Calibre Portable with a portable python install, is it possible?

[Vlash]

I installed calibre portable on a thumb drive, hoping I could use it on the university's computers, just to find out none of them has python, neither on the labs nor on the library, so it's all the same, can't run calibre on them. So I thought, maybe I could use Portable Python to run calibre, but I have no ideaif that would really work, or how to do it.

[BetterRed]

You don't need it - calibre portable is self contained i.e everything including Python is in the install, all you should need Windows.

BR

[itimpi]

The other thing required is the ability to run programs from the drive containing Calibre Portable. In some environments their security policy will not allow this.

[Vlash]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

You don't need it - calibre portable is self contained i.e everything including Python is in the install, all you should need Windows.

BR

Well, I tested it somewhere else, and it indeed works without installing Python.
I thought it was a python problem, I am getting the error "'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0x3f in position 18: invalid start byte (Error Code: 1)" upon trying to launch "calibre-portable.exe", what might be the cause?

[kovidgoyal]

Make sure the full path to the portable directory contains only english characters.

[Vlash]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Make sure the full path to the portable directory contains only english characters.

Indeed that was the case. I was launching calibre from my thumb drive, whose path is "[Drive Letter]:\Calibre\Calibre Portable\calibre-portable.exe"

[kovidgoyal]

run

calibre-debug.exe -g


in a command prompt to get more details about the erorr.

[Vlash]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

run

calibre-debug.exe -g


in a command prompt to get more details about the erorr.

I got this:

E:\Calibre Portable\Calibre>calibre-debug.exe -g
Python function terminated unexpectedly
  'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0xe3 in position 18: invalid continuation byte (Error Code: 1)
 Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "site.py", line 114, in main
  File "site.py", line 87, in run_entry_point
  File "site-packages\calibre\__init__.py", line 23, in <module>
  File "site-packages\calibre\startup.py", line 204, in <module>
  File "site-packages\calibre\utils\icu.py", line 28, in <module>
  File "site-packages\calibre\constants.py", line 232, in __getitem__
  File "site-packages\calibre\constants.py", line 216, in load_plugin
UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0xe3 in position 18: invalid continuation byte

Notice that the computers that present me these errors are all running Windows Vista x86. Don't know if that's the problem, but it may be, since it works absolutely fine with Win7/10 computers.

[kovidgoyal]

As is noted on the calibre windows page windows vista is not supported. you need to use calibre 3.48 for it.

[Vlash]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

As is noted on the calibre windows page windows vista is not supported. you need to use calibre 3.48 for it.

Ok, just had not noticed it. Anyway, thanks for making Calibre possible