Calibre - An excellent program, but no thanks

[neilmarr]

Just downloaded Calibre. More than impressed. It'll take me a wee while to find my way around (I'm old -- gimme a break). The only tiny wee grouse I have so far is that instead of being listed by full title, the books are listed by only the first two letters (often 'th'), so it's tough to find what I want. On the other hand, I'm so dim that maybe I've just not figured out a way to edit the actual listings yet. Thanks to the generous Kovid and his team. I'll be hitting the donation button with some enthusiasm just as sure as I feel this one's a keeper. Cheers. Neil

[GRiker]

With respect the books being listed by their first two letters, try resizing the title column to a wider setting.

G

[neilmarr]

Mille thanks, GRiker. That did the trick in a second. Told you I was dim. As far as I can see now, Calibre is the very dab for my simple needs -- for someone none too hot on technology, I find the programme clear, friendly and so much easier to use than others I've tried. Thanks again, pal. Advice much appreciated. Karma duly added. Cheers. Neil

PS: By the way, technodummy that I may be, I hold down the editorial team on small indie publisher BeWrite Books (www.bewrite.net). If any title/s there catch your eye, just drop me an email and I'd be more than happy to send you the ebook version/s free of charge as email attachments. The offer stands for all our MobileRead pals, of course. In fact, I'll add the offer to my sig line right now. N

[stisev]

Hi all,
I'm sorry I opened pandora's box and didn't participate in the discussion.

Don't let the door ...

This is an obvious troll, since it doesn't add to the discussion, so refrain from doing so please.

The OP really should ask about things before making assumptions and then complaining.

You should know that if Calibre was a god-awful program, I wouldn't have even bothered posting here. However, given the fact that I took the time to register and post my thoughts and pleas for future versions, I would think one would appreciate the passion that goes around the product.
Like some members had previously mentioned, "boycott" was the wrong word to use. I suppose I was so frustrated given that I've always wanted a configurable and stable eBook organizing program; I thought Calibre was it, but then I was disappointed by a few of the little quirks.

That *almost* makes it worthwhile

That's fine then kovidgoyal. If you're not open to ideas, then I wish you and your product the best of luck. It is a free gift to the community, but IMO it will never exceed and become the best without diligent consideration of the community's requests.

Look at all of the best software... Eventghost, Sythesia, etc.. All of them were created not by a single author, but by a strong community.

Thanks to everyone who participated in this thread. After careful consideration and a retrial of the latest version of Calibre, I've decided to stay with my ZIPed, RTF-format ebooks under a single folder "PDF ebooks" and "RTF ebooks" so that I can read them easily in AllReader.

Thanks again and best of luck. I will not be posting to this thread again, but hope to participate in other areas of MobileRead.

[kovidgoyal]

@stisev: Amusing how everyone that wants something, happily assumes the mighty "community" wants it too.

And calibre has a very active community, it most certainly is not the result of just my efforts. A community I might add that thinks other features are far more important for me to spend my time on and actually offers help in the form of code to implement those features.

[cvkemp]

Kovidgoyal
I have to say that I love calibre. And I also believe that it is going great and believe that it is the community that makes it all possible.

thanks
Chuck

[ahi]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Firstly I think you are incorrect, it is Author/Book/. Not sure why you even care what the file layout is. Do you complain about the way your browser stores your booksmarks? It is just an internal implementation detail.

I'm basically in agreement with the spirit of the original poster. So my answer to your question ought to have some relevance, even if it isn't the same as his/hers.

I don't find Calibre good enough to make it the sole tool for managing my eBooks. And as a result, I want the file storage scheme to remain 100% under my control.

The author/book scheme might be intuitive for most books, but not all. Most Star Trek books I have are written by miscellaneous authors who are basically nobodies (as far as I am concerned) and whose names I'll never learn or remember. Such books should not be under the author's name, but under "Star Trek". Similarly, my reference books, my larger history texts, et cetera are almost certainly not best stored by the author... particularly since many do not even have just one author.

So... anyways. That's why I care.

I've used Calibre before for this and that... even via its GUI... but never with any intention to keep the Calibre date/book folder around for any length of time after I was done copying stuff over to either my proper storage area of my eBook reading device.

- Ahi

[ahi]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

And I defy anyone to give me a single use case where having calibre support their pet folder structure is better.

Hmmm... how about explaining why it's preferable for Calibre to take an eBook source directory that may already have the books sorted exactly the way the user wants them sorted, then copy and resort them some other way?

Why can't Calibre's database simply point to where the file already exists? You are basically doubling eBook libraries' size for any person that isn't willing to fully entrust it to Calibre (by deleting the original, upon blind faith that nothing went wrong during Calibre's copying over).

- Ahi

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by ahi

Hmmm... how about explaining why it's preferable for Calibre to take an eBook source directory that may already have the books sorted exactly the way the user wants them sorted, then copy and resort them some other way?

Why can't Calibre's database simply point to where the file already exists? You are basically doubling eBook libraries' size for any person that isn't willing to fully entrust it to Calibre (by deleting the original, upon blind faith that nothing went wrong during Calibre's copying over).

- Ahi

Sigh, why cant you read the umpteen times I have answered this question in the thread below?

[polly]

Originally Posted by ahi

Hmmm... how about explaining why it's preferable for Calibre to take an eBook source directory that may already have the books sorted exactly the way the user wants them sorted, then copy and resort them some other way?

Why can't Calibre's database simply point to where the file already exists? You are basically doubling eBook libraries' size for any person that isn't willing to fully entrust it to Calibre (by deleting the original, upon blind faith that nothing went wrong during Calibre's copying over).

- Ahi

I still don't understand why this is such a sticking point for you. My Calibre library, with 180 books loaded, is at 110MB. This includes cover art and metadata for each book, and some of the books have been converted into a number of different formats for testing purposes. But just for round numbers, lets call it 1 MB/book. Just for grins and giggles, I went to NewEgg.com, where I quickly found a 1TB external hard drive for $75.00. At 1MB/book, that equals space for 1,000,000 books. You're library is really so large that you don't have space for the original archive, arranged however you like, and a Calibre library, arranged to work with Calibre? Twenty years ago, when a 40MB hard drive was standard, I might have been on your side. Today, books are small and back up media is large and cheap. And is anyone really naive enough to not keep a source archive?

Calibre is a well behaved program. It doesn't scatter itself around my hard drive or hide stuff where I can't find it. It has never once tried to take over my archive or handle books that I didn't load into it. I don't care what it does with its library, as long as it can find a book when I ask it too. In fact, I would be very unhappy if it tried to do anything with my archive. I'm delighted that when I convert a book, the new version is only in the Calibre library. If I want it someplace else, I can put it there. If I want to move Calibre someplace else, I don't have to worry about breaking the links to the source file. Half of my music in iTunes won't play in iTunes because of broken links. I manually manage my music there. When I rebuilt my computer, the data drive got a new drive letter. By the time I realized this problem, I'd loaded a lot of new songs that are linked to the new drive letter. I specifically wanted an ebook program that would not have the same problem. The solution to your use case is a little bit of hard drive space. What's your solution to my use case, where links are broken and books become unfindable within Calibre?

[ficbot]

Why don't you just change the author field on your Star Trek books to 'Misc' or 'Star Trek' or whatever and then they would all be sorted together?

The 'Calibre sorts everything' part bothered me too because I had a ton of eReader books it wouldn't deal with. But now that I have a Sony which does not read eReader files, I convert pretty much everything into HTML before I use it, so Calibre can handle all my files.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by polly

... You're library is really so large that you don't have space for the original archive, arranged however you like, and a Calibre library, arranged to work with Calibre?
...
Calibre is a well behaved program. It doesn't scatter itself around my hard drive or hide stuff where I can't find it. It has never once tried to take over my archive or handle books that I didn't load into it. I don't care what it does with its library, as long as it can find a book when I ask it too. In fact, I would be very unhappy if it tried to do anything with my archive. I'm delighted that when I convert a book, the new version is only in the Calibre library. If I want it someplace else, I can put it there. If I want to move Calibre someplace else, I don't have to worry about breaking the links to the source file.
...
I specifically wanted an ebook program that would not have the same problem. The solution to your use case is a little bit of hard drive space.

Excellent post!

[b0ned0me]

Originally Posted by tompe

If you search for a book you can never be sure that you do not have the book if for example the author name is not spellt correctly. Checking in the correct sub-folder you can be sure that you do not have a book.

But if you have the spelling of the author's name wrong then you won't be checking in the correct sub-folder, will you? You'll be looking at the Weitz folder when you should be looking in Weiss, or whatever. That particular problem is a PITA no matter how you organise your books.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by b0ned0me

But if you have the spelling of the author's name wrong then you won't be checking in the correct sub-folder, will you? You'll be looking at the Weitz folder when you should be looking in Weiss, or whatever. That particular problem is a PITA no matter how you organise your books.

Well, my example might have been sub-optimal...

But I usually go to a directory using tab completion. So if a sub dir is mis-spellt you will most probably notice that while navigating the folder structure. Some kind of searches also have these advantages (incremental searches).

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

That *almost* makes it worthwhile

The squeaky wheel theory of software development.