Quote:
Originally Posted by chaley
On the other hand, our app does nothing more than calibre does with the books themselves. If you send a book to your device via our app and then open it with aldiko or fbreader or ???, then you will see the metadata inside the book. That metadata could very easily be different from what you see in calibre. We have no control over this behavior. Updating metadata in books is extremely complicated and far beyond what we can implement. For evidence, look at threads like the one for modify epub.
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Believe me, I get the whole embedded data thing — it's why I don't sideload my books in bulk onto my Nexus 7. If you "download" (i.e., use the function provided
within the app to grab a book) the books from your Calibre content server into Mantano or Moon+ (I tried Aldiko, FBReader and CoolReader and for a variety of reasons didn't like them nearly as much), the metadata (including tags, series, description) comes with the books. If, however, you sideload the books and then open them in the readers, you're stuck with whatever metadata was in the file itself.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chaley
One reason that we are working hard at making our app be a "director" (able to open books using other reader apps) is to avoid all the kerfuffle around metadata inside the book vs calibre's metadata. OK, I admit that I like this feature and that is another reason we did it.  We have succeeded at that with some apps like FBReader, Cool Reader, and Adobe Reader (this list is not exhaustive -- for example I haven't tried Moon+ or Aldiko). Unfortunately, some reader apps don't play nice and publish what kinds of books they can open (Kindle for Android, for example), so people who "live" in those apps won't get many of the updated-metadata benefits.
As I said above, I hope this info helps more than it confuses.  |
Admittedly, I wasn't really thinking about really truly using Calibre as the front end book manager for my ereader apps — that's pure genius on your part. Since none of the ereader apps seem to grok the concept of getting books (really? they don't think anyone is going to want to pull more than 1 or 2 books at a time into their reader??) or browsing books (don't you think Barnes & Noble, who's been selling books for a trillion years would know people like to scan the back cover or inside flap before starting a book?) — with the sad sad sad exception of the now extinct Stanza, RIP Stanza — an external app like yours should make up for all their idiocies and offer more library management functionality too.
I'm assuming (I know you mentioned this in a post somewhere, but I couldn't find it) that in your app the book files on the device will stored/organized similarly to as they are on desktop Calibre — and all in one location?
Regardless, hats off to you for addressing and solving every other ereader's blindness around the need to actually
manage and browse books as well as
read them on a device.
For what it's worth, in my opinion,
Mantano comes closest to providing good management/browsing features (you can group/filter by collection, tag, or author and sort within group) and reading display options (font size, etc.). (And I think Mantano Premium has more extensive control over how books display.)
Moon+ Reader runs the closest second with their 'library' options, and a ton of reading display options all in the free version, and
Aldiko a distant third — you can only import from local (SD) storage,it ignores tags, doesn't seem to support collections, and has limited grouping/sorting. Plus, its reading display options are minimal.
Can't wait for the beta!