Thread: Glo Newbie to whole e-reader process
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Old 12-20-2012, 08:51 PM   #15
davidfor
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Posts: 24,905
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Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: Sydney, Australia
Device: Kobo:Touch,Glo, AuraH2O, GloHD,AuraONE, ClaraHD, Libra H2O; tolinoepos
Quote:
Originally Posted by jackastor View Post
Sorry dude this is bs. There are issues with it and it is not even supported by kobo, kindle, sony or any other ereader on the market. Sorry you feel this way. But thats your opinion and unfortunately its not reflected by the facts. As you can see that calibre even posts the problems and the fixes that it has implemented. Bear in mind your limited use of Calibre with your own devices do not reflect the thousands of users out that. That also includes my limited use of Calibre with my own devices. You nor my self are the end all of end all answers to Calibre bare that in mind. Also Calibre does interect the meta data on the readers. so its not a simple drag and drop it here answer. Infact here is another link to some rather interesting news about Calibre

http://www.the-digital-reader.com/20...-with-calibre/

again as its freeware there is no support beyond the original calibre author, something that needs to be noted for any users expecting techincal support from the ereader manufacture.
While Calibre is a preety darn good program for maintaining ones library it was not created by Ereader Manufacturers and certainly is not recoomended nor supported by any Ereader Manufacturer.
Yes, there have been problems with calibre and the various ereaders. And the problems get fixed. And you are right that none of the big ereader companies officially support using calibre. But, they know about it. And I can tell you that while Kobo will not officially say to use calibre, they know people are using it and they pay attention to any problems that people are seeing. There has been at least several problems fixed because of the calibre driver. They weren't problems caused by the driver, just much easier to reproduce or cause when using it. They also have asked questions the calibre driver and have given help with it.

You comment about calibre's bugs and that they publish the bugs they fix: GREAT!!!! Most software companies don't or make it hard to find. Kobo don't. I know of at least two bugs fixed in the latest firmware that have no mention in the release notes. And they change function without saying anything.

The link to the article about Amazon rejecting calibre created books is interesting. But it is six months old and includes a recommendation to not use the new Kindle format until the calibre generation of it has been finished. I know I have seen something more about this in the last few weeks, but I can't be bothered hunting it down. If you are that worried about books converted by calibre, you won't be buying many. Just about any ePub I have purchased shows signs of having been through calibre. And if they don't, they show signs of being created with Sigil. Another freeware application not supported by any big company.

As to the calibre interaction with the metadata on the readers, yes, it does. It reads the metadata to work out what books are on the device. For some, there isn't a database of metadata so it reads each book. This is not going to affect the device. For the devices that have a visible metadata database, that is used. Along with the actual book files.

Does calibre update the metadata database? Sometimes. It depends on the driver used and the options. As far as I can tell, all drivers default to not updating the database. This is the case for the Kobo Touch/Glo/Mini driver. It will not update the devices database with the default options. The user has to go in and change the options to cause this to happen. That makes it is a conscious decision to accept the risks.

For the Kobo devices, the driver does certain things and there are certain things it won't do. And NEVER will. The primary one is updating the device database to add a new book. This is always left to the device. The driver simply copies the book to the device. It then leaves it there for the device to detect the book and add it to the database so the user can see it. Yes, if certain options are checked, the other things are done. These have been done after a LOT of investigation and testing. If you can find a bug in it, please tell me so I can fix it. I use the driver it so if something is broken I want it fixed for purely selfish reasons.

If you don't trust the drivers that come with calibre for the devices, disable them. Then calibre won't attempt to read the device at all. You can still use calibre to put books on the device via the "Save as" options. Save the book to the USB drive. The only difference to manually doing the copy is that calibre updates the book to have the latest metadata in it.

Lastly, did you read the bug you linked? If you actually read it all you would have seen that it is a firmware bug. Copying the book to the device by other methods had exactly the same problem. The last response in it is mention of the firmware release that fixed the problem.

I think that is it. My apologies to the OP for getting of topic. Apparently I felt like good rant Maybe that will get it out of my system before visiting the in-laws for Christmas.
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