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Old 08-04-2014, 02:21 PM   #16
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I also use Calibre to convert epubs and I haven't had an issue either. I'm also curious about the poster who doesn't like Calibre. I've never read complaints about it before so I'm really genuinely curious in a "Hmm, that's different and good to know" kind of way.
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Old 08-05-2014, 04:17 AM   #17
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Quote:
Originally Posted by faithbw View Post
I also use Calibre to convert epubs and I haven't had an issue either. I'm also curious about the poster who doesn't like Calibre. I've never read complaints about it before so I'm really genuinely curious in a "Hmm, that's different and good to know" kind of way.
Even if you don't want to use Calibre as a library manager, you can still use it for ebook conversion. The conversion tool is a completely standalone program.
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Old 08-05-2014, 10:13 AM   #18
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Originally Posted by BeeTee-Ess View Post
OT I know, but I have to ask...

What's not to like about Calibre?
Keeping in mind I might not be up to date...

- don't like the way it stores books on disk (ie: the directory names with parenthesized numbers can potentially conflict with Dropbox versioning, pulling covers out of books, zipping HTML etc)

- don't like the way it looks, especially the icons

- UI doesn't feel polished. Feels like it takes many button presses to do common things. It also feels sluggish and not snappy to me, even on fast hardware.

- don't like the auto-generated styles when doing conversions. Also, the default formatting during conversion seemed pretty heavy-handed to me

- felt like it slowed down a lot after a few thousand books (this may have gotten better; I vaguely remember some kind of database update coming down the pike around the time I gave up on Calibre)


I understand why Calibre has fans, but between command line conversion tools, and the native tagging and metadata tools of my computer's filesystem, I don't really see much value add in Calibre for me personally. Especially since I consider my ebooks to be my "archival" copies and not just artifacts meant for display on particular hardware.
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Old 08-05-2014, 10:16 AM   #19
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Originally Posted by faithbw View Post
I also use Calibre to convert epubs and I haven't had an issue either. I'm also curious about the poster who doesn't like Calibre. I've never read complaints about it before so I'm really genuinely curious in a "Hmm, that's different and good to know" kind of way.
Oh I'm not complaining about Calibre. In fact I like and encourage it. Kovid and pals have done a bang up job and their work spins off to help ebook manipulation tools in general. I just don't enjoy using it is all.
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Old 08-05-2014, 10:16 AM   #20
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Originally Posted by radius View Post
Keeping in mind I might not be up to date...

- don't like the way it stores books on disk (ie: the directory names with parenthesized numbers can potentially conflict with Dropbox versioning, pulling covers out of books, zipping HTML etc)
You don't have to use the Calibre GUI. The book conversion program is a completely standalone command-line tool.
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Old 08-05-2014, 11:07 AM   #21
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You can get a Kobo e-reader to treat all your sideloaded books as kepubs pretty easily. Calibre even has a plugin for it.
The same plugin can also change the exported kepubs to show page numbers for the full books instead of chapters.

As for the Calibre debate: I wouldn't have switched to ebooks if Calibre didn't exist.
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Old 08-05-2014, 09:30 PM   #22
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Quote:
Originally Posted by radius View Post
Keeping in mind I might not be up to date...

- don't like the way it stores books on disk (ie: the directory names with parenthesized numbers can potentially conflict with Dropbox versioning, pulling covers out of books, zipping HTML etc)
Google Drive, not Dropbox, uses numbers in parentheses for versioning. And that is because it is braindead, and not only calibre has this problem. Google Groups had a bunch of people complaining, some regarding calibre, some regarding naming schemes for pictures, IIRC. That is only a problem if you actually want to use Google Drive, of course.

You don't like the way it separately stores the cover.jpeg? All it costs is a bit of disk space, and not really very of that either. Would you prefer it be in the database??? I don't see what that helps. And calibre needs to keep a copy of the metadata, for obvious reasons.

No help for the ZIP instead of OEB (Open EBook files), I suppose. (Curious: what are those actually used for, to an end user? )

Quote:
- don't like the way it looks, especially the icons

- UI doesn't feel polished. Feels like it takes many button presses to do common things. It also feels sluggish and not snappy to me, even on fast hardware.
Fair enough. Personal preferences and all that, if it doesn't work for you no problem.

Quote:
- don't like the auto-generated styles when doing conversions. Also, the default formatting during conversion seemed pretty heavy-handed to me
I don't particularly like it either, but if I am just using calibre to send-to-device I don't care. I make sure to keep the original format intact and if I need to change anything in it, I edit manually.

Quote:
- felt like it slowed down a lot after a few thousand books (this may have gotten better; I vaguely remember some kind of database update coming down the pike around the time I gave up on Calibre)
Yes, there is a new db backend from version 1.0 which is much faster, and various improvements along the way. Note that most slowdowns seem to come from using custom columns that must be computed per book every time the column is viewed. Especially if it uses the function for reading the book filesize from disk .

Quote:
I understand why Calibre has fans, but between command line conversion tools, and the native tagging and metadata tools of my computer's filesystem, I don't really see much value add in Calibre for me personally. Especially since I consider my ebooks to be my "archival" copies and not just artifacts meant for display on particular hardware.
I ♥ calibre.

But if you can get along without it, !

I do enjoy hearing from someone who actually understands what calibre is for and still doesn't like using it, but acknowledges that is only a personal preference and not indicative of calibre itself. It gives a useful perspective on what calibre is good for and where its shortcomings lie. Fascinating stuff.
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Old 08-08-2014, 07:29 PM   #23
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kindle will sync sideloaded books across all kindle devices if it is emailed to kindle.com. Will I be able to do the same with Kobo devices?
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Old 08-08-2014, 10:12 PM   #24
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No, Kobo only sync kepubs purchased from them.
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Old 08-08-2014, 10:26 PM   #25
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No, Kobo only sync kepubs purchased from them.


Thanks for the answer, mate.
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