calibre: most desired feature, pony up for Kovid

[astrodad]

Alright, calibre lovers. It's time to get together to talk about the one or two features you would like to see implemented in a near release of calibre. Kovid has spent many hours developing, troubleshooting, and documenting our favorite Reader program so I am proposing that we give back and sponsor him to develop the feature(s) the forum wants most.

Here's how this would work:

1. We would use this thread to make suggestions on features we would like to see in calibre.

2. After a week or so, we set up a poll for the final contenders.

3.[*]2ePub - converting various formats to ePub

3. Kovid will quote out what kind of effort it will take to implement the feature(s)

4. We all contribute what we can and when Kovid has the necessary amount, he puts it together for us.

Please take into consideration how much time and effort this software has saved you. How much is this wonderful app worth to you? Well put your money where your mouth is!

Tell us what features you want in calibre and let's get this started!

My desired features:

1. A iTunes-like sync system for automatically pulling down subscriptions to websites and putting them on the Reader.

2. Porting calibre over to MySQL so I can connect to databases I host in the cloud.

What about you?

[Gideon]

I'd like to see the "full feed conversion" placed in some sort of rather neutral format (lit or something) that can easily be changed into other formats short of having many format options. When I was using the Sony Reader I found these tools great, but now that I'm using a Kindle it's a non-option.

But really I'd just love to see something that changes partial feeds into full articles and makes them available on the Kindle.. if I have to do a small amount of work per feed I'm okay with that, but the trick seems to be having more time to read than to work to read it.

[wallcraft]

A general, export to MOBI (Kindle) capability would be my 1st choice. It would make Calibre a general purpose e-book library manager.

I think there is a significant demand for a vendor neutral conversion and management capability. It was interesting how much more buzz the Stanza Beta generated because it could convert to MOBI.

[Ervserver]

I'm happy with it now

[kovidgoyal]

@wallcraft: I thought about html2lmobi, but the problem with MOBI is that it is a technically inferior format that is going to be superseded soon. So while calibre supports conversion *from* mobi I'm reluctant to add support for conversion *to* mobi.

I expect the next generation of e-book readers to support epub, (except for the Kindle, because Amazon is on its own trip), so I'd much rather code html2epub.

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

So while calibre supports conversion *from* mobi I'm reluctant to add support for conversion *to* mobi.

I expect the next generation of e-book readers to support epub, (except for the Kindle, because Amazon is on its own trip), so I'd much rather code html2epub.

One approach would be to standardize on ePub as the archive format. Then there would be X2epub importers and epub2Y exporters, but no explicit X2Y converters. For a comprehensive package there would need to be an epub2mobi, but this would be just one of several "reader" formats. I also like the idea, originally discussed on teleread, for an epub2web converter, where "web" is the (exploded) epub plus additional html files to allow the ebook to be read by a standard web browser.

[RWood]

There were (read past tense) a few features I wanted in calibre, I opened a ticket on Kovid's web site, and now they are part of calibre. He is very responsive to user input and feedback.

[kovidgoyal]

@wallcraft
I agree, standardizing on epub is a good idea. X2epub is easy once you have html2epub, creating epub2Y basically means creating html2Y. Let's see, if there's enough demand for MOBI as a target format, I'll consider doing it.

@RWood
I think this thread is about "large" features that I wouldn't normally take on (my primary motivator for adding features is still that they are useful to me) but that enough people want to see.

[lovebeta]

@kovid
I think the new name is a golden opportunity to reposition your program as a general purpose toolbox for ebook lovers. ePub seems to be a promising/most powerful format and it could very well serve as the hub. As far as mobi concerns, I don't like it either despite that I own a Kindle. It's support for CSS is just pathetic. I think as long as you leave enough apis, kindle users can always code their plugins/converters if you don't like to do it.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

@wallcraft: I thought about html2lmobi, but the problem with MOBI is that it is a technically inferior format that is going to be superseded soon.

Are you referring to ePub?

I think that it's going to be a number of years before MobiPocket format is (IF it is) superceded by ePub, especially since (as I understand it) there is currently no agreement of how ePub will implement DRM (which, while some may not like it, is vital from a the viewpoint of many publishers).

We already, of course, have a number of excellent tools available for converting HTML to Mobi.

[igorsk]

Digital Editions 1.5 has support for DRMed ePub, even though no real books are available yet. I assume that's probably what will be used in Sony's implementation.

<label key="migrateLogAdeEbxEpubOk">ADE EBX ePUB imported:</label>
<label key="migrateLogAdeEbxEpubBad">ADE EBX ePUB failed to import:</label>
<label key="migrateLogEbxEpubConvOk">EBX ePub converted to new License:</label>
<label key="migrateLogEbxEpubConvBad">EBX ePub failed to convert to new License:</label>

[HarryT]

But there are a heck of a lot of other Mobi platforms out there, and dozens of Mobi bookstores. It's going to be a long time before Mobi disappears - if it ever does.

[serpentium]

Hi,
im a happy user of calibre: really great product!
Only worried about my growing library (>2000 ebooks) and so calibre on mac os x going slow when i ask something on the library (sorting or filtering or renaming). Could be a useful feature having more than one library (maybe selecting name and destination)?
Otherwise i will continue to swap file for library in order to make some quick conversion, when i dont want to wait minutes to calibre to open the big library.

[Mr. Goodbar]

I would like to see Calibre support exporting to the mobi format or configurable on whether you want mobi, epub or lrf for whatever action you are taking. I would love to have the news sources in mobi format.

[igorsk]

Originally Posted by HarryT

But there are a heck of a lot of other Mobi platforms out there, and dozens of Mobi bookstores. It's going to be a long time before Mobi disappears - if it ever does.

But there are only two DRM providers for Mobi. Remember last year's August?