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How about a version aimed at normal adults who have three businesses to run and a multitude of people to take care of and who already have some 50 programs sitting on their box? Really? I have to learn CSS to make this program function correctly? I actually have to stick to specific heading sizes or it will turn all my footnotes into chapter headings in the TOC!? I can input 15 (or whatever) different document types except Word's .doc format—the most common office document in the world? I can't have a window in which to view the file after it's been converted but before it's been output so I can make simple changes to it where I see the changes being made? I actually have to open it in XML to correct it in yet another editor and then zip the darn thing and bring it back into Calibre a second time?
The reason word processors and html WYSIWYG editors are so successful is because they require none of that. They do one thing and do it right. I know going in to use Notepad first to strip out the formatting before bringing it into the programs. Not exactly something that takes a month to learn.
Flash takes months to learn, but I expected it to. You're talking about learning various techniques for making sound and visuals move around the stage the way you want them to. The last thing I have to worry about is making all kinds of adjustments to input and output formats though. It takes care of all that for me so I can concentrate on getting my work done.
I don't have to worry about doing anything special to most video file types when I bring them into Vegas, Vdub, Premiere, After Effects, or any of the other dozen or so video apps I have. They'll automatically make all the adjustments for pixel type, color space depth and temperature etc. If I want to make a movie, there's about a thousand times more stuff to know than with Calibre. But when I just want to convert one video format to another, the input format will be automatically detected (and correctly) and I need only specify the output format, fps, audio type and bitrate/resolution, and amount of compression if not lossless, and I'm done. I don't have to remind the program to make up for this that or the other in the input file's structure, and there's a heck of a lot more parameters that go into video and audio files than simple little text documents. The mathematics involved the compression algorithms alone for any given format could fill 50 pages. Yet the programs do it without a hitch mostly. They may take a while, but conversions are the easiest thing you'll ever ask an NLE suite to do. Same with DAW setups. Leaving me time to actually get my work done editing film and audio.
It took a ridiculous amount of time to learn to make Calibre do something that should be simple. A document conversion shouldn't demand so much time from anyone. Yes, a child should be able to do it. You're not asking it to do that much. Simply take what I've got on the screen in my word processor or HTML editor and make it look that way in an e-reader. That should be the program's problem—not mine. I can make it do what I want it to do, but it shouldn't have taken me a month to learn to do it. The learning process if over. That's all I've got to say about it.
Au Revoir.
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