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>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 implemen

>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.
  - filmgirlcw 7y ago
    Immutable is the right word. I was trying to “fix” the new dark mode in Calibre 4 (it’s bad and clearly not tested — the default hyperlink colors are nearly unreadable and the hover-over color in the library menu are impossible to read), and while I could fix the CSS in some parts (which was the dev’s dismissive answer to the bug report on how dark mode is legitimately broken), other parts can’t be fixed without using overly-complex plugins (that have to apply overrides every time you start the app) or ripping apart the source in a way that is not worth the effort. My solution was to use a different Mac app to “force” Calibre to ignore the systemwide setting and use its light mode instead.
zapzupnz 7y ago
The last line reads needlessly dismissively. Someone, quite rightly, making an observation that the user interface/experience could do a little work is not analogous to someone suggesting the app should become the victim of poorly thought-out modern design trends.
- AdrianB1 7y ago
  Modern design trends != usability. Calibre is in need to usability and performance improvements.
  - zapzupnz 7y ago
    That's pretty much what I said.
mmsimanga 7y ago
Over the last few years reading HN comments a part of me can't help but think that the more criticism leveled at an application or technology the more useful it is for end users. This is probably true for Node, PHP, MySQL and Wordpress to name a few. Kovid Goyal should take the criticisms a sign Calibre is very useful to end users.
- filmgirlcw 7y ago
  I totally agree. In my case, it’s definitely a case of “I bitch because I care” — and I am very appreciative of the app and the hard work that has gone into it. I cannot imagine doing all of that myself and making the app free at that. I do think it’s a shame the codebase is such that seems to prevent meaningful contributions/collaboration that might improve things — but Kovid has done something amazing, make no mistake. And more to the point — we all complain about Calibre, yet no other app exists that even does a fraction of what it does.
  - mmsimanga 7y ago
    I guess there is something to be said about applications purely focused on user needs and not engineering. MS Excel and MS Access applications vs applications developed by engineers using the latest framework. On a personal level I was happy Drupal end user because whilst I am a developer I am not a web developer. Drupal 7 was useful to me it allowed me to create useful web applications similar to using MS Access on the desktop. I cannot even get the well engineered Drupal 8 running because I honestly don't have the time to first learn things like Composer.
  - zanny 7y ago
    > I cannot imagine doing all of that myself and making the app free at that. The only reason we are here talking about it is because its free software. Its not even about price, its about how Calibre evolved thanks to a community that grew around it. Maybe someone could start a proprietary ebook library program, charge for it, and make a living that way. But it would get orders of magnitude less usage and have done that much less good for the whole of mankind as a result. And the work of one person, or even a small team, is unlikely to accomplish all the features Calibre has because few people will recognize the collective needs of all book readers the way an open bug tracker and merge requests can.
tensor 7y ago
> without much effort I remember trying Calibre years ago and figure out how to use it was enough trouble that I just shelved it. Your post reads as though UX doesn't matter much, but that's far from reality.
- sbarre 7y ago
  Anecdotally, I had the opposite experience. From the first time I loaded up Calibre, I mostly understood how it worked. Perhaps it just clicked with me easier than with others, but other than the "bare bones" interface, I think it's a reasonably intuitive program.
smittywerben 7y ago
> Calibre is implemented for free in spare time in Python Well it was Python. The number of C extensions means they can't go back without many hours of work and hundreds of thousands (or millions) of LOC cleaned and tested. For instance, I recall a LZMA decompression C/Python script in the Calibre source. Python 3.3 added LZMA in the stdlib, but they're stuck maintaining their handrolled one. I'm missing details. I learned quite a bit from that codebase awhile back.

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.
- filmgirlcw 7y ago
  Immutable is the right word. I was trying to “fix” the new dark mode in Calibre 4 (it’s bad and clearly not tested — the default hyperlink colors are nearly unreadable and the hover-over color in the library menu are impossible to read), and while I could fix the CSS in some parts (which was the dev’s dismissive answer to the bug report on how dark mode is legitimately broken), other parts can’t be fixed without using overly-complex plugins (that have to apply overrides every time you start the app) or ripping apart the source in a way that is not worth the effort. My solution was to use a different Mac app to “force” Calibre to ignore the systemwide setting and use its light mode instead.

zapzupnz 7y ago

The last line reads needlessly dismissively. Someone, quite rightly, making an observation that the user interface/experience could do a little work is not analogous to someone suggesting the app should become the victim of poorly thought-out modern design trends.

AdrianB1 7y ago
Modern design trends != usability. Calibre is in need to usability and performance improvements.
- zapzupnz 7y ago
  That's pretty much what I said.

mmsimanga 7y ago

Over the last few years reading HN comments a part of me can't help but think that the more criticism leveled at an application or technology the more useful it is for end users. This is probably true for Node, PHP, MySQL and Wordpress to name a few. Kovid Goyal should take the criticisms a sign Calibre is very useful to end users.

filmgirlcw 7y ago
I totally agree. In my case, it’s definitely a case of “I bitch because I care” — and I am very appreciative of the app and the hard work that has gone into it. I cannot imagine doing all of that myself and making the app free at that. I do think it’s a shame the codebase is such that seems to prevent meaningful contributions/collaboration that might improve things — but Kovid has done something amazing, make no mistake. And more to the point — we all complain about Calibre, yet no other app exists that even does a fraction of what it does.
- mmsimanga 7y ago
  I guess there is something to be said about applications purely focused on user needs and not engineering. MS Excel and MS Access applications vs applications developed by engineers using the latest framework. On a personal level I was happy Drupal end user because whilst I am a developer I am not a web developer. Drupal 7 was useful to me it allowed me to create useful web applications similar to using MS Access on the desktop. I cannot even get the well engineered Drupal 8 running because I honestly don't have the time to first learn things like Composer.
- zanny 7y ago
  > I cannot imagine doing all of that myself and making the app free at that. The only reason we are here talking about it is because its free software. Its not even about price, its about how Calibre evolved thanks to a community that grew around it. Maybe someone could start a proprietary ebook library program, charge for it, and make a living that way. But it would get orders of magnitude less usage and have done that much less good for the whole of mankind as a result. And the work of one person, or even a small team, is unlikely to accomplish all the features Calibre has because few people will recognize the collective needs of all book readers the way an open bug tracker and merge requests can.

tensor 7y ago

> without much effort I remember trying Calibre years ago and figure out how to use it was enough trouble that I just shelved it. Your post reads as though UX doesn't matter much, but that's far from reality.

sbarre 7y ago
Anecdotally, I had the opposite experience. From the first time I loaded up Calibre, I mostly understood how it worked. Perhaps it just clicked with me easier than with others, but other than the "bare bones" interface, I think it's a reasonably intuitive program.

smittywerben 7y ago

> Calibre is implemented for free in spare time in Python Well it was Python. The number of C extensions means they can't go back without many hours of work and hundreds of thousands (or millions) of LOC cleaned and tested. For instance, I recall a LZMA decompression C/Python script in the Calibre source. Python 3.3 added LZMA in the stdlib, but they're stuck maintaining their handrolled one. I'm missing details. I learned quite a bit from that codebase awhile back.