4 ms·

Yet Calibre is full of quirks, seemingly lacks some reasonable features (like importing metadata from book files themselves) and stuck with Python 2. I wish the

Yet Calibre is full of quirks, seemingly lacks some reasonable features (like importing metadata from book files themselves) and stuck with Python 2. I wish there were alternatives...

bayindirh 8y ago
When I add books to Calibre, it reads and lists all the metadata correctly. I never added metadata to a book manually if the book has it. Strange. I can't comment on the Python2.x dependencies though.
- ascii_only 8y ago
  Calibre author have said that despite python2 eol he will not transition to python3 and that he is "perfectly capable of maintaining python2 himself"
  - bayindirh 8y ago
    However it seems that people are slowly migrating Calibre to Python 3. Also looks like any Python3 patch doesn't break the current Calibre build is welcome indeed.
    - ascii_only 8y ago
      Yes. I should have been more clear. He is not against python3 but thinks that it is less work to maintain python2 than port calibre to newer version.
      - qwerty456127 8y ago
        This sounds like Calibre codebase is a mess that needs to be refactored.
        darkpuma 8y ago
        To be honest the best part of Calibre, the `ebook-convert` tool, is already broken out from the rest of it. It's similar to pandoc though in my opinion often does a nicer job.
        PurpleRamen 8y ago
        Even the best codebase can't effortless be ported. Calibre seems to have something around 25 MB of python-code, several external plugins, some C-code and other languages. Transition of this would take quite some time. Additionally, there is the problem of compability. Configuration in Calibre is python-code, and on several corners the user can mod stuff. Any transition would need to make sure to not brake things to hard.
        megablast 8y ago
        Oh. Like every single codebase ever then?
  - rat9988 8y ago
    To be honest, I don't see why would you port it to python 3. Isn't it already working? Are there any python 2 bug hampering its development?
    - bayindirh 8y ago
      Because Python2's end of life is announced. There'll be no Python 2.8, 2.9 or future. It may get some security fixes, but it'll be abandoned then.
      - jiva 8y ago
        "there will be no updates, not even source-only security patches" from the man himself: https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2018-March/152348.html https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2018-March/1523...
    - PurpleRamen 8y ago
      Python2 will be at end of support next year. That means slowly it will become harder and harder to make calibre runable on modern systems. 3rd-party librays will decline and receive no updates. Python2-interpreter will not be installable out-of-the-box. There will be no security-updates or new features. Python2 as a platform will slowly die and any application depending on it will die with it. Though, this won't become a serious problem in the next years, but more like 5-10+ years. It's sad, but the reality now.
      - qwerty456127 8y ago
        To be honest, I doubt corporations will give Python 2 up easily. Currently Python 2 codebase in use in production is probably fairly huge and is just working. Look at how hard it is to convince enterprises to give up Internet Explorer even though Microsoft itself says they should really end using it. Someone like Red Hat will probably keep maintaining Python 2 for at least some years more.
        PurpleRamen 8y ago
- qwerty456127 8y ago
  Every time I drag a book file (whatever a format, whatever a source) to Calibre it can only guess the title and the author from the file name (although ebook formats like fb2, epub and mobi usually have this data embedded inside them). It can't even extract the cover (something CoolReader on Android does easily). Then I have to copy-paste ISBN manually and click "download metadata". I have always suspected the feature is there (it seems unreasonable to be missing from such a tool) but doesn't work for some weird reason. I use Calibre 3.39.1 from AUR on Manjaro.
  - bayindirh 8y ago
    I'm using Calibre 3.35 on Debian Testing and I have all authors, tags, categories, series, everything automatically imported to my library for many books from many sources. Maybe there's a library dependency missing somewhere? Any debug logs? I'm not at my main workstation at home, so I cannot compare now, but it's a very strange situation.
    - qwerty456127 8y ago
      Perhaps you mean you use Calibre to download books from particular sources so Calibre exchanges metadata with the source server directly? I add files manually by dragging them to the Calibre window and expect it to extract metadata (like the book autor, title, ISBN and cover picture) from the file.
      - bayindirh 8y ago
        No, I download books with my browser, and drag them into the Calibre. It harvests the metadata embedded in the file automatically.
      - PurpleRamen 8y ago
        I usually buy ebooks through Humble Bundle, download all formats and then import them into calibre. For 2 of 3 formats the metadata will be extracted without problems. Only one is usually lacking. I think it's mobi or epub, but never bother to pin it down because I just combine then in one entry anyway, and then the metadata will be merged together. Calibre has usually no problem with extracting metadata from files, independant from the source.
eeZah7Ux 8y ago
...and it needs a huge amount of dependencies. And RAM.
- bayindirh 8y ago
  It's a convoluted piece of software, which does a lot of things, but with ~160MB of RAM usage, I wouldn't call it a heavyweight. Its RAM requirement is more than the capacity of my first hard drive, but it's not in the league of Chrome, Slack or Atom. There are many wasteful applications out there doing much much less with much more resources.
  - eeZah7Ux 8y ago
    You are cherry-picking memory hogs like "Chrome, Slack or Atom" as comparisons and ignoring bookworm and other more reasonable applications. Also, I had to drop Calibre due to the large number of Python 2 and imagemagik dependencies that have a maintenance cost when it comes to pulling updated packages & so on. Making Calibre modular would have helped greatly but the author never cared.
    - bayindirh 8y ago
      > You are cherry-picking memory hogs like "Chrome, Slack or Atom"... Huge amount of RAM usage is subjective term. For me, Chrome, Slack and Atom are memory hogs. While I do not find the RAM usage of Calibre optimal, I think its RAM usage is reasonable with that feature set for me. Eclipse is also using ~1.1GB of RAM, but it's not a memory hog from my perspective, because I get what I give as productivity and features that I actually use and benefit. >... ignoring bookworm and other more reasonable applications. No, I'm not. Above, here [0], I said that Bookworm is a nice application, but my needs are different. Also, I compared Atom with another functionally-similar text application and said that similar applications (like BBEdit) use ~60MB, but Atom uses 660MB out of the box. Similarly, since Bookworm doesn't provide the features that I need, installing it would be moot, since it'll sit unused on my disk, actually wasting disk space from my point of view. However, this doesn't make Bookworm a bad application. If it provides the functionality one needs, then I'm happy for them. Also its user interface is elegant and minimal, this another plus for Bookworm. > Also, I had to drop Calibre due to the large number of Python 2 and imagemagik dependencies that have a maintenance cost when it comes to pulling updated packages & so on. I don't know your OS and setup, and can't comment on that. However, major distros are doing the required maintenance, so many people are just installing it on their systems. > Making Calibre modular would have helped greatly but the author never cared. I don't know internal architecture of Calibre, so I can't say anything about this issue. However modularity has its own set of benefits and problems. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19197443 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19197443
calcifer 8y ago
How does Calibre's use of Python 2 effect your use of the application?

Yet Calibre is full of quirks, seemingly lacks some reasonable features (like importing metadata from book files themselves) and stuck with Python 2. I wish there were alternatives...

bayindirh 8y ago

When I add books to Calibre, it reads and lists all the metadata correctly. I never added metadata to a book manually if the book has it. Strange. I can't comment on the Python2.x dependencies though.

ascii_only 8y ago
Calibre author have said that despite python2 eol he will not transition to python3 and that he is "perfectly capable of maintaining python2 himself"
- bayindirh 8y ago
  However it seems that people are slowly migrating Calibre to Python 3. Also looks like any Python3 patch doesn't break the current Calibre build is welcome indeed.
  - ascii_only 8y ago
    Yes. I should have been more clear. He is not against python3 but thinks that it is less work to maintain python2 than port calibre to newer version.
    - qwerty456127 8y ago
      This sounds like Calibre codebase is a mess that needs to be refactored.
      - darkpuma 8y ago
        To be honest the best part of Calibre, the `ebook-convert` tool, is already broken out from the rest of it. It's similar to pandoc though in my opinion often does a nicer job.
      - PurpleRamen 8y ago
        Even the best codebase can't effortless be ported. Calibre seems to have something around 25 MB of python-code, several external plugins, some C-code and other languages. Transition of this would take quite some time. Additionally, there is the problem of compability. Configuration in Calibre is python-code, and on several corners the user can mod stuff. Any transition would need to make sure to not brake things to hard.
      - megablast 8y ago
        Oh. Like every single codebase ever then?
- rat9988 8y ago
  To be honest, I don't see why would you port it to python 3. Isn't it already working? Are there any python 2 bug hampering its development?
  - bayindirh 8y ago
    Because Python2's end of life is announced. There'll be no Python 2.8, 2.9 or future. It may get some security fixes, but it'll be abandoned then.
    - jiva 8y ago
      "there will be no updates, not even source-only security patches" from the man himself: https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2018-March/152348.html https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2018-March/1523...
  - PurpleRamen 8y ago
    Python2 will be at end of support next year. That means slowly it will become harder and harder to make calibre runable on modern systems. 3rd-party librays will decline and receive no updates. Python2-interpreter will not be installable out-of-the-box. There will be no security-updates or new features. Python2 as a platform will slowly die and any application depending on it will die with it. Though, this won't become a serious problem in the next years, but more like 5-10+ years. It's sad, but the reality now.
    - qwerty456127 8y ago
      To be honest, I doubt corporations will give Python 2 up easily. Currently Python 2 codebase in use in production is probably fairly huge and is just working. Look at how hard it is to convince enterprises to give up Internet Explorer even though Microsoft itself says they should really end using it. Someone like Red Hat will probably keep maintaining Python 2 for at least some years more.
      - PurpleRamen 8y ago
qwerty456127 8y ago
Every time I drag a book file (whatever a format, whatever a source) to Calibre it can only guess the title and the author from the file name (although ebook formats like fb2, epub and mobi usually have this data embedded inside them). It can't even extract the cover (something CoolReader on Android does easily). Then I have to copy-paste ISBN manually and click "download metadata". I have always suspected the feature is there (it seems unreasonable to be missing from such a tool) but doesn't work for some weird reason. I use Calibre 3.39.1 from AUR on Manjaro.
- bayindirh 8y ago
  I'm using Calibre 3.35 on Debian Testing and I have all authors, tags, categories, series, everything automatically imported to my library for many books from many sources. Maybe there's a library dependency missing somewhere? Any debug logs? I'm not at my main workstation at home, so I cannot compare now, but it's a very strange situation.
  - qwerty456127 8y ago
    Perhaps you mean you use Calibre to download books from particular sources so Calibre exchanges metadata with the source server directly? I add files manually by dragging them to the Calibre window and expect it to extract metadata (like the book autor, title, ISBN and cover picture) from the file.
    - bayindirh 8y ago
      No, I download books with my browser, and drag them into the Calibre. It harvests the metadata embedded in the file automatically.
    - PurpleRamen 8y ago
      I usually buy ebooks through Humble Bundle, download all formats and then import them into calibre. For 2 of 3 formats the metadata will be extracted without problems. Only one is usually lacking. I think it's mobi or epub, but never bother to pin it down because I just combine then in one entry anyway, and then the metadata will be merged together. Calibre has usually no problem with extracting metadata from files, independant from the source.

eeZah7Ux 8y ago

...and it needs a huge amount of dependencies. And RAM.

bayindirh 8y ago
It's a convoluted piece of software, which does a lot of things, but with ~160MB of RAM usage, I wouldn't call it a heavyweight. Its RAM requirement is more than the capacity of my first hard drive, but it's not in the league of Chrome, Slack or Atom. There are many wasteful applications out there doing much much less with much more resources.
- eeZah7Ux 8y ago
  You are cherry-picking memory hogs like "Chrome, Slack or Atom" as comparisons and ignoring bookworm and other more reasonable applications. Also, I had to drop Calibre due to the large number of Python 2 and imagemagik dependencies that have a maintenance cost when it comes to pulling updated packages & so on. Making Calibre modular would have helped greatly but the author never cared.
  - bayindirh 8y ago
    > You are cherry-picking memory hogs like "Chrome, Slack or Atom"... Huge amount of RAM usage is subjective term. For me, Chrome, Slack and Atom are memory hogs. While I do not find the RAM usage of Calibre optimal, I think its RAM usage is reasonable with that feature set for me. Eclipse is also using ~1.1GB of RAM, but it's not a memory hog from my perspective, because I get what I give as productivity and features that I actually use and benefit. >... ignoring bookworm and other more reasonable applications. No, I'm not. Above, here [0], I said that Bookworm is a nice application, but my needs are different. Also, I compared Atom with another functionally-similar text application and said that similar applications (like BBEdit) use ~60MB, but Atom uses 660MB out of the box. Similarly, since Bookworm doesn't provide the features that I need, installing it would be moot, since it'll sit unused on my disk, actually wasting disk space from my point of view. However, this doesn't make Bookworm a bad application. If it provides the functionality one needs, then I'm happy for them. Also its user interface is elegant and minimal, this another plus for Bookworm. > Also, I had to drop Calibre due to the large number of Python 2 and imagemagik dependencies that have a maintenance cost when it comes to pulling updated packages & so on. I don't know your OS and setup, and can't comment on that. However, major distros are doing the required maintenance, so many people are just installing it on their systems. > Making Calibre modular would have helped greatly but the author never cared. I don't know internal architecture of Calibre, so I can't say anything about this issue. However modularity has its own set of benefits and problems. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19197443 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19197443

calcifer 8y ago

How does Calibre's use of Python 2 effect your use of the application?