Calibre For The Android O/S?

[Frank W]

Greetings to all,

I think that the development forum is the best place to ask this question. Please forgive me if I am wrong.

Is it possible to build a version of Calibre for the Android O/S?

The demand is there, despite the existence of many e-book reading/management apps. If Calibre were a choice for Android users, I know it would blow its competitors completely out of the water! Just imagine! An Android app that is actually free and not either supported by annoying ads or a limited version where you have to buy the Pro version to get all of the functionalities.

Thanks for your time and I apologize for the mini-rant on Android apps.

[kacir]

Please note:

You can run Calibre on your PC and enable "Sharing over the net" in the Preferences. Then you can use any browser on any phone (Android, iPhone, blackberry, whatever) to access your database. You just have to see the PC IP address and use it on your phone or tablet. For example your PC has an IP address 192.168.1.100, so you connect the phone to your home router and type URL 192.168.1.100:8080 and connect to your Calibre Content Server.

There is Calibre Companion app for Android. This will let you to connect to a PC with the installed Calibre and use its database. You can download books to Android to read off-line. CC is not free.

There is Calibre2opds software to accomplish something similar to Calibre Content Server as described in the first paragraph. It generates OPDS and HTML catalogs from Calibre database.

You can export books from Calibre to a hierarchical directory and use "Create a Catalog" functionality. You can find it after selecting the books in Calibre, right click and choosing Convert menu. A catalog is a mobi or epub file with descriptions of all the books, with covers, descriptions, nicely hyperlinked authors, series, titles, whatever. Provided you do have metadata in your Calibre database.

There are many excellent e-book reading apps for Android, such as CoolReader, FBReader, Moon+ reader, Alreader, ... It would be pointless to duplicate that functionality with Calibre for Android.

The directory with installed Calibre on my Linux PC has almost 200MB. How do you want to port all that to an Android? Calibre is written mostly in Python and uses quite a few dependencies / GUI toolkits / external programs. I am not sure whether those dependencies / libraries are available under Android.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Frank W

I think that the development forum is the best place to ask this question.

Moderator Notice
Well it's not, as is made clear in the PLEASE READ BEFORE POSTING - Purpose of Development subforum sticky at the top of the Development forum.

This subforum is not the place for [. . .] enhancement proposals unless you make clear in your post that you are prepared to develop the enhancements yourself . . .

Your post gives no indication that your proposing to do the development work.

Moved to main calibre forum.

Originally Posted by kacir

... is Calibre Companion app for Android. This will let you to connect to a PC with the installed Calibre and use its database. You can download books to Android ...

Companion will also connect to a calibre library hosted at a cloud storage provider such as DropBox, Onedrive etc, or on external storage connected directly to your Android device via an OTG cable.

The developer of Calibre Companion, Charles Haley, also developed a number of the main Calibre desktop application components, see ==>> calibre - contributors.

BR

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Frank W

The demand is there, despite the existence of many e-book reading/management apps. If Calibre were a choice for Android users, I know it would blow its competitors completely out of the water! Just imagine! An Android app that is actually free and not either supported by annoying ads or a limited version where you have to buy the Pro version to get all of the functionalities.

Just imagine, authors that publish everything I want for free! After all, they don't need to eat, pay for housing, or otherwise have a normal life. Why, even Frank W is willing to forgo wages from his employer so he can be like them!

I apologize for the mini-rant on the absurdity of thinking that developers who have invested person-years of work in developing an app should not be compensated.

To mods (other than me): if I have violated the no-politics rules then feel free to delete this post. Or perhaps the thread.

[BetterRed]

Politics? - I see no trumped-upped news, mention of marina pens, nor even a book from farago.

[Frank W]

Thank you for answering my question so well. I appreciate you doing so.

[Frank W]

Monsieur Haley:

Plutôt que d'écrire un courrier déclamatoire sur le fait que je déteste les applications qui prétendent être libres plutôt que soutenu par la publicité au lieu d'être assez honnête pour demander à être payé pour leur travail, pourquoi ne pas vous soit répondre à ma question ou fermer ensemble?

Comme l'a déclaré notre grand président Abraham Lincoln: «Mieux vaut rester silencieux et être considéré comme un fou que de parler et de lever tout doute».

J'ai trouvé votre poste à la fois impoli et orgueilleux qui est en accord avec ma vision des Français en général. Ce sera une journée froide en enfer avant que je sciemment acheter ou utiliser tout ce que vous avez développé!

Originally Posted by chaley

Just imagine, authors that publish everything I want for free! After all, they don't need to eat, pay for housing, or otherwise have a normal life. Why, even Frank W is willing to forgo wages from his employer so he can be like them!

I apologize for the mini-rant on the absurdity of thinking that developers who have invested person-years of work in developing an app should not be compensated.

To mods (other than me): if I have violated the no-politics rules then feel free to delete this post. Or perhaps the thread.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Frank W

Monsieur Haley:

Plutôt que d'écrire un courrier déclamatoire sur le fait que je déteste les applications qui prétendent être libres plutôt que soutenu par la publicité au lieu d'être assez honnête pour demander à être payé pour leur travail, pourquoi ne pas vous soit répondre à ma question ou fermer ensemble?

Comme l'a déclaré notre grand président Abraham Lincoln: «Mieux vaut rester silencieux et être considéré comme un fou que de parler et de lever tout doute».

J'ai trouvé votre poste à la fois impoli et orgueilleux qui est en accord avec ma vision des Français en général. Ce sera une journée froide en enfer avant que je sciemment acheter ou utiliser tout ce que vous avez développé!

I am not sure why you choose to insult me in French instead of English. Google Translate is at best approximate and can produce strange results. For example, using "libre" instead of "gratuit" in this context is funny. The grammar is also rather bizarre.

To help you avoid using anything I developed, you should know that in calibre I did (amongst other things) custom columns, user categories, searching on non-text types, hierarchical tag browser categories, bulk rename of items in the tag browser, quickview, the calibre template language, and virtual libraries. Of course Kovid was involved and improved things, which might be enough for you to ignore yourself.

Have a good day.

[Divingduck]

@chaley
+++1