Quote:
Originally Posted by kovidgoyal
calibre does not compress files, it does not store all books in one file, it is perfectly possible to do differential backups with calibre's library (I do it all the time). You can change where calibre stores its books, in fact you can have multiple libraries at different locations. You can run calibre entirely off a USB key if you want to.
The OP really should ask about things before making assumptions and then complaining.
And I defy anyone to give me a single use case where having calibre support their pet folder structure is better.
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Here's a use case. You have been collecting e-books for a long time and you have a library of about 20GB of ebooks. You have 15GB of free disk space.
Honestly, making a copy is silly. The books are already there. What are you gaining by using your own custom format? In the FAQ it says it's more efficient than any scheme one could come up with on their own. But I doubt it's noticeably more efficient than storing links to the paths in an sqlite database.
Another use case: You have an ebook collection at home with a proprietary naming scheme, you use calibre and you want to bring your library to work so you can read books from work. But you don't have privileges on your work computer to install programs, all you can do is copy files. What do you do? Searching / sorting is impossible with a flat directory layout like what Calibre uses. If it didn't make a copy and instead used a more reasonable method like referencing the existing files you could just copy the directory tree, drop them down on the new machine at work and you'd be good to go. Instead you have to maintain 2 parallel databases, one in calibre and one in your proprietary format.