[old-topic]ebook-viewer: Open source, crossplatform viewer for EPUB, LIT, MOBI, etc

[roger64]

I use Ubuntu Intrepid and it's my first post here. I would take this opportunity to thank you. I have been a calibre user for the last three months and I am indeed very happy. There are of course some small limitations but most of the obtained results are amazingly good. So I will not speak about "problems".

My question is about djvu format. I just had a look at a chess book in this format. I use the package djvulibre to read it on my computer. As I did not know this format, I looked for information and read that it was indeed very promising due to its amazing compression abilities far more efficient than pdf for example. I have read also that some ebook readers (a minority for sure) already support this format.

But I am not a technician. What's your idea about it ?

[ashkulz]

The Hanlin devices support DJVU natively (don't know how well they do that, though). If you want to use it on other devices, you'll have to use something like pdfread.

[kovidgoyal]

DJVU is not something I have ever looked at any detail, sorry.

[roger64]

Thanks for your reply.

Probably support of chess books with their diagrams and parallel columns of plies would be very tricky, so after mastering djvu format, there would be another steep hurdle.

But I have enough good books to keep me happy without that.

[Alf]

Would it be possible to print the books from the viewer? I'm awaiting my first ebook, the eslick,, and this one only supports pdf at the moment, so it would be nice to be able to convert lrf or epub to pdf easily, that would broaden even more the calibre of this amazing program xD.

[kovidgoyal]

No it's not

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by Alf

so it would be nice to be able to convert lrf or epub to pdf easily

I have not used it, but see LRFTools. Convert LRF to EPUB, HTML, PDF and RTF.

[Alf]

Wow! Thank you very much! It works extremely well! It seems that support for ePub in Foxit eSlick is in their lists of things to do, but in the meanwhile libraries won't be out of my reach .

[brecklundin]

Originally Posted by jedavis1

I have tried making the window bigger, but the result is the same and I can't find any scroll bars at the "bottom".

I did try three other .lit files and didn't seem to have trouble with them.

Kovid:

Just thought I would drop a note here that I just installed calibre and it's super and nice tool for organizing the library. Thanks!!

However (like you could not tell that was coming...hehe), I am using XPPSP3 and had the exact same problem with the text getting cut off on the right hand side. Only I was reading a .mobi file. A bit of fiddling and I found once I changed to a Windows standard font, the issue went away. I tried Arial, Georgia and Book Antiqua w/o seeing the problem again. Only when viewing with the default font the viewer is set to upon initial install.

You may have already solved the issue so, sorry if this post is redundant.

Nice work though it will be fun getting a feel for it.

Oh, I really like that we can add our own styles if we want...nice.

[smee]

Originally Posted by brecklundin

A bit of fiddling and I found once I changed to a Windows standard font, the issue went away. I tried Arial, Georgia and Book Antiqua w/o seeing the problem again. Only when viewing with the default font the viewer is set to upon initial install.

I found the same thing. I opened several files and all of them had problems until I change the font. After that, they looked fine.

[nrapallo]

Originally Posted by smee

I found the same thing. I opened several files and all of them had problems until I change the font. After that, they looked fine.

Yep, worked for me too! Finally got rid of that end of the line "chop"... Thanks brecklundin!

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by brecklundin

Kovid:

Just thought I would drop a note here that I just installed calibre and it's super and nice tool for organizing the library. Thanks!!

However (like you could not tell that was coming...hehe), I am using XPPSP3 and had the exact same problem with the text getting cut off on the right hand side. Only I was reading a .mobi file. A bit of fiddling and I found once I changed to a Windows standard font, the issue went away. I tried Arial, Georgia and Book Antiqua w/o seeing the problem again. Only when viewing with the default font the viewer is set to upon initial install.

You may have already solved the issue so, sorry if this post is redundant.

Nice work though it will be fun getting a feel for it.

Oh, I really like that we can add our own styles if we want...nice.

Hmm, I have no idea why that should happen. Opena ticket about it and I'll look into it when I get some time.

[brecklundin]

Originally Posted by nrapallo

Yep, worked for me too! Finally got rid of that end of the line "chop"... Thanks brecklundin!

Cool...glad that worked for someone and I was not just "seeing funny things..."

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Hmm, I have no idea why that should happen. Open a ticket about it and I'll look into it when I get some time.

Sure will do...

[mjdb]

Originally Posted by brecklundin

Cool...glad that worked for someone and I was not just "seeing funny things..."

Sure will do...

I was wondering if a ticket was ever opened for the Line Chop problem in the Viewer when using Calibre's viewer with its Default "Liberation" Font ?

I tried to search for it, but got "No tickets found".

I was pleased to find this thread however so as to know I wasn't alone in having this problem (where words are cut in half and the right margin is very ragged), or in finding the simple work around - changing from the default font to anything else.

This is using Calibre on a Windows XP desktop.
When I installed Calibre the Viewer's three default fonts are all "Liberation".

Is this default font some sort of bit mapped one built into or installed with the viewer ?
This font doesn't appear in the Control Panel font list, not can I access it from other software (I can see other bit mapped fonts elsewhere).

Anyway as noted above, the fix is to change to another font.
All the True Type ones I have tries are fine, as are most of the bit mapped ones other than Liberation.


Martin.


(I have been using the Calibre viewer more recently to test Baen formatted EPUB books).

[mjdb]

[edit: After posting this I may have answered my own question - see the following post].

Another question about the Calibre Viewer.

I notice that it will not open the _CyBook Gen3 User Guide_, instead returning an error message that the Book is protected by DRM.

This is an electronic document in Mobipocket .prc format which can be freely downloaded from the bookeen website.
As noted here
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15960
http://bookeen.free.fr/bin/CybookGen...rGuide_1_0.prc

I would have thought that it can't be protected by normal mobipocket DRM, as it isn't locked to limited number of devices - I think that this same version of the User Guide can be read by any Cybook's customised version of the mobipocket reader, and by anyone's Windows Desktop/Notebook version of the Mobipocket Reader - (it can on the computers I have tried it on).

I was wondering if it might be in the high compression mobipocket file format, as described here
https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/MOBI
"However there is also a high compression version of this file format that compresses data to a larger degree in a proprietary manner. ... The higher compression mode is using a huffman coding scheme that has been called the Huff/cdic algorithm. For a description in python check huffdic.py available as part of the Calibre project. "

But the above suggests that Calibre does support books in that variant of the Mobipocket format, or am I misunderstanding the Wiki ?

To satisfy my curiosity, would someone expert at decoding the headers of Mobipcket fomat files say if the Cybook manual is actually compressed or DRMed, or just has wrong headers ?
And is this indeed a version of a mobipocket file that Calibre can't open,
or is Calibre wrongly saying it can't open it ?

Thanks

Martin.