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As an aside, some folks may ask "why write a new app instead of contributing to Calibre Web or a similar project?" It's a good question! Because I wanted to :)

As an aside, some folks may ask "why write a new app instead of contributing to Calibre Web or a similar project?" It's a good question! Because I wanted to :) Right now, this is a hobby project — I'm more interested in having fun building (rough!!) software than worried about extending existing projects. Plus, with how Citadel is designed to be backwards compatible with Calibre, you can continue to use Calibre Web. As well, I've organized the backend so that all the Calibre-facing code is its own library, which (in the future!) others can use for their own projects. A Calibre library CLI, anyone?

michaelmrose 3y ago
> A Calibre library CLI, anyone? A nice idea I wrote a remarkably hacky cli for that rdr. Basically to - open the last book opened with the CLI - select from the last n books so opened - return the results of a query and narrow with rofi I figure this covers a huge portion of my normal usage. Pushing books to device would be useful too.
inhumantsar 3y ago
> "why write a new app" I'd imagine spearheading a ground up rewrite of their UI would be a lot more work too. thanks for taking this on! calibre is a pita for me to use, and I know what I'm doing. makes it impossible to recommend to anyone, whether they're my grandparents or asavvy tech person.
- reddalo 3y ago
  Trust me, I'm tech savvy but I tried Calibre once and I couldn't figure it out, so I just gave up.
  - Snow_Falls 3y ago
    What part couldn't you figure out? Where you editing ebooks or just managing a library? Not a contributor here, just curious. Edit: I've read a few more comments and some a free with you, while others think it works fine. I'm wondering if there's something about the UI that clicks with some but not others.
    - flkiwi 3y ago
      Without taking away from the overall project and work that’s gone into it, the UI reminds me unpleasantly of the darkest days of Lotus Notes: things aren’t quite where they should be and they don’t look entirely baked when I find them.
      - kwhitefoot 3y ago
        Can you be more specific? Or describe how it could be better? I'll grant that Calibre has a UI that doesn't look like other applications but it seems to work well enough for me.
    - pokeymcsnatch 3y ago
      I'll bite I guess. I use Calibre pretty regularly. I think a general way to put it is that it's not for "casuals". To understand a lot of the functionality outside of the basic inventory management stuff, you have to be a little bit of an enthusiast. For some examples: You have to know about different ereaders and their formats and how they differ, the differences between metadata sources, and dozens and dozens of configuration options if you're trying to convert a book to work well on your device. Also, there's definitely something "off" when it comes to using it intuitively. I have to devote a lot of brain power to searching for functionality AND trying to comprehend exactly how those pieces of functionality are going to affect my library data. Maybe it's too powerful of a tool up front or something. It could benefit from a "basic view" maybe? None of these are complaints from me, I'm a happy user. I'll just echo some other commenters in wishing for a more robust network interface (whether that's just an API, or a more hashed out front end). I'd like to easily share my library with people or just other devices while on-the-go, and Calibre has all the device formatting functionality built-in.
Cockbrand 3y ago
> Right now, this is a hobby project Gives me a bit of early Linus Thorvalds vibes: "just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu" [0] - that said, I wish you all the best for the project :) [0] https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~awb/linux.history.html https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~awb/linux.history.html
fasterik 3y ago
It's slightly sad that you have to give this disclaimer, especially on a forum for hackers. One of my favorite quotes about this comes from a John Carmack commencement speech: "In many areas, it's almost received wisdom that you shouldn't reinvent the wheel. But I would urge you to occasionally try anyways. You'll be better for the effort, and this is how eventually we get better wheels. By people just going ahead and trying." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOZnqjHkULc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOZnqjHkULc
- bluGill 3y ago
  Reinventing the wheel is fine. However most attempts should be done "in your basement" and thrown away. Don't publish your attempt on the likes of github. Learn what you can from it and then throw it away. Apply lessons learned the the dominate project already there. There are many good open source projects that could be great if more developers would work on them. So instead of reinventing the wheel I strongly encourage everybody to work on an existing project and make it better. Note that I said "most" above. There are reasons to write a start a new project despite others in the same space existing. However this should not be done until you define what is wrong with existing projects.
  - sentientslug 3y ago
    Could not disagree more, with this attitude there would never be any new open source projects!
  - dabber 3y ago
    > Reinventing the wheel is fine. However most attempts should be done "in your basement" and thrown away. Don't publish your attempt on the likes of github. Learn what you can from it and then throw it away. Apply lessons learned the the dominate project already there. [...] > Note that I said "most" above. There are reasons to write a start a new project despite others in the same space existing. However this should not be done until you define what is wrong with existing projects. I couldn't disagree with this more. Reinventing something in public view can be extraordinarily valuable, even if without a clearly defined problem to address. Off the top of my head: - Learning in public can have benefits: I personally tend to write much better software if I know there is any chance someone else might see it and reinventing the wheel (Todo app anyone?) is a great way to focus on learning some new techniques or technology without the added overhead of also inventing a novel solution to some hard problem. - Contributing to the dominate project in any space requires working within the constraints of the existing code and project/user expectations, and if you just show up out of the blue trying to "apply lessons learned", you also need to make a convincing argument for why your way is the better way. On the other hand, reinventing the project allows the freedom to experiment and demonstrate some radical alternative and doing it in public allows anyone (including dominant project maintainers and users) to learn from it. - People that don't have any interest in the original project, but do have interest in aspects of the reinvention can benefit. For example, I haven't used Calibre in years and don't plan to now, but I'm grateful the author shared this because I hadn't heard of Tauri prior or seen a Bun project, and now I'm exploring the repo and learning something new. > There are many good open source projects that could be great if more developers would work on them. Eh. Sounds like a Zero-Sum Fallacy.
EasyMark 3y ago
I would say "it doesn't fit my needs and would require a complete backend rewrite". I think you never have to justify this sort of thing when youre desires for an app are so much different than what is available currently
retrochameleon 3y ago
Calibre is a champion of ebook management functionalities, but I have never been satisfied with its experience, nor its developer. It was never designed to be a hosted library accessible over the web, and it's a very poor experience in my opinion. If there was a solid competitor that was more open, more modern, and designed with the hosted library solution in mind, I would no doubt start using it.

michaelmrose 3y ago

> A Calibre library CLI, anyone? A nice idea I wrote a remarkably hacky cli for that rdr. Basically to - open the last book opened with the CLI - select from the last n books so opened - return the results of a query and narrow with rofi I figure this covers a huge portion of my normal usage. Pushing books to device would be useful too.

inhumantsar 3y ago

> "why write a new app" I'd imagine spearheading a ground up rewrite of their UI would be a lot more work too. thanks for taking this on! calibre is a pita for me to use, and I know what I'm doing. makes it impossible to recommend to anyone, whether they're my grandparents or asavvy tech person.

reddalo 3y ago
Trust me, I'm tech savvy but I tried Calibre once and I couldn't figure it out, so I just gave up.
- Snow_Falls 3y ago
  What part couldn't you figure out? Where you editing ebooks or just managing a library? Not a contributor here, just curious. Edit: I've read a few more comments and some a free with you, while others think it works fine. I'm wondering if there's something about the UI that clicks with some but not others.
  - flkiwi 3y ago
    Without taking away from the overall project and work that’s gone into it, the UI reminds me unpleasantly of the darkest days of Lotus Notes: things aren’t quite where they should be and they don’t look entirely baked when I find them.
    - kwhitefoot 3y ago
      Can you be more specific? Or describe how it could be better? I'll grant that Calibre has a UI that doesn't look like other applications but it seems to work well enough for me.
  - pokeymcsnatch 3y ago
    I'll bite I guess. I use Calibre pretty regularly. I think a general way to put it is that it's not for "casuals". To understand a lot of the functionality outside of the basic inventory management stuff, you have to be a little bit of an enthusiast. For some examples: You have to know about different ereaders and their formats and how they differ, the differences between metadata sources, and dozens and dozens of configuration options if you're trying to convert a book to work well on your device. Also, there's definitely something "off" when it comes to using it intuitively. I have to devote a lot of brain power to searching for functionality AND trying to comprehend exactly how those pieces of functionality are going to affect my library data. Maybe it's too powerful of a tool up front or something. It could benefit from a "basic view" maybe? None of these are complaints from me, I'm a happy user. I'll just echo some other commenters in wishing for a more robust network interface (whether that's just an API, or a more hashed out front end). I'd like to easily share my library with people or just other devices while on-the-go, and Calibre has all the device formatting functionality built-in.

Cockbrand 3y ago

> Right now, this is a hobby project Gives me a bit of early Linus Thorvalds vibes: "just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu" [0] - that said, I wish you all the best for the project :) [0] https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~awb/linux.history.html https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~awb/linux.history.html

fasterik 3y ago

It's slightly sad that you have to give this disclaimer, especially on a forum for hackers. One of my favorite quotes about this comes from a John Carmack commencement speech: "In many areas, it's almost received wisdom that you shouldn't reinvent the wheel. But I would urge you to occasionally try anyways. You'll be better for the effort, and this is how eventually we get better wheels. By people just going ahead and trying." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOZnqjHkULc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOZnqjHkULc

bluGill 3y ago
Reinventing the wheel is fine. However most attempts should be done "in your basement" and thrown away. Don't publish your attempt on the likes of github. Learn what you can from it and then throw it away. Apply lessons learned the the dominate project already there. There are many good open source projects that could be great if more developers would work on them. So instead of reinventing the wheel I strongly encourage everybody to work on an existing project and make it better. Note that I said "most" above. There are reasons to write a start a new project despite others in the same space existing. However this should not be done until you define what is wrong with existing projects.
- sentientslug 3y ago
  Could not disagree more, with this attitude there would never be any new open source projects!
- dabber 3y ago
  > Reinventing the wheel is fine. However most attempts should be done "in your basement" and thrown away. Don't publish your attempt on the likes of github. Learn what you can from it and then throw it away. Apply lessons learned the the dominate project already there. [...] > Note that I said "most" above. There are reasons to write a start a new project despite others in the same space existing. However this should not be done until you define what is wrong with existing projects. I couldn't disagree with this more. Reinventing something in public view can be extraordinarily valuable, even if without a clearly defined problem to address. Off the top of my head: - Learning in public can have benefits: I personally tend to write much better software if I know there is any chance someone else might see it and reinventing the wheel (Todo app anyone?) is a great way to focus on learning some new techniques or technology without the added overhead of also inventing a novel solution to some hard problem. - Contributing to the dominate project in any space requires working within the constraints of the existing code and project/user expectations, and if you just show up out of the blue trying to "apply lessons learned", you also need to make a convincing argument for why your way is the better way. On the other hand, reinventing the project allows the freedom to experiment and demonstrate some radical alternative and doing it in public allows anyone (including dominant project maintainers and users) to learn from it. - People that don't have any interest in the original project, but do have interest in aspects of the reinvention can benefit. For example, I haven't used Calibre in years and don't plan to now, but I'm grateful the author shared this because I hadn't heard of Tauri prior or seen a Bun project, and now I'm exploring the repo and learning something new. > There are many good open source projects that could be great if more developers would work on them. Eh. Sounds like a Zero-Sum Fallacy.

EasyMark 3y ago

I would say "it doesn't fit my needs and would require a complete backend rewrite". I think you never have to justify this sort of thing when youre desires for an app are so much different than what is available currently

retrochameleon 3y ago

Calibre is a champion of ebook management functionalities, but I have never been satisfied with its experience, nor its developer. It was never designed to be a hosted library accessible over the web, and it's a very poor experience in my opinion. If there was a solid competitor that was more open, more modern, and designed with the hosted library solution in mind, I would no doubt start using it.