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pwalker8 · 10-07-2018, 03:01 PM

I suspect that the reason you don't see a lot of response is because there are very few options in this area. I've been playing around trying to find the perfect solution for a number of years and really haven't run across anything that works better for me that what I currently use Calibre on the Mac, CC on the iDevice and Marvin as a reader. The real issue is that Calibre truly dominates the server market, so it becomes a question of writing plug ins to Calibre on the server side and libraries/reader apps on the iDevice side that communicates with those plug ins.

It's really a chicken and egg questions. The big three (Apple, Amazon and Kobo) have no incentive to support Calibre plug-ins since they want tie you into their infrastructure. Each is more interested in selling you books than providing a robust library management system.

The smaller reading apps (Marvin and MapleReader are the two main ones here, but there are others) seem to be one man shops. Now that CC is out there and gives 90% of what most who want an on device library app, there just isn't any real incentive to go the rest of the way. As I pointed out earlier, the market for this is so small, anyone who makes the effort to write a reading app does it more as a labor of love rather than as a money making venture. Unless someone writes a new app designed specific as a reader/library app and who goes the extra distance to support two way syncing with Calibre, what you see is what you have to work with.

The issue with file sharing is that you really can't sync that way with Apple's security model (the new security model is what broke the Marvin plugin). I think that you need to write a calibre plugin that syncs up wirelessly to make it work. It's certainly doable, but you need to find someone who is willing to put the time and effort into doing it.

No idea about the other path. I suppose that in theory, you could write an app designed to work with a cloud solution that reads and writes to the calibre database files. You would need to coordinate that with Calibre's developer and I don't know how keen he is to allow that approach rather than stick to the plug-in model that Calibre normally uses.

10-07-2018, 03:01 PM	#8
pwalker8 Grand Sorcerer Posts: 7,195 Karma: 70314280 Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Atlanta, GA Device: iPad Pro, iPad mini, Kobo Aura, Amazon paperwhite, Sony PRS-T2	I suspect that the reason you don't see a lot of response is because there are very few options in this area. I've been playing around trying to find the perfect solution for a number of years and really haven't run across anything that works better for me that what I currently use Calibre on the Mac, CC on the iDevice and Marvin as a reader. The real issue is that Calibre truly dominates the server market, so it becomes a question of writing plug ins to Calibre on the server side and libraries/reader apps on the iDevice side that communicates with those plug ins. It's really a chicken and egg questions. The big three (Apple, Amazon and Kobo) have no incentive to support Calibre plug-ins since they want tie you into their infrastructure. Each is more interested in selling you books than providing a robust library management system. The smaller reading apps (Marvin and MapleReader are the two main ones here, but there are others) seem to be one man shops. Now that CC is out there and gives 90% of what most who want an on device library app, there just isn't any real incentive to go the rest of the way. As I pointed out earlier, the market for this is so small, anyone who makes the effort to write a reading app does it more as a labor of love rather than as a money making venture. Unless someone writes a new app designed specific as a reader/library app and who goes the extra distance to support two way syncing with Calibre, what you see is what you have to work with. The issue with file sharing is that you really can't sync that way with Apple's security model (the new security model is what broke the Marvin plugin). I think that you need to write a calibre plugin that syncs up wirelessly to make it work. It's certainly doable, but you need to find someone who is willing to put the time and effort into doing it. No idea about the other path. I suppose that in theory, you could write an app designed to work with a cloud solution that reads and writes to the calibre database files. You would need to coordinate that with Calibre's developer and I don't know how keen he is to allow that approach rather than stick to the plug-in model that Calibre normally uses.