Koreader > Calibre Wireless Device Connection

[Amon_Re]

Hi,

I've installed Koreader on my Boyue Likebook Mimas and I'm trying to use koreader's wireless connection to Calibre.

I can successfully connect to Calibre from Koreader as long as I don't set a password and send eBooks to the device, but on reconnect Calibre can't see the eBooks I previously transmitted nor sync reading position.

Is this normal behaviour or am I messing something up?

[NiLuJe]

IIRC, yes, that's normal behavior.

There's a couple of threads and/or issues about this, but your conclusions look sound, from what I can recall.

[Isomorpheus]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

IIRC, yes, that's normal behavior.

There's a couple of threads and/or issues about this, but your conclusions look sound, from what I can recall.

I can't find those related threads or issues. Can you link some?

Is there intention to fix this behavior?

[sherman]

Originally Posted by Isomorpheus

I can't find those related threads or issues. Can you link some?

Is there intention to fix this behavior?

I am not a Koreader developer at all, but having implemented a Calibre wireless client myself (in fact, it's going through an update at the moment), I can say that the Koreader implements just enough of the protocol to keep Calibre from complaining, and no more. It is a very bare-bones implementation.

In other words, it would take some effort to "fix" it. I have no idea when or if anyone will do so (not a koreader dev, so can't speak for them). I don't know Lua, or the koreader architecture, but if anyone on the team wants to create a more complete implementation, I'm happy to share any of my own learning about the protocol.

As a side-note, I was very grateful for the bare-bones Koreader implementation. It helped me figure out where to start with my own.

[NiLuJe]

Yeah, the developer that came up with it (@chrox) is currently inactive, so I wouldn't get my hopes up .

I don't think any of the currently active contributors actually even *use* it, so, if someone's up to it, PRs welcome .

In the meantime, I highly recommend @sherman's own implementation .

[Isomorpheus]

Originally Posted by sherman

I am not a Koreader developer at all, but having implemented a Calibre wireless client myself (in fact, it's going through an update at the moment), I can say that the Koreader implements just enough of the protocol to keep Calibre from complaining, and no more. It is a very bare-bones implementation.

In other words, it would take some effort to "fix" it. I have no idea when or if anyone will do so (not a koreader dev, so can't speak for them). I don't know Lua, or the koreader architecture, but if anyone on the team wants to create a more complete implementation, I'm happy to share any of my own learning about the protocol.

As a side-note, I was very grateful for the bare-bones Koreader implementation. It helped me figure out where to start with my own.

Your solution sounds nice. I gave it a try but got an error. Opened an issue for it.

[Frenzie]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

I don't think any of the currently active contributors actually even *use* it, so, if someone's up to it, PRs welcome .

Depends on how you define use. I figure I might use it as an EPUB debugging aid once every few months, to see how fast or slow it renders something or to inspect its DOM and styles.

[NiLuJe]

I, err, meant the plugin, not Calibre itself ^^.

[sherman]

Originally Posted by Isomorpheus

Your solution sounds nice. I gave it a try but got an error. Opened an issue for it.

As noted on Github, I'm looking into this.

As a sidenote, I sometimes hate working with Calibre emitted JSON. It seems to assume one is processing it with a dynamically typed language, so data types aren't always very... strict. For example, date/timestamp fields. If there is no date/time, one would expect the field to be non-existent, or null. What one doesn't expect is the string "None"

It makes unmarshalling into a Go struct an exercise in frustration

[Frenzie]

None is Python null. You'd think the JSON library would convert it to null though, not string "None" (which isn't what "None" is, anyway).

Edit: like so

>>> bla = None
>>> if bla == None: print('wee')
... 
wee
>>> bla = 'None'
>>> if bla == None: print('wee')
...
>>>

[sherman]

Originally Posted by Frenzie

None is Python null. You'd think the JSON library would convert it to null though, not string "None" (which isn't what "None" is, anyway).

Yeah, it doesn't. Which is highly frustrating when trying to decode a timestamp, because of course the parser errors out when it sees "None" instead of a RFC3339 formatted timestamp.

What's really annoying is that null is used elsewhere in the JSON.

EDIT: Just thinking about it a bit more, the problem probably isn't with the JSON encoder, but rather that "None" may have been stored as a string in the metadata database.