Congrats to Calibre

[MrsJoseph]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

Oh, yeah, right, all hails the almighty calibre.

While I disagree with Giggleton on that issue, i can't say I'm a fan a calibre. I was glad to find it when i needed to convert all these mobi to ePub. But for the rest, I found I was better off without calibre. (I need to deal with multiple versions of a book, and that something calibre isn't meant to do.)

So I just went back and read my post...nowhere does it say

all hails the almighty calibre.

The fact of the matter is that this is a congratulation thread. If you aren't a calibre fan, fine by me. There is a totally different thread that you can use to discuss your issues with Calibre.

[toddos]

Originally Posted by sourcejedi

Reading the Calibre manual on recipes, the BBC example shows it following the link in the RSS, and then downloading the "printable" version of the article. Checking the API docs, it does that dereferencing automatically for all RSS articles under a certain length.

Let me modify my previous point -- if content writers don't want their content manipulated, they need to stay off the web. Once they encode their content into HTML, it's fair game for rendering. The end user owns rendering, not the publisher. This could be anything from simply blocking ads, to re-styling or modifying the page using plugins like Stylish or Greasemonkey, to using accessibility tools like screen readers, to caching for later reading using any number of tools (including every browser's built-in cache).

The web is not print. The publisher does not have control over layout, presentation, format, form factor, time-shifting, place-shifting, or anything else other than raw content. If you're not okay with that, stick to paper magazines and newspapers.

[Bani]

Glad to see this great piece of software get the attention it deserves. I'm impressed with how it's evolved over time and has so many features. Looking forward to the future as well.

[Xiaopangzi]

While I do appreciate that Calibre exists, and occasionally use it to convert between formats, it is really unfortunate that it is written in Python. Tasks that would normally take a few milliseconds when written in C or C++ now take painful small eternities of several minutes, really unfortunate, definitely not the right tool for the job...

[Filark]

Don't know what I'd do without Calibre!

Thank you to Kovid and everyone else who works on this excellent program, including the people who comment in the Calibre forum and help keep it so clean and up to date!

[elcreative]

Considering that this is a freely provided work that is used cross-platform, python is pretty good for it... I find that handling 30,000 books doesn't take an unreasonable amount of time but I guess it also depends upon your platform and its age...

Originally Posted by Xiaopangzi

While I do appreciate that Calibre exists, and occasionally use it to convert between formats, it is really unfortunate that it is written in Python. Tasks that would normally take a few milliseconds when written in C or C++ now take painful small eternities of several minutes, really unfortunate, definitely not the right tool for the job...

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by toddos

Let me modify my previous point -- if content writers don't want their content manipulated, they need to stay off the web. Once they encode their content into HTML, it's fair game for rendering. The end user owns rendering, not the publisher. This could be anything from simply blocking ads, to re-styling or modifying the page using plugins like Stylish or Greasemonkey, to using accessibility tools like screen readers, to caching for later reading using any number of tools (including every browser's built-in cache).

The web is not print. The publisher does not have control over layout, presentation, format, form factor, time-shifting, place-shifting, or anything else other than raw content. If you're not okay with that, stick to paper magazines and newspapers.

Would this rendering include copying some or all of a site and reposting to another site, inserting the previous site's ads for your own? This is happening continuously of course, but is it right?

I take it you are in favor of abolishing copyright? A very small percentage of the population I believe, although I have yet to take a "scientific" poll on the subject.

Congrats Calibre!

[toddos]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

Would this rendering include copying some or all of a site and reposting to another site, inserting the previous site's ads for your own? This is happening continuously of course, but is it right?

I take it you are in favor of abolishing copyright? A very small percentage of the population I believe, although I have yet to take a "scientific" poll on the subject.

Congrats Calibre!

Rendering is rendering -- the act of converting the HTML markup to a visual (or audio) display. By definition of how the web works, that's the client's job. Since the client is run on the user's computer, they have full control over how that works. Is someone stealing your copyright if they use an ancient browser like IE6 to view your web page and it doesn't display the way you want? Is someone stealing your copyright when they use a screen reader to ignore all of your visual content and speak the textual content for a visually impaired user? Is someone stealing your content if they use a user stylesheet to change the background on your page to pink? Is someone stealing your content if they block your ads? (hint: the answer to all of these is "no")

I will reiterate -- the web is not paper. You don't get to control presentation on the web like you do on paper. You can try (all of the websites that try to block right-click actions, for example), but you'll fail. If you can't understand that, I seriously hope you're not a web designer. Your "repackaging" scenario is exactly what sites like Engadget, Gawker, Slashdot, etc do all day every day -- they provide summaries, perhaps some editorial comments, and a link to the original source. Users find value in aggregation, and if you think that's "stealing" content then you surely have no idea how the web works at all.

(note that the scenario I assume you were trying for, where someone lifts your entire content wholesale, repackages it on their own site claiming it's their own, without a link back to the original, is surely stealing your content. But that's not what aggregation websites do, that's not what rss readers do, and that's not what calibre does)

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by toddos

where someone lifts your entire content wholesale, repackages it on their own site claiming it's their own, without a link back to the original, is surely stealing your content. But that's not what aggregation websites do, that's not what rss readers do, and that's not what calibre does)

So you are a fan of attribution then? On the surface it seems a bit odd that a simple link is all that is needed but perhaps that is telling of the power of a link.

Just a little modification to your hypothetical, is lifting a site's content wholesale then reposting the content on your site while not claiming it as your own and also not posting an attribution link, would that be a violation of copyright in your mind? Calibre can do this for you, with some modified recipes.

[toddos]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

So you are a fan of attribution then? On the surface it seems a bit odd that a simple link is all that is needed but perhaps that is telling of the power of a link.

Just a little modification to your hypothetical, is lifting a site's content wholesale then reposting the content on your site while not claiming it as your own and also not posting an attribution link, would that be a violation of copyright in your mind? Calibre can do this for you, with some modified recipes.

Calibre is "lifting" the content for personal use, and is no different than the previously-mentioned Instapaper or other offline readers. It's time/place shifting in order to read the content where and how you want to, which fits with the "web philosophy" of user-control over how content is presented. Do you use a DVR? Do you fast forward over the commercials? Congratulations, you've done exactly what you're saying calibre shouldn't be doing.

You're still talking about something completely different -- essentially plagiarizing content. In your scenario, copying the content wholesale and putting it on the web for all to see without any sort of attribution (and yes, a link to the original is attribution, though good aggregators won't copy the entire source but just provide a summary) certainly is stealing, because you're implying the content is yours without citing where it came from. That's not what calibre, instapaper, google reader, etc are doing so stop claiming that it is.

Edit: Just to toss this out there -- once you say "with some modified recipes", you've already lost. Calibre provides a python-based plugin mechanism, and anything you can do using python you could theoretically do inside a calibre plugin. Kovid's not going to write his own domain-specific language for calibre plugins, so really you're just saying that, "given access to a programming language, people could do some bad things." Which means that Linux, OS X, Windows, etc all are now in the business of stealing because they ship with programming languages (bash, perl, python, apple script, powershell, vbscript, etc) that could be used to do bad things.

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by toddos

Which means that Linux, OS X, Windows, etc all are now in the business of stealing because they ship with programming languages (bash, perl, python, apple script, powershell, vbscript, etc) that could be used to do bad things.

In a way yes, they all steal, but I am more interested in the idea of the creation of these things, Windows, Linux, etc. Their creation is wholly dependent on prior art. As is all creation.

But getting back to Calibre, for starters I don't believe I've ever said that "Calibre" should or should not be doing anything, I am merely trying to understand current views on the subject of copyright and why the mind can deem one copying to be infringing while another copying is deemed to not infringe.

When you speak of "good aggregators" To me this is a meaningless term. Your idea of a good aggregator would be one that only lifts a single paragraph of an article, my idea of a good aggregator would be one that lifts the core concept of multiple articles and rewords this concept into a new article. To me it is the same and it is not.

Would a universal attribution line,

"This work is attributed to humanity and by extension the universe"

Be enough to negate all forms of copyright law? I have moved far beyond trying to claim anything as being mine, I do not believe anything can ever be claimed. To me this is the only way to go if where we are trying to go is complete freedom. Copyright is a small impediment and will soon be done away with of course, it's inevitable. Calibre has already done much to hasten copyright's demise.

Congrats Calibre!

[toddos]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

In a way yes, they all steal, but I am more interested in the idea of the creation of these things, Windows, Linux, etc. Their creation is wholly dependent on prior art. As is all creation.

But getting back to Calibre, for starters I don't believe I've ever said that "Calibre" should or should not be doing anything, I am merely trying to understand current views on the subject of copyright and why the mind can deem one copying to be infringing while another copying is deemed to not infringe.

When you speak of "good aggregators" To me this is a meaningless term. Your idea of a good aggregator would be one that only lifts a single paragraph of an article, my idea of a good aggregator would be one that lifts the core concept of multiple articles and rewords this concept into a new article. To me it is the same and it is not.

Would a universal attribution line,

"This work is attributed to humanity and by extension the universe"

Be enough to negate all forms of copyright law? I have moved far beyond trying to claim anything as being mine, I do not believe anything can ever be claimed. To me this is the only way to go if where we are trying to go is complete freedom. Copyright is a small impediment and will soon be done away with of course, it's inevitable. Calibre has already done much to hasten copyright's demise.

Congrats Calibre!

Now you're just talking gibberish

[Astrakan]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

(I need to deal with multiple versions of a book, and that something calibre isn't meant to do.)

Hmm? What do you mean exactly?

Multiple format versions? Multiple editions? Multiple works-in-progress of the same title?

I can't think of anything else, but all three of the above Calibre can handle quite well.

[EowynCarter]

Originally Posted by Astrakan

Hmm? What do you mean exactly?

Multiple format versions? Multiple editions? Multiple works-in-progress of the same title?

I can't think of anything else, but all three of the above Calibre can handle quite well.

Most of the time, i do some small fixes to the books I buy. Different format, calibre will handle. Different version of the same book, you won't be able to tel who's who.
And I like to be able to browse my books using the good old file browser, and the way calibre does it, can't find anything there.
I have the same problem with calibre than with iTunes and such, software thinking they know better than me how I want to organize my files.

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by toddos

Now you're just talking gibberish

What I'm talking about is the free flow of all ideas with more weight/influence to some ideas given based on the ideas popularity in the public's mind.

Copyright is an impediment to this free flow and programs like Calibre are helping to end this impediment, by allowing for the easy insertion of ideas into our minds.

What is so hard to understand about that?