35 ms·

Calibre 5.0

674 points by Alekhine 6y ago

ekianjo 6y ago
> The two headline features are Highlighting support in the calibre E-book viewer and that calibre has now moved to Python 3. Love the irony here. Last year the author said he would not move away from Python2 and that he could maintain Python2 all by himself even when deprecated. And suddenly it moves to Python 3. I guess someone drastically changed their mind. EDIT: actual quote: > No, it doesn't. I am perfectly capable of maintaining python 2 myself. Far less work than migrating the entire calibre codebase. https://bugs.launchpad.net/calibre/+bug/1714107 https://bugs.launchpad.net/calibre/+bug/1714107
- fireattack 6y ago
  Definitely felt weird when he said that at the time. Anyway, very glad he changed his mind.
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  It's just a reminder that you need somewhat eccentric people in the world if you want good open source projects like Calibre. Nobody else is going to do the job.
  - vcxy 6y ago
    Absolutely, I really appreciate this take. Calibre has been amazing for me for years, nothing else comes close. The guy is a hell of a hard worker.
  - BeetleB 6y ago
    > It's just a reminder that you need somewhat eccentric people in the world if you want good open source projects like Calibre. I'm not sure if you meant it this way, but your statement is saying that good open source projects require eccentric people - which is likely false.
- notRobot 6y ago
  There is no irony here. It's simply someone changing their views.
  - tcbasche 6y ago
    Yeah, how dare someone grow and evolve!
    - kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 6y ago
      Pretty sure that's not allowed anymore
- sircastor 6y ago
  Maybe he learned something about python 3, or he had one too many people ask him about it. Or the ghost of python past came in the night to warn him of the dangers of maintaining EOL resources. I’m glad we can change our minds when we want to.
  - ziotom78 6y ago
    OR he finally got some actual help and PRs, instead of just receiving complaints.
- ornornor 6y ago
  Good that the author is mature enough to change his views rather than entrenching himself. I wish more people could do that.
- tomcam 6y ago
  You sound pretty smart. Maybe you should consider doing a better Calibre. According to Patreon there’s a princely $1500 a month in it for you. I’m sure you could do much better for the same pay.
smnrchrds 6y ago
For those who are out of the loop, the notable thing about this release is that Calibre is now using Python 3. Three years ago, Calibre author famously said he will maintain Python 2 when it reaches EOL, because it would be less work than migrating Calibre to Python 3. https://bugs.launchpad.net/calibre/+bug/1714107 https://bugs.launchpad.net/calibre/+bug/1714107
- peterkelly 6y ago
  I remember seeing that and facepalming, because I was considering contributing to the project but that just put me right off. Now it's on Python 3 I'm inclined to reconsider.
  - andrepd 6y ago
    Maybe a good starting point to contributing would be helping to migrate to python 3?
  - darekkay 6y ago
    > Kovid has stated numerous times that any patches which work towards python3 compatibility without hurting python2 functionality or performance would be happily accepted. Oddly enough, no one has ever taken him up on that, though a number of people have insisted it is very important that he himself do that work.
  - comeonseriously 6y ago
    Now that the work of migrating is done?
- dagmx 6y ago
  Outside of the initial stance of wanting to maintain Python 2, I'm amazed at how much of a jerk the Arch distribution maintainer is being to everyone else.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    That’s a pretty strong and broad statement. Do you have any evidence or incidents to back that up?
acgh213 6y ago
Congrats to the dev finally realizing that the switch to python 3 was a real thing instead of, as I will quote " No, it doesn't. I am perfectly capable of maintaining python 2 myself. Far less work than migrating the entire calibre codebase." Glad he made the sane option, I held off from converting my eBook library to the system because of the previous python2 ignorance.
- discordance 6y ago
  Why? - I don't understand how Calibre's move from Python 2 to Python 3 should impact you as an end-user. The user experience should be identical. If anything, the user experience has been diminished in the move to Python 3, as the maintainer mentions some 3rd party plugins won't work as they need to be ported over.
  - Larrikin 6y ago
    If as a dev you know their code base will have issues based on what you know about the ecosystem why would that not be a reason to hold off on the product. If they prove themselves despite the issues you choose them, if they realize the issues with their response and adapt you choose them, and if the product blows up because of foreseen issues you predicted you didn't waste your time on a product you suspected was doomed and probably found an alternative in the meantime.
    - newen 6y ago
      Calibre is 13 years old and widely used. There is no reason someone would want to not use it because of as trivial a reason as Python 2 to 3 except for some rationalized emotional nonsense about the Python 2 to 3 shift. Every time Python 2 vs 3 is discussed, there are a bunch of emotional people spewing vitriol about luddites or some nonsense like that. Easy for especially weakly socialized young people that many programmers are to get caught up in that.
      - BeetleB 6y ago
        > There is no reason > there are a bunch of emotional people > or some nonsense like that > Easy for especially weakly socialized young people that many programmers are It's amusing to watch you call others "weakly socialized" when reading the rest of your comment. Social awareness is not exactly exuding from it, what with the judgments and the confident assertions.
wpdev_63 6y ago
I wish there was a way to define your own directory structure within calibre(i.e. tag>topic>bookname vs author>bookname) as I like to sync my calibre with drop box and browse the files from my e-reader. Right now you need calibre to browse the library the way it's setup which is a bummer for organizing everything.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 6y ago
  If you set up calibre-server and use an e-reader app that can browse an OPDS catalog (I use Librera Pro on Android), you can get to your books in a variety of ways, including searching.
  - anjel 6y ago
    Pocketbook (Android) plays very nicely with Calibre server as well.
- Vaslo 6y ago
  Yes! I always remember the name of the books but almost never remember the name of the author.
  - efreak 6y ago
    > Yes! I always remember the name of the books but almost never remember the name of the author. Then use the search mechanism in your file manager/OS. If your library is too large, use calibre itself. Alternatively, use a script to symlink all the ebook files into a central directory. Windows/msys2: `c:\msys2\usr\bin\find -type f -name ".epub" -printf 'mklink "%p" "c:\library\%P"\n' > links.bat && links.bat` Linux/mac/etc: `find -type f -name ".epub" -exec cp -s -t /home/me/library '%p' +` (find might be able to do symlinks on its own, not sure)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
artemisyna 6y ago
This project doesn't quite have the layers on top as some open source projects[1] but it is sort of amusing to see how much of Calibre is built on the back of one guy (funded via Patreon![2]) and a handful of volunteers. [1] https://xkcd.com/2347/ https://xkcd.com/2347/ [2] https://www.patreon.com/kovidgoyal https://www.patreon.com/kovidgoyal
- noja 6y ago
  > funded via Patreon he was only funded via Patreon relatively recently
k_sze 6y ago
The ability to highlight and browse the highlights is HUGE. It makes Calibre really useful for language learning (e.g. by reading novels). I can now highlight new vocabulary or idioms and see them in context when I need to, without me having to copy and paste into some separate file! Couple that with the fact that Calibre supports custom dictionary sources and it's just amazing. The one missing feature to make Calibre perfect for me is proper support for rendering PDF. Calibre currently absolutely sucks at rendering PDFs, but some ebooks are sadly only available as PDFs.
- square_usual 6y ago
  Unfortunately Calibre is pretty bad for reading Japanese novels. Every amazon.jp novel I ripped has issues rendering the vertical RTL text properly. Each "page" is a chapter, and you have to scroll sideways on the page to move in the current chapter. Frequently, scrolling horizontally blanks after the first screen. It's a mess. I had to force my books to render in horizontal LTR via CSS to be able to read them.
  - k_sze 6y ago
    Odd. Your problem might be caused by badly formatted epubs? I'm using Calibre 5.0.0 on Ubuntu and I have no problem with a Chinese novel epub in vertical layout. The mouse cursor even turns sideways for selecting text and I can use the mouse scroll wheel without any modifier key to scroll left and right.
    - square_usual 6y ago
      That might have been fixed in 5, I haven't used calibre in a while. As for formatting, I rip my collection from my amazon library, so there's nothing I can do about that unfortunately.
      - Liquid_Fire 6y ago
        I haven't tried it, but the linked announcement says: "Additionally, the E-book viewer now supports both vertical and right-to-left text."
edwinyzh 6y ago
Congrats! I'm your competitor - except it's built-on top of Microsoft Word, and is still in an early state :) For those interested: https://DocxManager.com https://DocxManager.com Edit: Sorry, I was wrong, I thought it's "ebook writer" software :P
- Alopis 6y ago
  Huh, this is interesting. It's not directly related but I'm still thankful you commented. Is this written in Delphi (as per your HN profile)?
  - edwinyzh 6y ago
    Yes, I use Delphi for all my software :) Delphi rocks and unfortunately it's mismanaged :(
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
Ever since Edge dropped EPUB support, I've been trying to find a suitable "just open this EPUB file" replacement. Okular is janky and renders a lot of EPUBs incorrectly. I've found Calibre's eBook Viewer the best I've installed as of yet, though I wish I could install just that part. Calibre feels a little heavyweight for what I want. But it does what it does pretty darn well, I think the lack of alternatives is because everyone has just decided to use Calibre.
- radicaldreamer 6y ago
  The alternatives are really really bad and Calibre is really good at what it does.
- shscs911 6y ago
  If you're looking for an e-book reader in Linux, Foliate (https://github.com/johnfactotum/foliate/ https://github.com/johnfactotum/foliate/) is the best I've seen. I used to be a fan of Calibre E-book reader and had my own custom CSS for theming, but the redesigned e-book reader (I think it was Calibre 4.0) completely broke my setup. I don't know how it is these days, but it was extremely buggy and lagging when I tried some months ago. Even Bookworm (https://github.com/babluboy/bookworm https://github.com/babluboy/bookworm) is a far better alternative than Calibre E-book reader.
- shadowprofile77 6y ago
  In case you're referring to mobile apps, there's also FBreader. Not great, but not bad, I've used it for years to read both epub and Mobi books on my phone just fine. (bad for the eyes I know but still useful for always having a book at hand). FBReader is terrible for PDFs though, warning on that.
  - rayrag 6y ago
    Try Readera, much nicer Ui and good pdf support. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.readera&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.readera&hl...
  - 6y ago
bane 6y ago
For those interested ubooquity is a nice simple alternative.
- ig0r0 6y ago
  Not sure I would call something requiring me to install Java as lightweight
jonahbenton 6y ago
Obligatory- this is one of the unsung hero open source projects. Truly amazing, useful work, run by a nice person, for valuable purpose. Author should be getting Medals of Intellectual Freedom or whatever plaudits a non-trashfire society would have to offer. And should be drinking/eating free wherever he goes. Cheers.
smcleod 6y ago
Calibre is one or those apps that I've used for many, many years and other than being a bit ugly has served me perfectly. Hats off to the developers and contributors, thank you for your fine work.
- summitsummit 6y ago
  this is probably how my wife describes me
  - desikoder 6y ago
    ROFL!
tripa 6y ago
And I'm only now noticing the guy's name is Kovid.
- snak 6y ago
  I was looking for this comment.
- sumedh 6y ago
  Google says Kovid is an Indian origin name but I have never heard it in India.
jwr 6y ago
Thanks to Calibre, I can read The Economist (which I'm paying for!) on my Kindle, in a format that doesn't bombard me with animated ads like their new iPad app does.
- Brakenshire 6y ago
  I’d like to do that, could you give some pointers?
  - jwr 6y ago
    I have a small script that essentially does: FILENAME=/tmp/economist-$(date +"%Y-%m-%d").mobi /usr/bin/ebook-convert "The Economist.recipe" $FILENAME --output-profile=kindle_voyage --username=[your_user] --password=[your_password] --keep-ligatures --smarten-punctuation --change-justification left --mobi-file-type new --mobi-keep-original-images and then E-mails $FILENAME to my kindle address. As a side note: I wish The Economist provided this service, but they don't. Instead, they started "enhancing" their mobile apps to include incredibly distracting, animated ads. I am very unhappy with how they are treating their readers. Also, what could these banners ads possibly be worth? $10/user/year? $25/user/year? Just let me pay more for my subscription and treat me respectfully.
    - mikestew 6y ago
      Also, what could these banners ads possibly be worth? I would guess not as much as the revenue lost when I said, "enough of this shit, I'll get my news elsewhere.", but less than collective ad revenue from those that don't care or can't be bothered.
Erlangen 6y ago
It's a big shame that whenever anything related to Calibre is posted, top comments will often be how arrogant is author is. I used to think the same. But when I read his comments history in GitHub, he doesn't seem a dick to me at all. So I googled his name, and end up in a forum. It completely changed my mind. Contrary to what people believe, Dovid Goyal is the most friendly programmer to his users. He spent lots of time answering questions in the forum https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=166 https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=166. His answers include where is a menu located, how to convert a book from one format to another, helping the user to debug the exact the problem with Calibre. He has been doing this daily and is very responsive. You can expect an answer to your question in the same day. (The forum used to allow you to read user's comments history anonymously, but now you need a account to do so)
- thackerwayac 6y ago
  >Dovid Goyal Kovid Goyal
  - auggierose 6y ago
    Wow, his name is really Kovid?? :-D
    - wonks 6y ago
      I know, I feel so bad for him.
- fireattack 6y ago
  Mobileread is THE forum for ebook and users there are amazing in general. And they reply fast. I once asked a question there and get 3 to 4 useful, relevant answers in 5 minutes. Edit: as for Kovid, he's just the type of person who speaks direct to the point without any extra words. Some people are not used to that. He's very helpful and responsive for feedback/bug report and really hard-working.
- ziotom78 6y ago
  I agree. I am an enthusiastic fan of the Kitty terminal emulator [1], another of his creatures, and I am following its development (though I never managed to contribute with some code). Kovid's answers on the GitHub forum are often short and sound a bit harsh sometimes, yet he's ready to accept others' suggestions and stand corrected when needed. If only there were more coders like him! [1] https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/index.html https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/index.html
bambax 6y ago
This release isn't compatible with DeDRM for now according to: > This release DOES NOT work with the latest calibre beta that requires Python 3 for plugins. (Updated June 2020). https://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/ https://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/ So I'll have to wait until it is. DeDRM is pretty vital as I often buy books on Amazon and read them elsewhere. And even if not, I would not "buy" books that are in effect protected and can be taken back from me at any time, without being able to do anything about it.
- toyg 6y ago
  I’ve noticed this before, DeDRM and Calibre releases occasionally get out of sync, so to speak. They typically realign eventually, since they are very co-dependant (people use DeDRM mostly from Calibre, and a lot of people use Calibre just to access DeDRM functionality).
- criddell 6y ago
  Have the DeDRM devs figured out a perfect crack for Amazon's latest DRM (KFX)? Last time I checked the best option was to force Amazon to give you the book in an older format but then you lose all the typography improvements in KFX.
  - kingbirdy 6y ago
    How does their DRM improve typography?
    - frosted-flakes 6y ago
      The DRM doesn't improve typography, the newer format does.
  - Tijdreiziger 6y ago
    The KFX format is undocumented and has changed over time. Books containing new or unknown features may fail to convert or result in incorrect content or formatting. KFX is more highly processed than Amazon's KF8 (azw3) format, causing some details in the markup of the original e-book provided by the publisher to be lost during conversion. The exact HTML tags and styles originally used in the book are not retained in KFX format. However, all of the text and most of the formatting should be preserved. Images may have been reduced in resolution or converted to black and white to match the capabilities of the device to which they were delivered. PDF resources in KFX print replica books may have been split into multiple files. Links between pages across files will be broken if the PDF content is extracted. These limitations make KFX less suitable for archival and conversion when compared with KF8. [1] [1] KFX Input - https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=291290 https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=291290
kissgyorgy 6y ago
Porting half a million code of Python 2 to Python 3 is quite an achievement!
unionpivo 6y ago
Lot of negativity here. I would just like to thank the author and people who help him for their work. Calibre is one of the few general public facing open source application that is best in class. It's also not maintained by a huge corporation, but mostly love of one man, and a few helpers. It also has great user support for end users.
- nix23 6y ago
  >Calibre is one of the few general public facing open source application that is best in class. Never though about that but its true.
  - jtbayly 6y ago
    Unless, like me, you downloaded it initially as an ebook reader app. I’m hopeful 5.0 isn’t as abysmal at just trying to scroll through a book. But the rest is absolutely best in class. In fact, it’s sadly the only in class for some things, I’m afraid.
    - lostcolony 6y ago
      You are/were evaluating it in the wrong class there I think. What viewing it provides seems intended to be functional as an extension of its role for management purposes; not ergonomic for actually reading the ebook.
      - pnutjam 6y ago
        The content view is pretty usable for reading, especially if you're on a locked down device that can't install a an e-reader app.
      - jtbayly 6y ago
        Exactly, and I use it for the other things, now. Just not reading.
    - pnutjam 6y ago
contravariant 6y ago
I hope the Kobo utilities get ported soon, otherwise I might be stuck with Calibre 4 for a while.
qwerty456127 6y ago
Can it let you customize the way it stores books already? It would be awesome if I could configure it to store books in a flat directory (without creating a directory for every book), using book's first author surnames and short titles as-is (without transliterating to plain ASCII).
qwerty456127 6y ago
The dude was named Kovid before this became mainstream :-)
Havoc 6y ago
Awesome project. Don’t think it even has a good alternative available?
xiconfjs 6y ago
I‘m using calibre with calibre-web [1] to browse my 80000+ pdfs and couldn‘t be happier with the workflow. Only downside: import of these pdfs took almost a whole day. [1] https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web
- underlines 6y ago
  I do the same. Calibre-web is awesome! Autocompleting metadata automatically from Amazon Books is also great. Plus multi laguage and multi user function. As well as collaborating on public shelves to create useful collections. I also let my co-workers and friends upload ebooks. It's great. Do you know if and when they migrate calibre-web to calibre 5? I don't know if the project is active.
- pnutjam 6y ago
  I think vanilla calibre supports this web version now, at least in linux. I just install calibre on my vps and run it headless. I posted directions up thread.
physicsguy 6y ago
Excellent! Calibre is a really great piece of software that I use all the time. Kudos to the devs!
underlines 6y ago
I run a calibre-web docker instance on aws. I can just upload any ebook file and in a second it's available for my family and friends. One click and it imports the necessary metadata from amazon books. Custom shelves allows for collaboration or sharing of collections of books. It's a great web adoption of calibre. I hope Calibre 5.0 gets merged into it soon. https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web
dunce2020 6y ago
Calibre rules.
teekert 6y ago
I recently learned that Calibre is pronounced (by the creator) as Kalibur, not Ka-Libre!
- mkl 6y ago
  Ka-Libre never occurred to me. "Calibre" is the same word the US spells "caliber", with the same pronunciation: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/calibre https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/calibre
  - teekert 6y ago
    Maybe because I'm dutch and I made the FOSS/Libre connection...
- zem 6y ago
  I've always pronounced it that way because in British English is just the regular spelling of the word (Americans spell it "caliber"). the name was doubtless influenced by the "libre" part but I never thought to say "ca-libre"
  - frosted-flakes 6y ago
    Yep. On the About page Kovid says, > libprs500 was renamed to calibre in mid-2008. The name calibre was chosen by my wife, Krittika. The libre in calibre stands for freedom, indicating that calibre is a free and open source product, modifiable by all. Nonetheless, calibre should be pronounced as cali-ber, not ca-libre.
Balvarez 6y ago
I love this software and am grateful to the author for his work. Glad he's still making it
AdmiralAsshat 6y ago
Calibre is, bar none, one of the best tools I ever used. I acquired it originally for managing and converting my Kobo ebooks, but I was amazed at how robust its ebook viewer and especially ebook production tools were. I had an ebook that was clearly of dubious origin, as its Table of Contents page was completely broken (both the actual ToC page and the auto-generated navigation page). But all of the actual test was there. Once I opened the book up in the ebook editor, I was surprised at how quickly I was able to fix the ToC and change all the references to the correct chapter documents. It's a fantastic tool, and one of the few examples where I think the "kitchen sink" approach really works, as opposed to a collection of UNIX-style tools (although it has those, too).
- efreak 6y ago
  Better yet, you don't even need to open the full ebook editor to access the toc editor, iirc it's available from the right click menu (might not be a default setting).
dcchambers 6y ago
I love calibre. One of my favorite examples of free software. Easy to use, fully featured, great command line tools. That is all. Glad he's finally moved to Python 3. Hope the (popular) plugins get migrated soon as well.
dexterdog 6y ago
And in typical Calibre style, by the time I go to upgrade it's already at 5.0.1
heimatau 6y ago
My experience with Calibre has been improving as of late. I'm really grateful for the snappiness of the software. I hope we can have a separate epub reader, so that I don't need to keep Calibre always open to skim through a book. Calibre is more resource intensive than I was expecting when I first downloaded it many many years ago.
- efreak 6y ago
  It won't help with being resource intensive, but there's a good number of electron-based ebook readers around. Alternatively, if you constantly have a browser open, you could use calibre-web and simply open the books in your browser. FBReader is also available and multiplatform (as FBReaderJ), as are a few other ebook readers.
Germstorm 6y ago
I am using Calibre since a good few years. It works perfectly and has helped me immensely. As a software developer I can only imagine the amount of work that went into it.
pwinnski 6y ago
Kovid Goyal does great work, but this remains the worst program I use regularly. He's chosen for himself the unenviable task of delivering software most people who use it consider irreplaceable, and trying to satisfy every feature anyone could ever want, which means it has many, many, many features most users don't want. BUT we all want a different subset of existing features, and are annoyed by a different subset of other features we don't use, making any replacement nearly impossible. Me, I maintain a library large enough that my metadata.db file is 40,116,224 bytes. The library lives on a NAS, and I run the program on a MacBook, which is not recommended, but seems to be the best choice available to me.
- copperx 6y ago
  Why do you consider it to be the worst program that you use?
  - pwinnski 6y ago
    It's quite ugly among Mac apps, since it's a Qt app. I usually avoid non-Mac apps, but calibre does what I need it to do, and there is no better option. The feature set is truly impressive. Hard to believe it's essentially the work of one developer. I don't mean to criticize when I say it's ugly: I'm a back-end developer primarily, and I don't have any idea how to cram as many features as it has in any interface without it becoming ugly.
crazygringo 6y ago
> It now supports Highlighting. The highlights can be colors, underlines, strikethrough, etc. and have added notes. All highlights can be both stored in EPUB files for easy sharing This is amazing! It's always driven me batty that things I highlight in Apple Books, even when it's my own epub file, are kept internal to Apple Books and can't be exported in the epub itself. I never thought epub had any highlighting standard though. Is this just adding <span>'s with CSS to achieve the effect? I do wish this became standard for all non-DRM'd e-readers -- the way highlighting PDF's is standardized.
vkaku 6y ago
Has someone ever tried to get this on to PyPi? Like pip install calibre? :-)

674 points by Alekhine 6y ago

> The two headline features are Highlighting support in the calibre E-book viewer and that calibre has now moved to Python 3. Love the irony here. Last year the author said he would not move away from Python2 and that he could maintain Python2 all by himself even when deprecated. And suddenly it moves to Python 3. I guess someone drastically changed their mind. EDIT: actual quote: > No, it doesn't. I am perfectly capable of maintaining python 2 myself. Far less work than migrating the entire calibre codebase. https://bugs.launchpad.net/calibre/+bug/1714107 https://bugs.launchpad.net/calibre/+bug/1714107

fireattack 6y ago
Definitely felt weird when he said that at the time. Anyway, very glad he changed his mind.
hombre_fatal 6y ago
It's just a reminder that you need somewhat eccentric people in the world if you want good open source projects like Calibre. Nobody else is going to do the job.
- vcxy 6y ago
  Absolutely, I really appreciate this take. Calibre has been amazing for me for years, nothing else comes close. The guy is a hell of a hard worker.
- BeetleB 6y ago
  > It's just a reminder that you need somewhat eccentric people in the world if you want good open source projects like Calibre. I'm not sure if you meant it this way, but your statement is saying that good open source projects require eccentric people - which is likely false.
notRobot 6y ago
There is no irony here. It's simply someone changing their views.
- tcbasche 6y ago
  Yeah, how dare someone grow and evolve!
  - kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 6y ago
    Pretty sure that's not allowed anymore
sircastor 6y ago
Maybe he learned something about python 3, or he had one too many people ask him about it. Or the ghost of python past came in the night to warn him of the dangers of maintaining EOL resources. I’m glad we can change our minds when we want to.
- ziotom78 6y ago
  OR he finally got some actual help and PRs, instead of just receiving complaints.
ornornor 6y ago
Good that the author is mature enough to change his views rather than entrenching himself. I wish more people could do that.
tomcam 6y ago
You sound pretty smart. Maybe you should consider doing a better Calibre. According to Patreon there’s a princely $1500 a month in it for you. I’m sure you could do much better for the same pay.

smnrchrds 6y ago

For those who are out of the loop, the notable thing about this release is that Calibre is now using Python 3. Three years ago, Calibre author famously said he will maintain Python 2 when it reaches EOL, because it would be less work than migrating Calibre to Python 3. https://bugs.launchpad.net/calibre/+bug/1714107 https://bugs.launchpad.net/calibre/+bug/1714107

peterkelly 6y ago
I remember seeing that and facepalming, because I was considering contributing to the project but that just put me right off. Now it's on Python 3 I'm inclined to reconsider.
- andrepd 6y ago
  Maybe a good starting point to contributing would be helping to migrate to python 3?
- darekkay 6y ago
  > Kovid has stated numerous times that any patches which work towards python3 compatibility without hurting python2 functionality or performance would be happily accepted. Oddly enough, no one has ever taken him up on that, though a number of people have insisted it is very important that he himself do that work.
- comeonseriously 6y ago
  Now that the work of migrating is done?
dagmx 6y ago
Outside of the initial stance of wanting to maintain Python 2, I'm amazed at how much of a jerk the Arch distribution maintainer is being to everyone else.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  That’s a pretty strong and broad statement. Do you have any evidence or incidents to back that up?

acgh213 6y ago

Congrats to the dev finally realizing that the switch to python 3 was a real thing instead of, as I will quote " No, it doesn't. I am perfectly capable of maintaining python 2 myself. Far less work than migrating the entire calibre codebase." Glad he made the sane option, I held off from converting my eBook library to the system because of the previous python2 ignorance.

discordance 6y ago
Why? - I don't understand how Calibre's move from Python 2 to Python 3 should impact you as an end-user. The user experience should be identical. If anything, the user experience has been diminished in the move to Python 3, as the maintainer mentions some 3rd party plugins won't work as they need to be ported over.
- Larrikin 6y ago
  If as a dev you know their code base will have issues based on what you know about the ecosystem why would that not be a reason to hold off on the product. If they prove themselves despite the issues you choose them, if they realize the issues with their response and adapt you choose them, and if the product blows up because of foreseen issues you predicted you didn't waste your time on a product you suspected was doomed and probably found an alternative in the meantime.
  - newen 6y ago
    Calibre is 13 years old and widely used. There is no reason someone would want to not use it because of as trivial a reason as Python 2 to 3 except for some rationalized emotional nonsense about the Python 2 to 3 shift. Every time Python 2 vs 3 is discussed, there are a bunch of emotional people spewing vitriol about luddites or some nonsense like that. Easy for especially weakly socialized young people that many programmers are to get caught up in that.
    - BeetleB 6y ago
      > There is no reason > there are a bunch of emotional people > or some nonsense like that > Easy for especially weakly socialized young people that many programmers are It's amusing to watch you call others "weakly socialized" when reading the rest of your comment. Social awareness is not exactly exuding from it, what with the judgments and the confident assertions.

wpdev_63 6y ago

I wish there was a way to define your own directory structure within calibre(i.e. tag>topic>bookname vs author>bookname) as I like to sync my calibre with drop box and browse the files from my e-reader. Right now you need calibre to browse the library the way it's setup which is a bummer for organizing everything.

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 6y ago
If you set up calibre-server and use an e-reader app that can browse an OPDS catalog (I use Librera Pro on Android), you can get to your books in a variety of ways, including searching.
- anjel 6y ago
  Pocketbook (Android) plays very nicely with Calibre server as well.
Vaslo 6y ago
Yes! I always remember the name of the books but almost never remember the name of the author.
- efreak 6y ago
  > Yes! I always remember the name of the books but almost never remember the name of the author. Then use the search mechanism in your file manager/OS. If your library is too large, use calibre itself. Alternatively, use a script to symlink all the ebook files into a central directory. Windows/msys2: `c:\msys2\usr\bin\find -type f -name ".epub" -printf 'mklink "%p" "c:\library\%P"\n' > links.bat && links.bat` Linux/mac/etc: `find -type f -name ".epub" -exec cp -s -t /home/me/library '%p' +` (find might be able to do symlinks on its own, not sure)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

artemisyna 6y ago

This project doesn't quite have the layers on top as some open source projects[1] but it is sort of amusing to see how much of Calibre is built on the back of one guy (funded via Patreon![2]) and a handful of volunteers. [1] https://xkcd.com/2347/ https://xkcd.com/2347/ [2] https://www.patreon.com/kovidgoyal https://www.patreon.com/kovidgoyal

noja 6y ago
> funded via Patreon he was only funded via Patreon relatively recently

k_sze 6y ago

The ability to highlight and browse the highlights is HUGE. It makes Calibre really useful for language learning (e.g. by reading novels). I can now highlight new vocabulary or idioms and see them in context when I need to, without me having to copy and paste into some separate file! Couple that with the fact that Calibre supports custom dictionary sources and it's just amazing. The one missing feature to make Calibre perfect for me is proper support for rendering PDF. Calibre currently absolutely sucks at rendering PDFs, but some ebooks are sadly only available as PDFs.

square_usual 6y ago
Unfortunately Calibre is pretty bad for reading Japanese novels. Every amazon.jp novel I ripped has issues rendering the vertical RTL text properly. Each "page" is a chapter, and you have to scroll sideways on the page to move in the current chapter. Frequently, scrolling horizontally blanks after the first screen. It's a mess. I had to force my books to render in horizontal LTR via CSS to be able to read them.
- k_sze 6y ago
  Odd. Your problem might be caused by badly formatted epubs? I'm using Calibre 5.0.0 on Ubuntu and I have no problem with a Chinese novel epub in vertical layout. The mouse cursor even turns sideways for selecting text and I can use the mouse scroll wheel without any modifier key to scroll left and right.
  - square_usual 6y ago
    That might have been fixed in 5, I haven't used calibre in a while. As for formatting, I rip my collection from my amazon library, so there's nothing I can do about that unfortunately.
    - Liquid_Fire 6y ago
      I haven't tried it, but the linked announcement says: "Additionally, the E-book viewer now supports both vertical and right-to-left text."

edwinyzh 6y ago

Congrats! I'm your competitor - except it's built-on top of Microsoft Word, and is still in an early state :) For those interested: https://DocxManager.com https://DocxManager.com Edit: Sorry, I was wrong, I thought it's "ebook writer" software :P

Alopis 6y ago
Huh, this is interesting. It's not directly related but I'm still thankful you commented. Is this written in Delphi (as per your HN profile)?
- edwinyzh 6y ago
  Yes, I use Delphi for all my software :) Delphi rocks and unfortunately it's mismanaged :(

ocdtrekkie 6y ago

Ever since Edge dropped EPUB support, I've been trying to find a suitable "just open this EPUB file" replacement. Okular is janky and renders a lot of EPUBs incorrectly. I've found Calibre's eBook Viewer the best I've installed as of yet, though I wish I could install just that part. Calibre feels a little heavyweight for what I want. But it does what it does pretty darn well, I think the lack of alternatives is because everyone has just decided to use Calibre.

radicaldreamer 6y ago
The alternatives are really really bad and Calibre is really good at what it does.
shscs911 6y ago
If you're looking for an e-book reader in Linux, Foliate (https://github.com/johnfactotum/foliate/ https://github.com/johnfactotum/foliate/) is the best I've seen. I used to be a fan of Calibre E-book reader and had my own custom CSS for theming, but the redesigned e-book reader (I think it was Calibre 4.0) completely broke my setup. I don't know how it is these days, but it was extremely buggy and lagging when I tried some months ago. Even Bookworm (https://github.com/babluboy/bookworm https://github.com/babluboy/bookworm) is a far better alternative than Calibre E-book reader.
shadowprofile77 6y ago
In case you're referring to mobile apps, there's also FBreader. Not great, but not bad, I've used it for years to read both epub and Mobi books on my phone just fine. (bad for the eyes I know but still useful for always having a book at hand). FBReader is terrible for PDFs though, warning on that.
- rayrag 6y ago
  Try Readera, much nicer Ui and good pdf support. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.readera&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.readera&hl...
- 6y ago

bane 6y ago

For those interested ubooquity is a nice simple alternative.

ig0r0 6y ago
Not sure I would call something requiring me to install Java as lightweight

jonahbenton 6y ago

Obligatory- this is one of the unsung hero open source projects. Truly amazing, useful work, run by a nice person, for valuable purpose. Author should be getting Medals of Intellectual Freedom or whatever plaudits a non-trashfire society would have to offer. And should be drinking/eating free wherever he goes. Cheers.

smcleod 6y ago

Calibre is one or those apps that I've used for many, many years and other than being a bit ugly has served me perfectly. Hats off to the developers and contributors, thank you for your fine work.

summitsummit 6y ago
this is probably how my wife describes me
- desikoder 6y ago
  ROFL!

tripa 6y ago

And I'm only now noticing the guy's name is Kovid.

snak 6y ago
I was looking for this comment.
sumedh 6y ago
Google says Kovid is an Indian origin name but I have never heard it in India.

jwr 6y ago

Thanks to Calibre, I can read The Economist (which I'm paying for!) on my Kindle, in a format that doesn't bombard me with animated ads like their new iPad app does.

Brakenshire 6y ago
I’d like to do that, could you give some pointers?
- jwr 6y ago
  I have a small script that essentially does: FILENAME=/tmp/economist-$(date +"%Y-%m-%d").mobi /usr/bin/ebook-convert "The Economist.recipe" $FILENAME --output-profile=kindle_voyage --username=[your_user] --password=[your_password] --keep-ligatures --smarten-punctuation --change-justification left --mobi-file-type new --mobi-keep-original-images and then E-mails $FILENAME to my kindle address. As a side note: I wish The Economist provided this service, but they don't. Instead, they started "enhancing" their mobile apps to include incredibly distracting, animated ads. I am very unhappy with how they are treating their readers. Also, what could these banners ads possibly be worth? $10/user/year? $25/user/year? Just let me pay more for my subscription and treat me respectfully.
  - mikestew 6y ago
    Also, what could these banners ads possibly be worth? I would guess not as much as the revenue lost when I said, "enough of this shit, I'll get my news elsewhere.", but less than collective ad revenue from those that don't care or can't be bothered.

Erlangen 6y ago

It's a big shame that whenever anything related to Calibre is posted, top comments will often be how arrogant is author is. I used to think the same. But when I read his comments history in GitHub, he doesn't seem a dick to me at all. So I googled his name, and end up in a forum. It completely changed my mind. Contrary to what people believe, Dovid Goyal is the most friendly programmer to his users. He spent lots of time answering questions in the forum https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=166 https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=166. His answers include where is a menu located, how to convert a book from one format to another, helping the user to debug the exact the problem with Calibre. He has been doing this daily and is very responsive. You can expect an answer to your question in the same day. (The forum used to allow you to read user's comments history anonymously, but now you need a account to do so)

thackerwayac 6y ago
>Dovid Goyal Kovid Goyal
- auggierose 6y ago
  Wow, his name is really Kovid?? :-D
  - wonks 6y ago
    I know, I feel so bad for him.
fireattack 6y ago
Mobileread is THE forum for ebook and users there are amazing in general. And they reply fast. I once asked a question there and get 3 to 4 useful, relevant answers in 5 minutes. Edit: as for Kovid, he's just the type of person who speaks direct to the point without any extra words. Some people are not used to that. He's very helpful and responsive for feedback/bug report and really hard-working.
ziotom78 6y ago
I agree. I am an enthusiastic fan of the Kitty terminal emulator [1], another of his creatures, and I am following its development (though I never managed to contribute with some code). Kovid's answers on the GitHub forum are often short and sound a bit harsh sometimes, yet he's ready to accept others' suggestions and stand corrected when needed. If only there were more coders like him! [1] https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/index.html https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/index.html

bambax 6y ago

This release isn't compatible with DeDRM for now according to: > This release DOES NOT work with the latest calibre beta that requires Python 3 for plugins. (Updated June 2020). https://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/ https://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/ So I'll have to wait until it is. DeDRM is pretty vital as I often buy books on Amazon and read them elsewhere. And even if not, I would not "buy" books that are in effect protected and can be taken back from me at any time, without being able to do anything about it.

toyg 6y ago
I’ve noticed this before, DeDRM and Calibre releases occasionally get out of sync, so to speak. They typically realign eventually, since they are very co-dependant (people use DeDRM mostly from Calibre, and a lot of people use Calibre just to access DeDRM functionality).
criddell 6y ago
Have the DeDRM devs figured out a perfect crack for Amazon's latest DRM (KFX)? Last time I checked the best option was to force Amazon to give you the book in an older format but then you lose all the typography improvements in KFX.
- kingbirdy 6y ago
  How does their DRM improve typography?
  - frosted-flakes 6y ago
    The DRM doesn't improve typography, the newer format does.
- Tijdreiziger 6y ago
  The KFX format is undocumented and has changed over time. Books containing new or unknown features may fail to convert or result in incorrect content or formatting. KFX is more highly processed than Amazon's KF8 (azw3) format, causing some details in the markup of the original e-book provided by the publisher to be lost during conversion. The exact HTML tags and styles originally used in the book are not retained in KFX format. However, all of the text and most of the formatting should be preserved. Images may have been reduced in resolution or converted to black and white to match the capabilities of the device to which they were delivered. PDF resources in KFX print replica books may have been split into multiple files. Links between pages across files will be broken if the PDF content is extracted. These limitations make KFX less suitable for archival and conversion when compared with KF8. [1] [1] KFX Input - https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=291290 https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=291290

kissgyorgy 6y ago

Porting half a million code of Python 2 to Python 3 is quite an achievement!

unionpivo 6y ago

Lot of negativity here. I would just like to thank the author and people who help him for their work. Calibre is one of the few general public facing open source application that is best in class. It's also not maintained by a huge corporation, but mostly love of one man, and a few helpers. It also has great user support for end users.

nix23 6y ago
>Calibre is one of the few general public facing open source application that is best in class. Never though about that but its true.
- jtbayly 6y ago
  Unless, like me, you downloaded it initially as an ebook reader app. I’m hopeful 5.0 isn’t as abysmal at just trying to scroll through a book. But the rest is absolutely best in class. In fact, it’s sadly the only in class for some things, I’m afraid.
  - lostcolony 6y ago
    You are/were evaluating it in the wrong class there I think. What viewing it provides seems intended to be functional as an extension of its role for management purposes; not ergonomic for actually reading the ebook.
    - pnutjam 6y ago
      The content view is pretty usable for reading, especially if you're on a locked down device that can't install a an e-reader app.
    - jtbayly 6y ago
      Exactly, and I use it for the other things, now. Just not reading.
  - pnutjam 6y ago

contravariant 6y ago

I hope the Kobo utilities get ported soon, otherwise I might be stuck with Calibre 4 for a while.

qwerty456127 6y ago

Can it let you customize the way it stores books already? It would be awesome if I could configure it to store books in a flat directory (without creating a directory for every book), using book's first author surnames and short titles as-is (without transliterating to plain ASCII).

qwerty456127 6y ago

The dude was named Kovid before this became mainstream :-)

Havoc 6y ago

Awesome project. Don’t think it even has a good alternative available?

xiconfjs 6y ago

I‘m using calibre with calibre-web [1] to browse my 80000+ pdfs and couldn‘t be happier with the workflow. Only downside: import of these pdfs took almost a whole day. [1] https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web

underlines 6y ago
I do the same. Calibre-web is awesome! Autocompleting metadata automatically from Amazon Books is also great. Plus multi laguage and multi user function. As well as collaborating on public shelves to create useful collections. I also let my co-workers and friends upload ebooks. It's great. Do you know if and when they migrate calibre-web to calibre 5? I don't know if the project is active.
pnutjam 6y ago
I think vanilla calibre supports this web version now, at least in linux. I just install calibre on my vps and run it headless. I posted directions up thread.

physicsguy 6y ago

Excellent! Calibre is a really great piece of software that I use all the time. Kudos to the devs!

underlines 6y ago

I run a calibre-web docker instance on aws. I can just upload any ebook file and in a second it's available for my family and friends. One click and it imports the necessary metadata from amazon books. Custom shelves allows for collaboration or sharing of collections of books. It's a great web adoption of calibre. I hope Calibre 5.0 gets merged into it soon. https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web

dunce2020 6y ago

Calibre rules.

teekert 6y ago

I recently learned that Calibre is pronounced (by the creator) as Kalibur, not Ka-Libre!

mkl 6y ago
Ka-Libre never occurred to me. "Calibre" is the same word the US spells "caliber", with the same pronunciation: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/calibre https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/calibre
- teekert 6y ago
  Maybe because I'm dutch and I made the FOSS/Libre connection...
zem 6y ago
I've always pronounced it that way because in British English is just the regular spelling of the word (Americans spell it "caliber"). the name was doubtless influenced by the "libre" part but I never thought to say "ca-libre"
- frosted-flakes 6y ago
  Yep. On the About page Kovid says, > libprs500 was renamed to calibre in mid-2008. The name calibre was chosen by my wife, Krittika. The libre in calibre stands for freedom, indicating that calibre is a free and open source product, modifiable by all. Nonetheless, calibre should be pronounced as cali-ber, not ca-libre.

Balvarez 6y ago

I love this software and am grateful to the author for his work. Glad he's still making it

AdmiralAsshat 6y ago

Calibre is, bar none, one of the best tools I ever used. I acquired it originally for managing and converting my Kobo ebooks, but I was amazed at how robust its ebook viewer and especially ebook production tools were. I had an ebook that was clearly of dubious origin, as its Table of Contents page was completely broken (both the actual ToC page and the auto-generated navigation page). But all of the actual test was there. Once I opened the book up in the ebook editor, I was surprised at how quickly I was able to fix the ToC and change all the references to the correct chapter documents. It's a fantastic tool, and one of the few examples where I think the "kitchen sink" approach really works, as opposed to a collection of UNIX-style tools (although it has those, too).

efreak 6y ago
Better yet, you don't even need to open the full ebook editor to access the toc editor, iirc it's available from the right click menu (might not be a default setting).

dcchambers 6y ago

I love calibre. One of my favorite examples of free software. Easy to use, fully featured, great command line tools. That is all. Glad he's finally moved to Python 3. Hope the (popular) plugins get migrated soon as well.

dexterdog 6y ago

And in typical Calibre style, by the time I go to upgrade it's already at 5.0.1

heimatau 6y ago

My experience with Calibre has been improving as of late. I'm really grateful for the snappiness of the software. I hope we can have a separate epub reader, so that I don't need to keep Calibre always open to skim through a book. Calibre is more resource intensive than I was expecting when I first downloaded it many many years ago.

efreak 6y ago
It won't help with being resource intensive, but there's a good number of electron-based ebook readers around. Alternatively, if you constantly have a browser open, you could use calibre-web and simply open the books in your browser. FBReader is also available and multiplatform (as FBReaderJ), as are a few other ebook readers.

Germstorm 6y ago

I am using Calibre since a good few years. It works perfectly and has helped me immensely. As a software developer I can only imagine the amount of work that went into it.

pwinnski 6y ago

Kovid Goyal does great work, but this remains the worst program I use regularly. He's chosen for himself the unenviable task of delivering software most people who use it consider irreplaceable, and trying to satisfy every feature anyone could ever want, which means it has many, many, many features most users don't want. BUT we all want a different subset of existing features, and are annoyed by a different subset of other features we don't use, making any replacement nearly impossible. Me, I maintain a library large enough that my metadata.db file is 40,116,224 bytes. The library lives on a NAS, and I run the program on a MacBook, which is not recommended, but seems to be the best choice available to me.

copperx 6y ago
Why do you consider it to be the worst program that you use?
- pwinnski 6y ago
  It's quite ugly among Mac apps, since it's a Qt app. I usually avoid non-Mac apps, but calibre does what I need it to do, and there is no better option. The feature set is truly impressive. Hard to believe it's essentially the work of one developer. I don't mean to criticize when I say it's ugly: I'm a back-end developer primarily, and I don't have any idea how to cram as many features as it has in any interface without it becoming ugly.

crazygringo 6y ago

> It now supports Highlighting. The highlights can be colors, underlines, strikethrough, etc. and have added notes. All highlights can be both stored in EPUB files for easy sharing This is amazing! It's always driven me batty that things I highlight in Apple Books, even when it's my own epub file, are kept internal to Apple Books and can't be exported in the epub itself. I never thought epub had any highlighting standard though. Is this just adding <span>'s with CSS to achieve the effect? I do wish this became standard for all non-DRM'd e-readers -- the way highlighting PDF's is standardized.

vkaku 6y ago

Has someone ever tried to get this on to PyPi? Like pip install calibre? :-)