 5 years ago

Does anything trump GNU Maxima at this point?

michaelmcdonald• 5 years ago

Obligatory link to the terminal emulator that Kovid also created / maintains that is super nice:

https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/

LibertyBeta• 5 years ago

Wait, I didn't know they where the same person. Neat.

johnchristopher• 5 years ago

Calibre's interface isn't to my liking but since they added the possibility to manage collections/bookshelves ~two years ago for my almost ten year old kobo I love it a lot ^^. Managing collections/bookshelves on the Kobo is a major PITA.

wlesieutre• 5 years ago

Added support for Kobo's "series" organization feature as well. Apparently requires some janky 2-stage process because it's not done with the book's built-in metadata; you have to sync the books to the Kobo, then sync again for it to poke the special series sauce after the files are on the device.

Seems like a needlessly complicated way to do it when the books have series metadata, so props to Calibre for the extra work to support that!

gnull• 5 years ago

Agreed, I'm very happy with their Kobo support.

A great discovery for me was that Calibre can convert to KEPUB (subset of EPUB tailored for Kobo readers).

La1n• 5 years ago

Check out koreader for Kobo devices. I've been using it for a quite some time and it adds some nice Calibre features such as wireless sync. Besides that the PDF support is leaps ahead of stock Kobo

https://github.com/koreader/koreader

lobstrosity4202• 5 years ago

Calibre just works and is great, but the user interface needs some work to modernize how it looks and to be less confusing in general. I'd love a fork that follows the Gnome Human Interface guidelines.

curiouser22• 5 years ago

Yeah it's wild how the use case for 90% of users is "convert epub/mobi/whatever to azw3 and upload to kindle" and doing that is buried in several right click context menus... I'm comfortable doing it now but it seems as easy as having a left pane for books in my "library" and right pane for books on my device

tucosan• 5 years ago

If you just want to convert books and then copy them to your device I suggest you have a look at the command line tools installed alongside calibre.

`ebook-convert` does exactly that.

https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/de/generated/de/ebook-conve...

skeletonjelly• 5 years ago

Haven't used it in a little bit, but from memory most of my flow for this was drag and drop. Drag the source onto Calibre, then drag that to the Kindle logo up top.

Elora• 5 years ago

I'm afraid that attempts to change it will ruin it, like many other things. Calibre just works and once you've learned how to use it, it's great that it doesn't change on you for no particular reason. I personally wish it remain unchanged.

pmlnr3• 5 years ago

the user interface needs some work to modernize

No, it doesn't. Eventually people learn to use it, and everyone is happy that way.

mishac• 5 years ago

Not everyone is happy, which is why many of us wish it had a better UI.

FemmeAndroid• 5 years ago

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

turtlebits• 5 years ago

There are some huge UI warts, so I only use it to convert e-books.

1. I can't figure out how to change the styling of the book viewer. 2. Whenever I search, then try to hit backspace to modify my search terms, it tries to delete the first search result.

zapzupnz3• 5 years ago

People shouldn't have to learn how to use its complicated interface. The killer feature is managing eBooks, not rocket science.

There is nothing at all about the Calibre interface that needs to be the way it is. What's so interesting is the way it apes an old version of iTunes, one which nobody would've considered the pinnacle of UX, and still manages to complicate and bury things in unexpected places.

paxys3• 5 years ago

Considering that it is an amazing piece of software but 90% of the comments on this thread (made up of mostly technical users) are about its user interface, it should be obvious that there are some problems.

the_af4• 5 years ago

I disagree and I hope no effort is wasted on this. Calibre is great and any confusion is solved by googling.

If and only if the author(s) feel they have time and energy to spend on this, then that's ok. But no forks and no wasted energy, please!

I'd rather they spent time solving bugs and improving/adding features.

lobstrosity4202• 5 years ago

UIs that you have to google are like jokes you have to explain...

Shorel4• 5 years ago

Noooo, no more Gnome ultra-minimalist and featureless interfaces.

If we ask for a better user interface, it pays to be sure it is actually an improvement.

mixmastamyk• 5 years ago

I'll be a bit nicer and say it needs some usability improvements. "Modernize"-ation and gnome-esque removal of features is _not_ what it needs.

dsr_3• 5 years ago

Invaluable for the command-line tool ebook-convert; I rarely use any other part of it.

fireattack• 5 years ago

Similarly, I primarily use calibre-debug CLI to extract resources from ebook.

metalliqaz• 5 years ago

it seems like every time I open Calibre it wants to autoupdate.

curiouser22• 5 years ago

nah it's worse, prompts for a manual download and update.

thrower1232• 5 years ago

The one thing I really don't like about Calibre is how it will copy all of my ebooks into its own file organization. There is probably a way to disable this, but that is the default.

Kind of irritating when you have Calibre in a cloud-storage folder and your books are also in the cloud storage, and it uses up your space with duplicates.

jpindar• 5 years ago

Once I put a book into Calibre, and make sure the metadata is correct, I delete the original. If there's any important info in the original filename I put it in the metadata. Is there a reason I need to save the originals?

rahimnathwani• 5 years ago

"There is probably a way to disable this"

No, there is not, and never will be:

https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq.html#why-doesn-t-calibr...

Calibre's library is meant to be the place where you store your books.

I'm curious why you want to store a second copy outside Calibre. Is it because:

1. Calibre doesn't allow you to find books the way you want? (e.g. tagging doesn't have the all metadata you want)

2. You have other software (e.g. ebook reader software) that needs to read ebook files, and it's impossible/inconvenient to use Calibre's OPDS server for that purpose?

3. Some other reason?

thrower1232• 5 years ago

I've already got them organized. At this point some of these PDFs and CHM and LIT files could get drafted, they're so old.

TomatoDash• 5 years ago

From the linked Calibre FAQ:

Why doesn’t calibre let me store books in my own folder structure?
... a search/tagging based interface is superior to folders ...
... much more efficient than any possible folder scheme you could come up with ...

Quite opinionated software. That and the quirky UI are reasons why I only use Calibre for a conversion or de-DRM here and there. Jump in, flail around until task done, fast exit.

lnl• 5 years ago

I just dislike library software in general. I like files, I like keeping files neatly in folders and subfolders (and adding tags in filenames if necessary), so that I can easily use whatever software I like at the time on whatever platform to view or edit them, without ever being dependent on any. I organize all my movies, music, photos, documents, etc. this way, and I didn't want to hand over my ebooks to some software to keep it organized in its own way.

I don't even like it if a program scans my existing files to form a database without affecting them; but as long as it's not too in-my-face I guess I don't mind it so much; as I can get rid of the software and its database whenever I like, and I wouldn't notice anything was different. But Calibre decidedly takes the opposite approach, so, as the link says, I decided it's not for me. There are many parts of Calibre that I thought I might find useful, but it would be tiring to fight against a software that actively tries to work fundamentally differently than the way I like. (And I did try it, but using it felt almost as frustrating as using much of Apple software; it's an agony unless you use it exactly the way they want.) That's why I don't have Calibre installed on my computer even just for those useful parts; I just found other software to do things I like. Which is sad, because as an ebook user I really tried to like Calibre, and I really thought I would because I tend to love software that people criticize as "ugly/not modern" and "too cluttered/bloated". If only those things came with a package that didn't make it its "mission" to get me "to stop storing metadata in filenames and stop using the filesystem to find things".

neilsimp1• 5 years ago

I was surprised by this on my first use too. I just decided to give up and store my ebooks in the format that it wants, rather than just the media/books folder I already had.

m4632• 5 years ago

...and rewrites/truncates the file titles

Isthatablackgsd3• 5 years ago

It is not meant for you, it is done that way by design for calibre's database. If you use the export feature, then you can set how the way you want it.

mattkevan• 5 years ago

Calibre is great. There’s a real lack of good quality ebook software and Calibre is an essential do-everything toolkit.

The interface, however, is like some incredible piece of outsider art, gloriously free of best practice, convention or accepted wisdom.

As a UX designer it gave me some trouble at first, but now I’ve genuinely come to appreciate it. There’s no way the interface could be ‘improved’ by conventional standards of aesthetics or usability without losing the thing that makes it special in the first place.

webwielder2• 5 years ago

This is how I feel about the Libby app for iPhone. What is it with book apps? https://twitter.com/bendansby/status/1334717731925417986?s=2...

stinkytaco3• 5 years ago

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

the_af4• 5 years ago

I agree the UI is confusing. However, I'm glad Calibre exists, solves my needs, and is so versatile. And in the end, I decided the confusing UI didn't matter all that much. I'd rather they* spent their efforts in improving stability and features rather than making a fancy intuitive UI -- assuming of course you can't have both. If you can have both, all the better!

*I'm never sure if Calibre is a one-person effort. If it is, more kudos to the author.

tomc19855• 5 years ago

Calibre's UI is an artifact from a superior and more civilized time, IMHO

Extremely functional and just a little bit incomprehensible. Compared to modern UI/UX which just slaps me with how stupid it thinks I am

colechristensen• 5 years ago

It reminds me a bit of something you would find running on solaris in the 90s.

paxys3• 5 years ago

Compared to modern UI/UX which just slaps me with how stupid it thinks I am

Because most average users of any software absolutely fall in that bucket. My mom can use the Facebook app on her phone just fine, but I wouldn't even dare to suggest that she try to convert an eBook on Calibre and transfer it to her Kindle.

Black101• 5 years ago

Extremely functional and just a little bit incomprehensible.

lol, that is what everyone should aim for (I'm not being sarcastic).

ehutch79• 5 years ago

spoiler; most users are stupider then that ui/ux thinks you are.

qwerty4561274• 5 years ago

The UI is not the only weird part of it, probably the least weird one.

What I miss are first-class attachments (i.e. code archives and CD/floppy images) support, raw file naming (without automatic romanization of non-ASCII alphabets), flat storage (without creating a separate folder for every book). Using a Calibre-managed library from outside of Calibre (i.e. on a PocketBook reader) feels quite unnatural.

Another thing I always wanted is a simple viewer app without library management features. Like Adobe Acrobat Reader but for ePub and other book formats. The Linux app closest to this concept also comes with Calibre (Sumatra does the job on Windows). All the other book viewers I've seen insist on maintaining your library.

secstate• 5 years ago

If you're on linux, check out Foliate. It's everything you're asking for :D

schwartzworld• 5 years ago

What's the benefit over just converting to html and using a browser? As far as I know epub is just html anyway.

horstmeyer2• 5 years ago

Okular can open ebooks. Maybe it does what you want.

imwillofficial2• 5 years ago

This is the best attitude I’ve ever seen in a rebuke of a poor interface. I wish I treated every criticism this way.

m4632• 5 years ago

It's obviously a labor of love. Sort of like a house that was built by someone's grandfather ... also subject to grandfathered building codes. :)

dmix• 5 years ago

The interface, however, is like some incredible piece of outsider art, gloriously free of best practice, convention or accepted wisdom.

That was a wonderful way to put it. Excellent writing.

dav• 5 years ago

I’d really love a post that just analyzed this take.

synergy20• 5 years ago

Essential OSS for me, I wish the new update can be more user friendly though, something like "downloading at the backend and prompt you to update when you feel like it"

VonGuard• 5 years ago

Calibre is great, but if you just want to throw a directory at an ebook server and be done, Ubooquity is GREAT! https://vaemendis.net/ubooquity/

pmlnr3• 5 years ago

Ubooquity server requires Java 8 (Oracle version).

That is rather limiting in 2021.

jamiek88• 5 years ago

Yeah and Mac OS will bitch about Java 8 as well.

dsr_3• 5 years ago

It's perfectly happy to use OpenJDK 11.

stinkytaco3• 5 years ago

I prefer calibre-web[1] and it is under active development.

[1] https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web

rrdharan• 5 years ago

Seconding calibre-web; I rarely interact with calibre itself anymore since calibre-web handles the bulk of the tasks I’m trying to accomplish.

david_allison2• 5 years ago

Kovid only makes $1,800/m from/for development.[0]

More people should support him; Calibre has been extremely high quality for years.

https://www.patreon.com/kovidgoyal

witherk• 5 years ago

Is he the sole creator? That is a sadly small sum for this work.

stinkytaco3• 5 years ago

I think there are other contributors, but he rubs lots of people the wrong way, so probably not as many as there could be.

fencepost• 5 years ago

Seems to me that he might do better if he put in a few tiers of "You get absolutely nothing extra for this except the thanks of Kovid and the Calibre community for supporting ongoing development." Right now all support is custom donations.

femiagbabiaka• 5 years ago

Great reminder. Done. I wonder how much extra income he will get just because you thought to mention it.

david_allison2• 5 years ago

~$57/m: well worth the time to make the comment

barbazoo6• 5 years ago

What an unfortunate name these days

nchallak• 5 years ago

Kovid (pronounced with a soft d sound as 'th' in the) means an "expert in his domain".

Shorel4• 5 years ago

Also, kitty, which is a very fast Linux terminal I use all the time.

(not to be confused with the terminal software of the same name that runs in Windows.)

SauciestGNU• 5 years ago

I've recently switched to his terminal emulator Kitty and I'm similarly impressed by that! I had no idea he was also behind calibre. I definitely owe him a subscription.

billyjobob• 5 years ago

I don't want to dig up old grievances but I think most people who have had the misfortune to interact with Kovid on a personal level would agree he is not the sort of person who deserves a penny of your money.

passwert• 5 years ago

Care to explain?

AdmiralAsshat• 5 years ago

Calibre is one of those rare examples of software where the kitchen-sink approach is absolutely warranted. It's a one-stop shop for pretty much everything related to e-book management, conversion, or creation.

I spend most of my time in Calibre just managing my library or converting ebooks between formats (particularly if I'm pulling ebooks off my Kindle or Kobo to strip their DRM). When I want to test whether the conversion was successful, the built-in ebook viewer is there. It's not great, and I wouldn't use it over some dedicated programs to read an entire book, but it gets the job done.

Then there's that rare occasion in which I might actually need to edit an ebook, because the ToC is broken or I spotted an annoying typo that I feel compelled to fix. And for that, the e-book editor tool is more than capable. Again, maybe it's not ideal (I've never tried producing an e-book start-to-finish through it), but for some quick edits, it just works.

There's alot to be said for UNIX philosophy and fighting bloat, but sometimes having everything you could conceivably need for a given purpose in one well-maintained program is comforting.

Barrin92• 5 years ago

one of those rare examples of software where the kitchen-sink approach is absolutely warranted

I actually like this approach in general and I often wonder why there's so much animosity towards it. There's something about platform-like software like Calibre, or Emacs or WeChat where it becomes more than the sum of its parts that you just don't get with just a collection of disjointed, individual tools.

tomc19855• 5 years ago

It's because it doesn't fit into the modern zeitgeist of extreme testability and pandering to computer illiterates

Every time this kind of UI comes up in discussion, I feel like there is always someone groaning about how much extra effort and cost is involved with giving the user too many options. In fact, you could say that modern software seeks to eliminate all noncritical optionality. Combine this with gobs of pointless whitespace, an inexplicable need to humanize pretty much everything, and smother the user in unnecessary feelgood emotions...

And then people wonder why modern apps suck so much...

aidenn0• 5 years ago

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

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

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

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

tclancy• 5 years ago

I appreciate the thought but I think there's a sort of survivorship bias in this. You remember the apps that worked for you which did this and not the ones that overwhelmed you too, even as a savvy user. The vast majority of users are not Hacker News users (even if we adjust that bar for average).

Even as a developer (not a UX designer), whenever a client suggested, up-front, there should be a "power user mode" I would ask, "Is there such a thing as a power user or just someone with Stockholm Syndrome who hasn't found a better app yet?"

ocdtrekkie• 5 years ago

Calibre is one of those rare examples of software where the kitchen-sink approach is absolutely warranted.

I disagree, and that's why I generally do not use Calibre, despite being an ebook aficionado. ...I already have my own ebook organization management. I'd like a good ebook reader, and I'd appreciate some of the surrounding tools, but Calibre's monolithic design isn't useful in my case.

It seems like even running the plain ebook reader takes a while because it's doing some callbacks to the larger program? Okular is a better fit for "a program that reads ebooks", but unfortunately has some really buggy handling with a number of books I've seen.

cassianoleal• 5 years ago

This is an odd take. You don't use Calibre because it doesn't fit your use-case, not because it's not good for what it's meant.

I already have my own ebook organization management.

Calibre is an e-book management software with a reader for convenience, it's not geared towards reading.

Isthatablackgsd3• 5 years ago

I happened to read Kovid justification[0] of this kitchen-sink approach few days ago and I agreed with Kovid. Before I was dead-set against his idea, and now I understand why it is the best for calibre.

It boils down to database and robustness. Filesystem and OS have their particular way of how it manage the files. And sometime when the file are being used and when calibre try to modify/something to the file, it can lead to unpredictable situation such as data corruption. And some OS sandboxed/isolated the app from ever touching outside of it own home directory unless explicitly permitted to do so. Sometime, it can be a permission weirdness. It is less variables for Kovid to worry and putting the software itself in control of the directory.

Also, another variable that Kovid don't have to worry about is between the keyboard and the chair errors. Users does stupid shit with it and those management software are sensitive to sudden changes without the software's awareness. Sure, you can set the path to find it again (it can be a pain for some), it didn't mean everything is jolly good. Some will force itself to rebuild the database to ensure it accounts for every bit of data. Those softwares are THAT particular and I can understand why.

Zotero does the same thing (and they preferred it), but Zotero does allows users to decide where it should be. Shoko Desktop/Server preferred their own but does allows users.

And the biggest advantage of calibre's approach is that its library only exist in single directory. You can move the folder itself without worrying the data corruption.

[0] https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq.html#id33

justnotworthit• 5 years ago

I hope full support for audiobooks (single file, folder of mp3, ...zip?...) someday goes in that kitchen sink.

wing-_-nuts• 5 years ago

The only thing I have against calibre is that the scroll speed on books is really fast. It's easy to flick 20 pages forward or backward on accident. Makes me miss smooth scroll on other interfaces.

harshreality• 5 years ago

Customizing it doesn't help? Right-click on the book text, select Preferences, select Scrolling Behavior

yazantapuz• 5 years ago

I love Calibre, and I love its user interface. Maybe a little arcane, but free of modern ux nonsense.

timwaagh4• 5 years ago

Nice if you're into downloading ebooks illegally or from the few sites that don't do ERP. I used to use it too. However since graduating college and starting to make money I didn't download anything anymore due to lack of time more than lack of funds so I don't use it anymore.

badsectoracula3• 5 years ago

This implies that the only use for Calibre has to do with illegally downloaded ebooks... and i'm not sure how that has anything to do with it though.

Personally the only times i have used Calibre is the opposite of that: i used it with books i bought on Amazon to remove the DRM and convert them to epub so that i can read them on my mobile phone using my favorite ebook reader app (and also keep my own offline copies of course).

barbazoo6• 5 years ago

If you wanted to remove Amazon from the equation, I recommend Kobo. Prices are similar and you can remove the DRM quite easily.

timwaagh4• 5 years ago

I literally stated 'or the few sites that don't do ERP'. Of course calibre does have legal use cases. Playing with (I think) O'Reilly ebooks and project Gutenberg being some of them.

I did not mean to imply it has no legal use. However stripping DRM and converting is not one of them. It's a form of copyright infringement as well, depending on where you are. I'm not sure how 'calibre has nothing to do with illegal copying' is very credible at this point.

paxys3• 5 years ago

Unlike other kinds of content most books ever written are out of copyright and completely free today. Publishers and distributors, however, have every incentive in the world to keep charging you for them. Efforts like Project Gutenberg and Calibre are going a long way towards taking back control from Amazon & co. for things that shouldn't be owned and controlled by them in the first place.

timwaagh4• 5 years ago

Of course calibre has legal uses too. Certainly books like War and Peace and other classics are still relevant today, however they are the exception, rather than the rule.

minsc__and__boo• 5 years ago

Does anyone know of any good ebook platforms that compete with Amazon?

Getting really sick of the Goodreads/Amazon interfaces and lack of quality recommendations.

cogburnd02• 5 years ago

Uh, LibGen?

specktr• 5 years ago

I’ve purchased a book from Kobo before. It used the epub DRM compatible with adobe digital editions. At the time (afaik) they didn’t have a way to load it on a kindle without breaking the drm, converting it to mobi and doing a manual transfer. These days I stick with my public library (which uses overdrive and in my opinion is fantastic) or amazon in the event they don’t own ebook licenses.

barbazoo6• 5 years ago

That's my flow actually. I look up books on Goodreads or Amazon but buy them from Kobo. There are the additional steps of downloading, removing the DRM and uploading it to my Kindle but I think it's worth it.

imwillofficial2• 5 years ago

I just wish it wasn’t so ugly and felt like 1990s software.

barbazoo6• 5 years ago

It is, isn't it. Many people find the UI charming, the top post actually put that into words nicely.

asoneth2• 5 years ago

Calibre is great once you get the hang of the interface. The one thing I haven't yet figured out is how to stop it from butchering Kobo (kepub) ebooks downloaded from Standard Ebooks:

"Important: Don’t use Calibre to transfer the kepub file! Calibre will apply its own conversion on top of our own conversion, making for strange results" from https://standardebooks.org/help/how-to-use-our-ebooks

Shorel4• 5 years ago

Your comment is interesting and relevant.

I always used Calibre to convert normal epub files to kepub format, to be able to zoom images and other things that the Kobo doesn't do with epubs.

I didn't know I could also get kepub files from somewhere else.

asoneth2• 5 years ago

Thanks, I've found the Standard Ebooks (both kepubs and epubs) quite good and would recommend them if you're looking for something in the public domain. The downside is that their kepubs did not play well with Calibre.

By default Calibre didn't recognize Standard Ebook kepub files as anything other than a regular epub which caused it to reformat it (poorly) when sending to a Kobo eReader. It also prevented me from storing both the kepub and epub versions in my library.

There may be a better way but the workaround I use for now is to rename the kepub book files from .kepub.epub to .kepub which the Kobo eReader handles equally well. The downsides are that I have to remember to explicitly send the kepub format when I'm sending to a Kobo and I occasionally get notifications that there are duplicate book files in my library.

umvi• 5 years ago

Calibre has a great CLI too for automating ebook generation

AcidBurn• 5 years ago

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

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

xiconfjs• 5 years ago

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

Kudos for your project.

xconverge• 5 years ago

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

Isthatablackgsd3• 5 years ago

Ditto. I did the same for my partner for his Lego instruction booklet collection. He have over 150 sets and managing all of his Lego booklet (through Lego official app) and the official Lego website don't have every single booklet. And those PDFs are rather large file (averaging 40+MB, some are 100MB, a few is 200MB). It wasn't feasible to keep it all in his iPad due to the storage space. So I used my desktop to handles that for him. The best thing about calibre-web, it allows him to upload the PDF and edit the metadata directly in his iPad's Safari than depending on me to put it up for him (I don't mind doing for him, just that I have terrible time management.) For him, he don't have to do manual management and it is in one place.

Right now, I am trying to set up a scrapping the metadata from few sites in calibre (Import List plugin). Because LibraryThing, WorldCatalog and Amazon are usually scrapping for books. The thing is I don't know how to do XPath expression even I tried to read the guide. I couldn't understand how the hell it work. I can understand LaTeX, Homebrew, Chocolatey, Bash, CSS documentation just fine, but XPath I am just dumbfounded.

Pasorrijer3• 5 years ago

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

mcrittenden• 5 years ago

Just curious, what do you like about it over other ebook readers? I've been using Moon+ heavily for years and it's fine but I'm interested in trying some others out.

Pasorrijer3• 5 years ago

Simplicity. It just works. It's just an eReader. No fancy app, no ads, just an eReader. That's why I like it.

Shorel4• 5 years ago

I am always looking for that 'perfect' eReader in Android. Still have not found it.

So I will install AlReader for sure.

figbert2• 5 years ago

I use Calibre to manage my ebook library. I share it across devices (and with a couple friends) using Syncthing[1], and read the books using KOReader[2] on a Kindle. I get my books either from Z-Library or by ripping the DRM off of books purchased from Amazon.

Genuinely the best reading setup.

[1] https://syncthing.net/ [2]: https://koreader.rocks/

barbazoo6• 5 years ago

What made you use KOReader? I've always synced between my Calibre library and my Kindle directly and that works great.

figbert2• 5 years ago

By default, Kindle is a closed box. I love it, but the ads and tracking ruin a beautiful product.

KOReader gives me a great experience, sans the privacy violations, and with an incredible amount of additional control over the device. I love it.

steelframe2• 5 years ago

I've used Calibre extensively for stripping DRM and converting formats for my various e-readers. Note that it does glitch sometimes in strange and assorted ways.

For example, when it converted the book Futu.re, it replaced all instances of "ft" with a blank space. While reading the book my brain has been interpolating over words to "fill in" the "ft" -- for example, when I read "a er" I know the word really is "after."

I don't understand all the ins-and-outs of e-book conversion, but I figure it might have something to do with the font processing. Aside from these occasional glitches, I am a very happy Calibre user.

ink_13• 5 years ago

It's likely that "ft" was a ligature in the original which didn't survive the conversion (for example, if the destination font doesn't have the character ﬅ). Sounds like a bug, though.

Cyberdog• 5 years ago

"ft" is a common ligature. When characters are often used together, fonts are often designed with those characters grouped together as their own character so they can be given certain design flair such as having the "branches" of the "f" and "t" as one continuous horizontal line. Aside from "ft," "ll" (ell ell) also often gets this treatment and others I can't recall off the top of my head. Text rendering engines will then substitute the composite character with the ligature if the ligature exists in the font being used for display. So what might have been happening is that the text engine thought that an "ft" ligature existed for the font it was using to show your book and was trying to show it, but in fact it didn't exist. But who knows at the end of the day.

More information about ligatures can be found on the Internet.

steelframe2• 5 years ago

Again, Hacker News delivers. Thank you for identifying this as a ligature issue. Maybe I'll be able to figure this out with some deeper poking around Calibre's legendary UI.

aj7• 5 years ago

I'm too old to be bothered by a UI that doesn't work. I get by with Apple Books.

lostlogin• 5 years ago

For anyone that hasn’t taken the Docker route for installing it, I recommend it. It’s been rock solid sitting on a Synology. As always, Linux Server.

https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-calibre

copycatchiller• 5 years ago

Calibre is my favourite product - been using it for more than a decade now. So happy to see it top the front page here.

tpmx2• 5 years ago

So few tweaks would be needed to make Calibre actually user-friendly to the average consumer. Instead people here are falling over themselves in declaring their love for a weirdo UI. Just because it's unusual?

ycombinete• 5 years ago

This makes me think of Dwarf Fortress. Weird menu system, that becomes endearing very quickly. Emacs too, now that I think of it. I love all three though.

havernator• 5 years ago

They like real buttons, lacking flat nonsense, and densely-presented functionality. I do too, so I get the impulse to resist calls for change, but agree with you that a light-touch reorganization of some of the buttons & menus, and some filing-off of wholly-unhelpful behavioral rough edges would go a long way. It’s one of those pieces of software I’m constantly nervous using, because I’ve seen it do weird, destructive things for no other reason than some piece of the UI is “quirky”.

tpmx2• 5 years ago

Well, Blender managed to pull it off and "everyone" loved that change. They have 24 salaried employees, though.

dang• 5 years ago

This counts as a dupe because the most recent discussion was less than a year ago. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.

Calibre 5.0 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24586455 - Sept 2020 (267 comments)

Calibre 4.0 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21156482 - Oct 2019 (302 comments)

The Calibre Content Server - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14568146 - June 2017 (140 comments)

Announcing Calibre 2.0 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8212885 - Aug 2014 (98 comments)

Calibre version 1.0 released - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6271090 - Aug 2013 (121 comments)

Calibre and Project Gutenberg: Liberate Your eReader. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3750807 - March 2012 (18 comments)

matthewfelgate• 5 years ago

I use Calibre all the time to put ebooks onto my Kindle.

Ok so the interface looks like it was made in the 90s. But I don't know where I'd be without Calibre.

I have no idea what the other 100s of buttons do in Calibre.

avinassh• 5 years ago

What are the alternatives to Calibre?

Calibre – E-Book Management

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