Calibre directly insert books into Aldiko

[wizardking]

Is there anyway to get Calibre to drop my books directly into Aldiko 2?
I see how to use the generic settings, and then let Aldiko do the import vie sd card/folder, but I would love to have Calibre manage my whole library.
I am running cyanogenmod on a nook color.
Thanks

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by wizardking

Is there anyway to get Calibre to drop my books directly into Aldiko 2?

No. Calibre can't talk to or modify the Aldiko database.

I am running cyanogenmod on a nook color.

I run CM7 on my HD2.

[user_none]

I believe Charley was in contact with Aldiko people and they declined any sort of calibre integration.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by user_none

I believe Charley was in contact with Aldiko people and they declined any sort of calibre integration.

Is that it? I thought it was just lack of interest/financial support to get him an Android device needed to write the code. IIRC, Aldiko just uses an SQL database. I keep thinking about doing some work on this, as I've now got 3 Android devices, but I haven't decided which reader I'll settle on. Aldiko sucks for images, but has a good library system. Cool Reader does great image resizing. Moon Reader has great scrolling features. So many decisions in life

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Starson17

Is that it? I thought it was just lack of interest/financial support to get him an Android device needed to write the code.

It was two things:

1) they offered no support for obtaining devices. It was up to me to purchase devices with differing levels of android OS, differing screens, etc. I was unable to justify spending my own money and my own time to help them, when in the end my only interest was the challenge of it. I am happy with my PRS-300.

2) After the first email exchange, no messages were answered. That, along with the lack of support told me that (at the time) the project was unimportant to them. If they didn't care, it was hard for me to care.

Note that I am not casting aspersions upon Aldiko. They have their own priorities, and it makes sense that they pay attention to them.

Aldiko does (did) use a database, and at the time it didn't seem outrageous to build a close integration. My plans were to do at least as well as we do with the sony. I still believe that it could be a very sweet pairing, but I have no idea what has happened in the last year. It could be good, or it could be not particularly useful.

[mrdeadlocked]

Would it just be possible to make calibre have a option to mimic aldiko. Would just require us to put sync folder with /ebooks/ on the sdcard, and have calibre write a library.db (of its data) mimicking how aldiko current works. Remount sdcard, open up aldiko it would read the changes from the DB and any updates would be there.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by mrdeadlocked

Would it just be possible to make calibre have a option to mimic aldiko. Would just require us to put sync folder with /ebooks/ on the sdcard, and have calibre write a library.db (of its data) mimicking how aldiko current works. Remount sdcard, open up aldiko it would read the changes from the DB and any updates would be there.

I don't see how doing that is any better (or easier) than directly modifying the Aldiko db. I agree with Charles. It's possible to do it. It would be as nice as the linkage to Sony. It just needs someone with the time, skill and desire to do it.

Of course, I'm not sure why Aldiko would/should be chosen over Moon+ or any of the many other Android readers.

[mrdeadlocked]

I was referring to directly changing the aldiko database. The beginning part is the 'sync to folder' part of calibre, just being used with the same folder structure aldiko already uses to store books.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by mrdeadlocked

I was referring to directly changing the aldiko database. The beginning part is the 'sync to folder' part of calibre, just being used with the same folder structure aldiko already uses to store books.

I'm confused. You wrote about an alternative of just having Calibre "mimic aldiko" in the context of a conversation about having Calibre change the Aldiko database directly, then you say you're referring to directly changing the database. Perhaps we're using different terms. IIRC, Aldiko uses an SQL database and a folder structure. Calibre does the same thing, although the fields and folder structure differ. Are you referring to the folder structure or the actual SQL file?

AFAIK, to get Calibre and Aldiko to work well together, one would want Calibre to write into the Aldiko SQL file (the "Aldiko database") and write the books into the Aldiko file structure the way Aldiko expects them to be organized. The way it works now, Calibre writes them into an import area and you import them, or you grab them from the content server using Aldiko's network access functions.

[wizardking]

What a shame. I have not found another ereader program that Calibre works with which has an interface and feel that I like as much as Aldiko.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by Starson17

IIRC, Aldiko uses an SQL database

In case anyone is interested, I grabbed the "library.db" file from my Android device in the Aldiko library eBooks folder and it is indeed a simple SQL database. I wasn't sure if it had changed since Aldiko went to v.2. It hasn't. It reminds me of the Calibre metadata.db database.

With Calibre's open source code and extensive SQL/Android access support already built in, this is an area that's ripe for someone to develop who is looking for a project, reads on Aldiko and has basic coding skills.

I would be surprised if no one has done it in the next six months, but when winter rolls around, if it's still undone, I may take a look. (Please don't let that stop anyone else from tackling it). It's also not a promise - more like a possibility - if I decide I like Aldiko best, and I decide I want to use the Aldiko library (currently I use the content server and books are on the reader only while being read), and I get motivated.

[rahlquist]

Maybe we should do like the folks at XDA-developers do, pass the hat and offer a reward/bounty to the first person to accomplish this automation? I find it sad that Stanza is so beautiful an app and we are still hoping for a fully integrated product for android.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by rahlquist

Maybe we should do like the folks at XDA-developers do, pass the hat and offer a reward/bounty to the first person to accomplish this automation?

Tried that a year ago (https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=103690). Didn't get the necessary level of support.

I find it sad that Stanza is so beautiful an app and we are still hoping for a fully integrated product for android.

I am confused. Stanza is integrated via the content server using OPDS. Aldiko (and others I am sure) can do the same thing. What other Stanza/calibre integration are you referring to?

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Starson17

With Calibre's open source code and extensive SQL/Android access support already built in, this is an area that's ripe for someone to develop who is looking for a project, reads on Aldiko and has basic coding skills.

If someone is going to play, then beyond putting books directly into the library, something reasonably straight-forward, there are some interesting issues to work through.

First is deciding how to connect. My guess is that it should be done using 'connect to' instead of a device plugin, which would permit providing application connectors instead of device connectors. If we go down this route, I suspect that we might want to build a 'connect to' plugin architecture that integrates with device detection. Much of this is already there, used by (for example) Meme's kindle collections plugin, but we would need to extend the device drivers to permit the 'connect to' plugin to modify things like destination paths. Another way would be to have plugins that insert themselves into device driver plugins. I lean to the first because configuration will probably be very target-application specific.

Second is working through the collection management issues. It isn't clear to me how one supports arbitrary sortable collections such as exist for sonys without having to invent a new set of tweaks and parameters. It would also be best if collection management was bi-directional (something the sony driver does not do), permitting calibre to see changes made directly on the device. The interesting problem is determining what the changes actually mean and how to propagate them back into calibre's metadata. For example, if the user changes the name of a series collection, should that change the name of the series in calibre? If not, then what happens?

Third is reverse importing. What should calibre do when books appear in the device library that calibre has never seen? It might be that book matching is failing and calibre does have the book, or it might be that the book is genuinely new. The first case presents questions of metadata merging, and the second questions about auto-import.

The list can go on, but these are the ones that I have been musing about for the last year.

[wizardking]

I would be happy to beta test if someone trys their hand at building a interface for Aldiko.