5 ms·

As others have said, this is an app I have an absolute love/hate relationship with. I really appreciate all the work the dev puts into it, but it’s a slow app

As others have said, this is an app I have an absolute love/hate relationship with. I really appreciate all the work the dev puts into it, but it’s a slow app that just isn’t very usable. It’s not just that it’s ugly, it’s that it’s poorly designed. And yet, nothing else even comes close to doing what it does. I even wrote out a spec for a similar app that was built using a more modern framework/usable interface, that some friends and I could potentially build, but the task was so monumental and the return on investment (and I’m not even talking about money) seemed so small, we shelved it. That said, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that DeDRM is the reason a lot of us use the app — I know it’s a key for me — and that does have an excellent CLI tool. There are also some good iOS apps that work with the book server, for accessing lots of ebooks. Even then tho, those apps are labors of love where the core audience is both critical and shockingly cheap (I say shockingly b/c many pay thousands on ebooks and ereaders a year — it’s an enthusiast market). One look at the MobileReads forums (a fantastic resource) for any specific app, and I kind of understand why we don’t have a “good” Calibre that is OSS for paid for that matter.

tomc1985 7y ago
> modern framework/usable interface, Let me guess, some Electron monstrosity that looks like a web site but runs on a desktop?
- horsawlarway 7y ago
  Let me guess, you're the type of person that doesn't understand ROI? Let me guess, you'd rather have a holy war about shit your users don't give a flying fuck about? Let me guess, you want it to run in QT and use nothing but C++ despite the fact that it will take 4 times longer to reach users, and when it does it will be less stable, less usable, and harder to hire resources for? But it's cool, cause electron is slow, amirite guise!!?!?!?!
  - tomc1985 7y ago
    Honestly if someone doesn't like Calibre so much it would be better to contribute to it, or fork it. And yes, electron sucks and it ruined desktop software because a bunch of business brats have to cut costs on software craftsmanship. This "modern UI" crap is a lie. Software using native widgets (or even JVM) is fine, but hey take it to extremes
    - horsawlarway 7y ago
      I don't have a problem with Calibre. I have a problem with asshats spouting off with Electron hate. I use Arch every freaking day. We have finally gotten to the point where basically any vendor can release software day one that will work for me. They use electron. Most of them don't even freaking test on linux, but it still just works. Better yet, it works and those companies literally spent zero effort on it! Better Better yet, those companies have easy access to developers with the skillsets they need to continue providing me features. Does electron have warts? Abso-fucking-lutely. But I'd take a large download and slightly slower execution ANY day in exchange for native support on the platform of my choice. You can fuck right off with your "it ruined desktop software" bullshit.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - blub 7y ago
        I'd wager most of us that dislike Electron aren't at the point that we're so desperate for software, that we would lower our standards regarding usability, resource consumption and platform integration. For me it's definitely not a problem that I'm missing software X which is only available as an Electron app. The Electron apps I use are required to interact with some piece of hardware (syncing, etc) and have completely custom UIs, which work most of the time, but have super-weird limitations or UX bugs, because you can't reinvent decades of UX on all platforms without forgetting or messing up several things. And then there's MS Teams, which proves either that Microsoft can't write working software, or that Electron isn't able to offer a way of building working software. Probably both.
  - bayindirh 7y ago
    Python is a perfectly fine language for something like Calibre. I'm maintaining my growing library with it, and it's doing more than a decent job. Also I'm using Kobo utilities and it's neither prohibitively slow, nor it's useless. If you want something pretty but basic, you can use bookworm. It's also an electron app, so you can try how it can perform. > But it's cool, cause electron is slow, amirite guise!!?!?!?! Sorry, but electron is literally slow and bloated. In case of Atom (the flagship app using Electron), using 600MB of RAM at the startup without the ability to load large files, or being not on par with BBEdit feature-wise, which uses 60MB at the start, is blatant waste of resources. My Eclipse installation is using 600 MB of RAM (like Atom) out of the box with quadruple amount of features and orders of magnitude higher speed. > Le me guess, you're the type of person that doesn't understand ROI? I'd rather write an Atom-like application with Python, Java or similar and have much better ROI while not requiring small portable servers from my users to just edit some little scripts and push them to git(hub/lab). Using Electron is a wrong type of investment for future of your application due to its power and space requirements, but it's cool, cause hardware is cheap, amirite guise!!?!?!?!
  - dang 7y ago
    Would you please review the site guidelines and stick to the rules when posting here? You broke them with this, and even worse with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21160833 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21160833. That's not cool. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- novok 7y ago
  TBH, since it's a server application that would be displaying some fairly basic stuff, whats wrong with a simple web app that you run in your browser?
  - filmgirlcw 7y ago
    Nothing! There are a lot of web-front ends for Calibre, actually. And that’s also why you have some really great iOS apps for accessing your library. For me, the value of Calibre is more in the plugins than the serving mechanism — which is where the bad design becomes frustrating. But again, despite being frustrated by the app, I’m so grateful to the developer for making it, because I would rather have this version of Calibre then no Calibre at all.
- filmgirlcw 7y ago
  Why would it matter? My initial design doc was going to be Swift-based and in my “pie-in-the-sky” goal, it would be a native macOS app. But part of the value of Calibre is that it is cross-platform and so yes, Electron was a strong option because for cross-platform development, I definitely don’t think it is worse than QT or Java. There are a lot of bad Electron applications, but apps like Visual Studio Code* prove that as with anything, you can make a really fantastic experience if you put the right work into it. But it doesn’t matter anyway. The amount of work that would be required would be monumental and the payoff wouldn’t be worth it. Which is why I have tremendous respect for the Calibre developer. I don’t agree with his design decisions and I wish the app was more usable, but I fully acknowledge that nothing else exists and that no one else is willing to do the work to make a better version. * Disclosure: I work at Microsoft but not on VS Code. I have huge respect for the VS Code and the Electron team, however.
- dang 7y ago
  "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
ehvatum 7y ago
>it’s a slow app >it’s ugly >it’s poorly designed >nothing else even comes >the task was so monumental I think what's going on here is that Calibre is implemented for free in spare time in Python with an eye toward being accessible to all audiences and feature complete. So, it's neither super fast, nor super pretty, nor super elegant. But everyone can build up a library of ebooks without much effort and then browse around and read them, highlight them, and sort them in various ways. You're welcome to submit patches that hide everything behind a hamburger menu and make the scrollbars vanish and crap like that.
- filmgirlcw 7y ago
  That’s actually not an easy patch — I looked into it and the way the QT layer works — not even diving into the codebase underneath — doing anything more than an icon pack/skin is nearly impossible — at least with my level of skill and the amount of time I would be willing to put into it. As I said, I’m super grateful Calibre exists and I think software is better for it existing. I also fully understand why there haven’t been other attempts to do what Calibre does — because it’s a shitload of work and the userbase is niche.
  - dmix 7y ago
    Design is something that can't simply be tacked on after the fact either. It's something that must be embraced by the core developers and influences plenty of decision making. Plenty of people don't have good design taste but can still be useful software, so I hope it doesn't deter them. Although there may be a correlation between poor interface design being reflected in the backend. From naming schemes, to modelling the data, to managing complexity, saying no to certain features, etc are all things that cross over into the design world.
  - zanny 7y ago
    Calibre is just a qwidgets based pyqt program. Since its as KDE project the "modern" UI stack would be Kirigami QML and you can use QWidget::createWindowContainer to embed QtQuick parts in a QWidgets program. With signals and slots they can still communicate, so you can peacemeal replace parts of the UI like that, but looking at the sources the main window is composed of about 30 different parts between a half dozen folders so thats pretty immutable.
zacmps 7y ago
I run it on a server and use calibre-web as a frontend. Has a nice UI and works well for my purposes: https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web
- jrochkind1 7y ago
  Interesting. I wonder if you could embed something based on calibre-web in an Electron app. It'd be one way to get a better UI in a more accessible way...
  - zacmps 7y ago
    I just use chrome for this: chrome.exe --app="https://url.of.calibre.web" https://url.of.calibre.web" Removes the top bar and shows the favicon as the application icon. You can create a shortcut/.desktop and it'll act pretty much like an electron app would.
    - jrochkind1 7y ago
      But you still gotta run the 'web app' somewhere, responding on some port (even if only on localhost)?
  - xbmcuser 7y ago
    With the new server backend that has been released where you can add remove books and modify metadata etc. It would be lot easier to build a different frontend. The Calibre Dev is quite open to take patches that increase functionality without taking away previous functionality so he would be probably open to adding more functions in the server.
- pnutjam 7y ago
  How is this better then running the standard calibre in daemon mode. I sync my library to a vps and do this: /usr/bin/calibre-server --daemonize --enable-auth --url-prefix=/calibre --port 8000 --enable-local-write --log /home/user/calibre_log /home/user/user_library
GordonS 7y ago
I feel similarly - I use Calibre because it's the least-worst option. I truely appreciate the effort the devs put in, because I know how complex it is and that I wouldn't expend the effort myself. But it certainly has some performance and UX issues. For me personally, I'd prefer to focus on getting the UX right, then I wouldn't care so much about the performance
VvR-Ox 7y ago
Isn't this the case for a lot of tools? For me Thunderbird is one of those - there's no better open source mail client to be found and you use it because it works (most of the time). The problem with this is that creating GUIs is very complicated as there's just too many different frameworks and specific stuff to know to achieve this. In my opinion interface design on computers is kind of broken just because there's no standard that works for every system. I don't want to implement things 4 or 5 times to get the same result. If I could I would contribute to those apps because I have good ideas for UX/UI but I'm nowhere near learning all the stuff I need to know to do so I'm afraid. Maybe when I'm really old and retire it's still as crappy as it is and I'll find the time. In the meanwhile at least we have tools like Calibre and Thunderbird and I'm very thankful for the work the Dev's put into them! :)

tomc1985 7y ago

> modern framework/usable interface, Let me guess, some Electron monstrosity that looks like a web site but runs on a desktop?

horsawlarway 7y ago
Let me guess, you're the type of person that doesn't understand ROI? Let me guess, you'd rather have a holy war about shit your users don't give a flying fuck about? Let me guess, you want it to run in QT and use nothing but C++ despite the fact that it will take 4 times longer to reach users, and when it does it will be less stable, less usable, and harder to hire resources for? But it's cool, cause electron is slow, amirite guise!!?!?!?!
- tomc1985 7y ago
  Honestly if someone doesn't like Calibre so much it would be better to contribute to it, or fork it. And yes, electron sucks and it ruined desktop software because a bunch of business brats have to cut costs on software craftsmanship. This "modern UI" crap is a lie. Software using native widgets (or even JVM) is fine, but hey take it to extremes
  - horsawlarway 7y ago
    I don't have a problem with Calibre. I have a problem with asshats spouting off with Electron hate. I use Arch every freaking day. We have finally gotten to the point where basically any vendor can release software day one that will work for me. They use electron. Most of them don't even freaking test on linux, but it still just works. Better yet, it works and those companies literally spent zero effort on it! Better Better yet, those companies have easy access to developers with the skillsets they need to continue providing me features. Does electron have warts? Abso-fucking-lutely. But I'd take a large download and slightly slower execution ANY day in exchange for native support on the platform of my choice. You can fuck right off with your "it ruined desktop software" bullshit.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - blub 7y ago
      I'd wager most of us that dislike Electron aren't at the point that we're so desperate for software, that we would lower our standards regarding usability, resource consumption and platform integration. For me it's definitely not a problem that I'm missing software X which is only available as an Electron app. The Electron apps I use are required to interact with some piece of hardware (syncing, etc) and have completely custom UIs, which work most of the time, but have super-weird limitations or UX bugs, because you can't reinvent decades of UX on all platforms without forgetting or messing up several things. And then there's MS Teams, which proves either that Microsoft can't write working software, or that Electron isn't able to offer a way of building working software. Probably both.
- bayindirh 7y ago
  Python is a perfectly fine language for something like Calibre. I'm maintaining my growing library with it, and it's doing more than a decent job. Also I'm using Kobo utilities and it's neither prohibitively slow, nor it's useless. If you want something pretty but basic, you can use bookworm. It's also an electron app, so you can try how it can perform. > But it's cool, cause electron is slow, amirite guise!!?!?!?! Sorry, but electron is literally slow and bloated. In case of Atom (the flagship app using Electron), using 600MB of RAM at the startup without the ability to load large files, or being not on par with BBEdit feature-wise, which uses 60MB at the start, is blatant waste of resources. My Eclipse installation is using 600 MB of RAM (like Atom) out of the box with quadruple amount of features and orders of magnitude higher speed. > Le me guess, you're the type of person that doesn't understand ROI? I'd rather write an Atom-like application with Python, Java or similar and have much better ROI while not requiring small portable servers from my users to just edit some little scripts and push them to git(hub/lab). Using Electron is a wrong type of investment for future of your application due to its power and space requirements, but it's cool, cause hardware is cheap, amirite guise!!?!?!?!
- dang 7y ago
  Would you please review the site guidelines and stick to the rules when posting here? You broke them with this, and even worse with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21160833 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21160833. That's not cool. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
novok 7y ago
TBH, since it's a server application that would be displaying some fairly basic stuff, whats wrong with a simple web app that you run in your browser?
- filmgirlcw 7y ago
  Nothing! There are a lot of web-front ends for Calibre, actually. And that’s also why you have some really great iOS apps for accessing your library. For me, the value of Calibre is more in the plugins than the serving mechanism — which is where the bad design becomes frustrating. But again, despite being frustrated by the app, I’m so grateful to the developer for making it, because I would rather have this version of Calibre then no Calibre at all.
filmgirlcw 7y ago
Why would it matter? My initial design doc was going to be Swift-based and in my “pie-in-the-sky” goal, it would be a native macOS app. But part of the value of Calibre is that it is cross-platform and so yes, Electron was a strong option because for cross-platform development, I definitely don’t think it is worse than QT or Java. There are a lot of bad Electron applications, but apps like Visual Studio Code* prove that as with anything, you can make a really fantastic experience if you put the right work into it. But it doesn’t matter anyway. The amount of work that would be required would be monumental and the payoff wouldn’t be worth it. Which is why I have tremendous respect for the Calibre developer. I don’t agree with his design decisions and I wish the app was more usable, but I fully acknowledge that nothing else exists and that no one else is willing to do the work to make a better version. * Disclosure: I work at Microsoft but not on VS Code. I have huge respect for the VS Code and the Electron team, however.
dang 7y ago
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

ehvatum 7y ago

>it’s a slow app >it’s ugly >it’s poorly designed >nothing else even comes >the task was so monumental I think what's going on here is that Calibre is implemented for free in spare time in Python with an eye toward being accessible to all audiences and feature complete. So, it's neither super fast, nor super pretty, nor super elegant. But everyone can build up a library of ebooks without much effort and then browse around and read them, highlight them, and sort them in various ways. You're welcome to submit patches that hide everything behind a hamburger menu and make the scrollbars vanish and crap like that.

filmgirlcw 7y ago
That’s actually not an easy patch — I looked into it and the way the QT layer works — not even diving into the codebase underneath — doing anything more than an icon pack/skin is nearly impossible — at least with my level of skill and the amount of time I would be willing to put into it. As I said, I’m super grateful Calibre exists and I think software is better for it existing. I also fully understand why there haven’t been other attempts to do what Calibre does — because it’s a shitload of work and the userbase is niche.
- dmix 7y ago
  Design is something that can't simply be tacked on after the fact either. It's something that must be embraced by the core developers and influences plenty of decision making. Plenty of people don't have good design taste but can still be useful software, so I hope it doesn't deter them. Although there may be a correlation between poor interface design being reflected in the backend. From naming schemes, to modelling the data, to managing complexity, saying no to certain features, etc are all things that cross over into the design world.
- zanny 7y ago
  Calibre is just a qwidgets based pyqt program. Since its as KDE project the "modern" UI stack would be Kirigami QML and you can use QWidget::createWindowContainer to embed QtQuick parts in a QWidgets program. With signals and slots they can still communicate, so you can peacemeal replace parts of the UI like that, but looking at the sources the main window is composed of about 30 different parts between a half dozen folders so thats pretty immutable.

zacmps 7y ago

I run it on a server and use calibre-web as a frontend. Has a nice UI and works well for my purposes: https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web

jrochkind1 7y ago
Interesting. I wonder if you could embed something based on calibre-web in an Electron app. It'd be one way to get a better UI in a more accessible way...
- zacmps 7y ago
  I just use chrome for this: chrome.exe --app="https://url.of.calibre.web" https://url.of.calibre.web" Removes the top bar and shows the favicon as the application icon. You can create a shortcut/.desktop and it'll act pretty much like an electron app would.
  - jrochkind1 7y ago
    But you still gotta run the 'web app' somewhere, responding on some port (even if only on localhost)?
- xbmcuser 7y ago
  With the new server backend that has been released where you can add remove books and modify metadata etc. It would be lot easier to build a different frontend. The Calibre Dev is quite open to take patches that increase functionality without taking away previous functionality so he would be probably open to adding more functions in the server.
pnutjam 7y ago
How is this better then running the standard calibre in daemon mode. I sync my library to a vps and do this: /usr/bin/calibre-server --daemonize --enable-auth --url-prefix=/calibre --port 8000 --enable-local-write --log /home/user/calibre_log /home/user/user_library

GordonS 7y ago

I feel similarly - I use Calibre because it's the least-worst option. I truely appreciate the effort the devs put in, because I know how complex it is and that I wouldn't expend the effort myself. But it certainly has some performance and UX issues. For me personally, I'd prefer to focus on getting the UX right, then I wouldn't care so much about the performance

VvR-Ox 7y ago

Isn't this the case for a lot of tools? For me Thunderbird is one of those - there's no better open source mail client to be found and you use it because it works (most of the time). The problem with this is that creating GUIs is very complicated as there's just too many different frameworks and specific stuff to know to achieve this. In my opinion interface design on computers is kind of broken just because there's no standard that works for every system. I don't want to implement things 4 or 5 times to get the same result. If I could I would contribute to those apps because I have good ideas for UX/UI but I'm nowhere near learning all the stuff I need to know to do so I'm afraid. Maybe when I'm really old and retire it's still as crappy as it is and I'll find the time. In the meanwhile at least we have tools like Calibre and Thunderbird and I'm very thankful for the work the Dev's put into them! :)