BookONO wants to be a Calibre alternative

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by JoeD

As it happens, I'd prefer it if calibre didn't take over my folder structure too.

It doesn't. It imports books into its own folder structure. It has never done anything to folders to which I directed it to get books from.

Originally Posted by Istvan diVega

Bugger me, that looks like a s***load of work. I'd spend far more time getting books sorted out and tweaked than I'd spend reading if I were to adopt something like that. Which kinda defeats the purpose, or at least my purpose.

In the beginning it was, while hammering everything out.

Now I can get an entire series of books at a store and run them through my entire workflow and having everything in place within a few minutes, assuming that there are no major layout defects. It doesn't really matter if the series consists of one book or 5 or 10 or even 20.

The only time when I could get into trouble is when I buy like 20 books from different authors with no or bad metadata and crap layout... but it has never been that bad.

[TechniSol]

I like Calibre. It's a bit daunting for a newbie due to there being so many features and so much that can be configured and changed and a lot of menu structure devoted just to that. Tutorials from helpful souls do help compensate. The database structure was chosen for good reasons as pointed out. Pretty obvious to anyone who sat down for a bit and thought about creating such a thing and what happens when references to imported books change if you easily allow for manual editing of storage and all the error handling required to keep up... Frankly, once the books are imported, you can do pretty much anything you like as far as creating shelves or collections.

I don't think the interface or look is bad. I do think a few things should be revisited like how one builds parsing expressions and the like to simplify the process. A GUI approach where one selects elements or common expressions from lists or inputs new expressions would make the whole thing a lot simpler than trying to remember which operator does what, if you don't often have need to build custom new ones, and would help people to remember by looking at examples as they go...

Overall, it is a killer program. I wish they had an Android version so I could maintain the full capabilities on my Tablet and dump reworked content to my ereader when away from home, but I guess my convertable laptop isn't really that much heavier.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by TechniSol

I don't think the interface or look is bad. I do think a few things should be revisited like how one builds parsing expressions and the like to simplify the process. A GUI approach where one selects elements or common expressions from lists or inputs new expressions would make the whole thing a lot simpler than trying to remember which operator does what, if you don't often have need to build custom new ones, and would help people to remember by looking at examples as they go...

Regular expressions are cool. They also want to make me kill myself. Yes, I can handle them, but I need a reference while doing it. They're one of those things that are cool and hateful all at the same time.

Overall, it is a killer program. I wish they had an Android version so I could maintain the full capabilities on my Tablet and dump reworked content to my ereader when away from home, but I guess my convertable laptop isn't really that much heavier.

Do work on a tablet

[BearMountainBooks]

Calibre TOTALLY ROCKS. For me as a writer, I'd be lost without it.

It's great if someone else wants to write something, but I do think they should give props/kudos to Calibre if they are using it.

[JoeD]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

It doesn't. It imports books into its own folder structure. It has never done anything to folders to which I directed it to get books from.

Yeah, that's what I was referring to. Once you've imported them into calibre, any metadata changes you make and format conversions are either kept within the DB or made to the books within the folder controlled by calibre.

The folder you imported from is no longer in the picture and maintaing a separate outside folder is wasting space plus a lot more labour intensive.

[Istvan diVega]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

In the beginning it was, while hammering everything out.

More power to you, I certainly didn't mean to rain on your parade. I was just a bit flabbergasted there for a moment.

I probably do hardly any of the stuff you do to your books anyway. I use only tags, which I input myself, and a custom MetaSeries field - no other metadata. And no more than a couple of tags per book. I've never edited a book or tweaked its layout, partly because I wouldn't know how and partly because I've yet to come across one that was bad enough to make me feel the need to learn how.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by Istvan diVega

More power to you, I certainly didn't mean to rain on your parade. I was just a bit flabbergasted there for a moment.

So I don't talk about my calibre libraries I have, I think, 8 or 8, for different purposes. Anyway, none of them are my real library. One is my main ereader library, and the other are auxiliary ones. I keep my library out of calibre, it's more comfortable to me.

[DBDigital]

Interesting but I don't see it ever replacing Calibre. Not open source is just dooming it from the start. As for "calibre not being pretty to look it" I beg to differ. Usually when a interface is "pretty" the functionality is greatly reduced. Being a power user myself, I like options and usefulness. Calibre gets the job done and works well. There are some aspects added in the UI over its history (I have a older version so it may not be 'new' now) that I actually dislike compared to before ('hiding' a few buttons under something else). But at least the same options are still there. So I just sigh and keep going.

[EowynCarter]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Regular expressions are cool. They also want to make me kill myself. Yes, I can handle them, but I need a reference while doing it. They're one of those things that are cool and hateful all at the same time.



Do work on a tablet

I'm using my tablet (and mantanno), to download my e-books. Less a mess than having to boot windows to have ADE running.

[salines]

I nearly like Calibre. It does the job - BUT it's REALLY REALLY SLOOOOOOW.
I don't know why.

Some more improvements about speed would be nice - also memory (about 600 MB!!!! ram).

[Istvan diVega]

Very fast here and it only uses 185MB RAM. That's with in excess of 8000 books in the library and on a not particularly powerful laptop.

[jgaiser]

Originally Posted by Istvan diVega

Very fast here and it only uses 185MB RAM. That's with in excess of 8000 books in the library and on a not particularly powerful laptop.

On Linux I'm using about 156M and a bit over 2000 books. Plenty snappy for me. One thing that did seem slow was searching, but I got a recommendation to use the "Limit the search metadata" checkbox and then limit the search to title, author, series and publisher (Preferences -> Searching).

[salines]

Thanks for reply.
Maybe something went wrong of my installation...
I will reinstall Calibre.

[Istvan diVega]

Certainly worth a try.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by salines

Thanks for reply.
Maybe something went wrong of my installation...
I will reinstall Calibre.

Since version 1.0, Calibre handles databases differently. It's reported to be quite a bit faster with big collections.