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Somewhat interestingly, under the hood calibre seems to be a bunch of little tools, strung together by the UI: Here's what's under calibre/bin calibre cal

Somewhat interestingly, under the hood calibre seems to be a bunch of little tools, strung together by the UI: Here's what's under calibre/bin calibre calibre-complete calibre-customize calibredb calibre-debug calibre-parallel calibre_postinstall calibre-server calibre-smtp cjpeg ebook-convert ebook-device ebook-edit ebook-meta ebook-polish ebook-viewer fetch-ebook-metadata jpegtran JxrDecApp lrf2lrs lrfviewer lrs2lrf markdown-calibre optipng pdfinfo pdftohtml pdftoppm web2disk You can use many (possibly all) of these independently of the UI.

Mediterraneo10 7y ago
Thanks for mentioning this. I didn't know that Calibre packages its own optipng, a program for which there have been some security advisories in recent years. I hope Calibre keeps pace with upstream releases of these tools.
AdmiralAsshat 7y ago
If it helps to think of Calibre as a "toolkit," then, instead of a single monolithic app, I'm all for it. It's funny, if they released a version of Calibre that had only the bins you mentioned and omitted the GUI entirely, it would probably be held in much higher esteem among the HN community.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  I’d argue this is true in general: I once gave a presentation about a (IMO) pretty decent tool but made the mistake of demonstrating it with a UI that was usable but needed work. It got a lot worse of a reaction than an earlier and worse version of the same tool where I ran it from the command line.
  - AdrianB1 7y ago
    Showing tools that work, CLI or not, is better than showing something that barely works. It is a very natural and logical explanation.
danmg 7y ago
Poettering should learn from the design of this software.
- coldacid 7y ago
  Better he learn from Kovid than the other way around!
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- dralley 7y ago
  If you had spent 2 seconds looking at the source code to Calibre, you would not be praising it's codebase. Also, systemd is not one binary. It's like 50 different binaries.
defective 7y ago
I installed it on one server that I only ssh to JUST to use that ebook-convert so I can read anything (epub, mobi, pdf, etc) on the command line. It's so easy to use, detects to- and from-formats from filenames and works on anything.
trianglem 7y ago
That's good design, right?

Mediterraneo10 7y ago

Thanks for mentioning this. I didn't know that Calibre packages its own optipng, a program for which there have been some security advisories in recent years. I hope Calibre keeps pace with upstream releases of these tools.

AdmiralAsshat 7y ago

If it helps to think of Calibre as a "toolkit," then, instead of a single monolithic app, I'm all for it. It's funny, if they released a version of Calibre that had only the bins you mentioned and omitted the GUI entirely, it would probably be held in much higher esteem among the HN community.

saagarjha 7y ago
I’d argue this is true in general: I once gave a presentation about a (IMO) pretty decent tool but made the mistake of demonstrating it with a UI that was usable but needed work. It got a lot worse of a reaction than an earlier and worse version of the same tool where I ran it from the command line.
- AdrianB1 7y ago
  Showing tools that work, CLI or not, is better than showing something that barely works. It is a very natural and logical explanation.

danmg 7y ago

Poettering should learn from the design of this software.

coldacid 7y ago
Better he learn from Kovid than the other way around!
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
dralley 7y ago
If you had spent 2 seconds looking at the source code to Calibre, you would not be praising it's codebase. Also, systemd is not one binary. It's like 50 different binaries.

defective 7y ago

I installed it on one server that I only ssh to JUST to use that ebook-convert so I can read anything (epub, mobi, pdf, etc) on the command line. It's so easy to use, detects to- and from-formats from filenames and works on anything.

trianglem 7y ago

That's good design, right?