5 ms·

I use calibre as well and it's excellent. The only thing I think should have some attention is the awful interface.

dewey 3y ago
That’s the first thing I always check and think about when I see an update. It’s an amazing tool otherwise though.
paperhatwriter 3y ago
Yes I cringe whenever I see the logo. I use it too and it works well enough but it’s so inelegant. I wish visual designers involved themselves more in open source development.
- bdeshi 3y ago
  If you meant the splash screen when it starts up, this can be turned off in the settings. Otherwise the core app's UI looks fine to me personally, though some of the plugins make some, unusual, choices.
  - stavros 3y ago
    The UI is a mess of buttons and menus strewn about everywhere. I'm not complaining, Calibre is a great project, but let's not kid ourselves that the UI is even mediocre.
- __rito__ 3y ago
  Use an icon pack, and it is very likely it has something different already there for Calibre. I use candy icons, and I like the Calibre "logo" in this icon pack.
- d1l 3y ago
  The last thing anyone needs is “visual” “designers” shitting up our useful applications. Stick to your todo list apps and stay in your lane.
  - bigfudge 3y ago
    This is such an aggressive way of saying something unhelpful. Visual/information/interaction. design -can- be an important part of an app team. I also think calibre is clunky and many of their interactions inelegant. That it’s also ugly is not irrelevant - reading is or can be an aesthetic experience too. I’m grateful it exists but like Anki I really wish someone with real design skills could help them polish the rough edges - that would make it a pleasure to use rather than just ok.
  - IshKebab 3y ago
    Some designers are definitely terrible (e.g. whoever made the mind numbing decision to use hamburger menus in Gnome), but plenty are good at their jobs. Go and watch some Tantacruul videos on YouTube.
- globular-toast 3y ago
  Meh. I find it charming. It's a product of passion not the product of hyper-optimised marketing designed to trick you into thinking it's good.
Fluorescence 3y ago
With a bit of fiddling, it can be quite elegant: - dark theme and switch the icon theme to monstre - remove toolbar buttons you don't use like help/donate/news etc. so that it's quite minimal and streamlined - edit the ebook reader css to add some padding / line-spacing to fit your taste and use a font like Libre Baskerville - no splash-screen The preference pages remain a bit of a headache to navigate but it's not like you are fiddling with those too often and importantly, it does have plentiful configuration to do what you want. And if you run into a problem, you'll probably get a response from Kovid faster than any company. Overall, thank you Kovid for years of hard work!
- walteweiss 3y ago
  Would love to see that upstream!
- pbowyer 3y ago
  Thank you! That looks so much better withh these changes. I couldn't work out how to do this one though: > - edit the ebook reader css to add some padding / line-spacing to fit your taste and use a font like Libre Baskerville Where/how do I find those options? I found other CSS in the Preference pages, but not the ebook reader css.
  - Fluorescence 3y ago
    1. Open an ebook (epub/mobi etc.) in the viewer. 2. Click the top or hit escape to show the menu and open up the preferences. My current settings are: - Colors: off-white background and dark grey text - I tend to pick these per device given different brightness / temperature of the display - Page Layout: margins - left/right: 100px, top/bottom: 75px - Fonts: I get Libre Baskerville from Google Fonts. I believe I choose a different font on Windows because each OS's rendering is slightly different. For me it's a matter of getting the font-weight just right so that it's not oppressive to the eye, distracting or hard to read but just right and it's a combination of the font, colour, size and how the OS renders. My goal is that it feels like the words on the page just fall into my eyes without effort. - Style: This is where you can write css. (complaints about how bad my css is will fall on deaf ears!) The hack job I have on this machine is: p { line-height: 1.5em !important; font-size: 0.854em !important; padding-bottom: 25px; text-indent: 35.868px !important; } div { line-height:1.5em; padding-top: 1em; } line-height: 1.5em; - and then I just zoom-in with ctrl-mousewheel for a decent text size and to me it looks roughly the same as Apple Books. Some ebooks have hardcoded styles that force ugly formatting. Fortunately Calibre lets you edit ebooks so you can just open them up and delete their custom css. 3. A few other things I remove are i) columns from the grid view like rating/publisher/series ii) categories on the left like language/format - I only use author/tags. Once you remove all the things you don't use, it's a neat minimal app.
ReptileMan 3y ago
Give thorium a try. Probably the best least bloated reader for windows there is. I guess on osx and linux too. I switched to it couple of months ago. Haven't looked back.

That’s the first thing I always check and think about when I see an update. It’s an amazing tool otherwise though.

Yes I cringe whenever I see the logo. I use it too and it works well enough but it’s so inelegant. I wish visual designers involved themselves more in open source development.

bdeshi 3y ago
If you meant the splash screen when it starts up, this can be turned off in the settings. Otherwise the core app's UI looks fine to me personally, though some of the plugins make some, unusual, choices.
- stavros 3y ago
  The UI is a mess of buttons and menus strewn about everywhere. I'm not complaining, Calibre is a great project, but let's not kid ourselves that the UI is even mediocre.
__rito__ 3y ago
Use an icon pack, and it is very likely it has something different already there for Calibre. I use candy icons, and I like the Calibre "logo" in this icon pack.
d1l 3y ago
The last thing anyone needs is “visual” “designers” shitting up our useful applications. Stick to your todo list apps and stay in your lane.
- bigfudge 3y ago
  This is such an aggressive way of saying something unhelpful. Visual/information/interaction. design -can- be an important part of an app team. I also think calibre is clunky and many of their interactions inelegant. That it’s also ugly is not irrelevant - reading is or can be an aesthetic experience too. I’m grateful it exists but like Anki I really wish someone with real design skills could help them polish the rough edges - that would make it a pleasure to use rather than just ok.
- IshKebab 3y ago
  Some designers are definitely terrible (e.g. whoever made the mind numbing decision to use hamburger menus in Gnome), but plenty are good at their jobs. Go and watch some Tantacruul videos on YouTube.
globular-toast 3y ago
Meh. I find it charming. It's a product of passion not the product of hyper-optimised marketing designed to trick you into thinking it's good.

Fluorescence 3y ago

With a bit of fiddling, it can be quite elegant: - dark theme and switch the icon theme to monstre - remove toolbar buttons you don't use like help/donate/news etc. so that it's quite minimal and streamlined - edit the ebook reader css to add some padding / line-spacing to fit your taste and use a font like Libre Baskerville - no splash-screen The preference pages remain a bit of a headache to navigate but it's not like you are fiddling with those too often and importantly, it does have plentiful configuration to do what you want. And if you run into a problem, you'll probably get a response from Kovid faster than any company. Overall, thank you Kovid for years of hard work!

walteweiss 3y ago
Would love to see that upstream!
pbowyer 3y ago
Thank you! That looks so much better withh these changes. I couldn't work out how to do this one though: > - edit the ebook reader css to add some padding / line-spacing to fit your taste and use a font like Libre Baskerville Where/how do I find those options? I found other CSS in the Preference pages, but not the ebook reader css.
- Fluorescence 3y ago
  1. Open an ebook (epub/mobi etc.) in the viewer. 2. Click the top or hit escape to show the menu and open up the preferences. My current settings are: - Colors: off-white background and dark grey text - I tend to pick these per device given different brightness / temperature of the display - Page Layout: margins - left/right: 100px, top/bottom: 75px - Fonts: I get Libre Baskerville from Google Fonts. I believe I choose a different font on Windows because each OS's rendering is slightly different. For me it's a matter of getting the font-weight just right so that it's not oppressive to the eye, distracting or hard to read but just right and it's a combination of the font, colour, size and how the OS renders. My goal is that it feels like the words on the page just fall into my eyes without effort. - Style: This is where you can write css. (complaints about how bad my css is will fall on deaf ears!) The hack job I have on this machine is: p { line-height: 1.5em !important; font-size: 0.854em !important; padding-bottom: 25px; text-indent: 35.868px !important; } div { line-height:1.5em; padding-top: 1em; } line-height: 1.5em; - and then I just zoom-in with ctrl-mousewheel for a decent text size and to me it looks roughly the same as Apple Books. Some ebooks have hardcoded styles that force ugly formatting. Fortunately Calibre lets you edit ebooks so you can just open them up and delete their custom css. 3. A few other things I remove are i) columns from the grid view like rating/publisher/series ii) categories on the left like language/format - I only use author/tags. Once you remove all the things you don't use, it's a neat minimal app.

ReptileMan 3y ago

Give thorium a try. Probably the best least bloated reader for windows there is. I guess on osx and linux too. I switched to it couple of months ago. Haven't looked back.