ebook-viewer and 8.3 DOS short filenames

[RobertJSawyer]

I love Calibre's ebook-viewer.exe, but I also love old software and sometimes use a DOS file-management shell [ProFinder, which came bundled with WordStar for DOS] that can only pass on short filenames (8.3-style) to other programs, such that an ebook file with this name:

Quantum Night - Robert J. Sawyer.epub

has its named passed on to the Calibre ebook viewer as:

QUANTU~1.EPU

The problem, of course, is the extension .EPU, because the Calibre ebook-viewer.exe doesn't recognize it, and so gives this error message:

ERROR: Could not open ebook
ValueError: No plugin to handle input format: epu

Would it be possible to add the ability for the ebook viewer to recognize .epu as a valid synonym for the extension .epub?

Thank you so, so much!

[BetterRed]

A better way might be for you to associate .EPU with calibre's ebook-viewer.exe via your OS. BTW, the ebook-viewer code is frozen, that means bug fixes only.

BR

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

A better way might be for you to associate .EPU with calibre's ebook-viewer.exe via your OS. BTW, the ebook-viewer code is frozen, that means bug fixes only.

BR

That won't work. The code for ebook-viewer works on the file extension. It does not check the file. It works on .epub is ePub and .epu is unknown. So unless there's a way to pass .epub instead of .epu, using ProFinder is out. The only way to solve this problem is to modify the code so .epu is ePub.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

That won't work. The code for ebook-viewer works on the file extension. It does not check the file. It works on .epub is ePub and .epu is unknown. So unless there's a way to pass .epub instead of .epu, using ProFinder is out. The only way to solve this problem is to modify the code so .epu is ePub.

I stand corrected - should have checked. I assumed it would read the file and then decide whether it could do anything with it - like most other programs do.

@RobertJSawyer - sorry for the bum steer. If you set up a file association to the Azardi ebook viewer for .EPU it will work, Readium can also open a .EPU - assuming its a valid ePub of course.

But ADE and the calibre will only open .EPUB's

BR

[kovidgoyal]

The problem with doing that is that in the future .epu might be used for some non-epub file type, in which case trying to open it would be the wrong thing to do.

[BetterRed]

.EPU is already known. It's used by commercially available software from DGMR, a civil engineering consultancy based in the Netherlands.

BR

[RobertJSawyer]

Thank you for your replies, everybody.

Of course, I'm NOT looking to have the extension .epu associated via Windows Explorer or the Windows registry with ebook-viewer.exe; that's both inappropriate and unnecessary.

All I was hoping for is that if ebook-viewer.exe encounters a standard Windows/DOS short filename in the 8.3 format as a command-line argument when ebook-viewer.exe is being called, which, as Windows itself will style it, has the .epu extension, that ebook-viewer.exe would recognize it instead of rejecting it. No part of calibre would ever try to steal the file association from any present or future program that used the .epu extension.

Thanks!

[latepaul]

The following "wrapper" batch file will convert the 8.3 filename back to the long version and then call ebook-viewer.exe with it:

@echo off
REM VIEWER.BAT - a wrapper for Calibre's ebook-viewer.exe 
REM 
REM This script expects a filename in 8.3 format, it will 
REM convert it to a long filename and call ebook-viewer

if "%1" == "" (
	echo VIEWER.BAT - Missing filename
	goto :eof
)

REM get the directory name of the filename passed in
FOR /f  "tokens=*" %%A IN ('echo %~dp1') DO (
   set DIR_NAME=%%A
)

REM convert filename to long format
FOR /f  "tokens=*" %%A IN ('dir /b %1') DO (
   set LONG_NAME=%%A
)

REM pass the full filename to ebook-viewer
REM Change the path to Calibre if necessary
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Calibre2\ebook-viewer.exe" "%DIR_NAME%\%LONG_NAME%"

I've knocked this up quickly and done minimal testing. Use at your own risk.

[RobertJSawyer]

latepaul, thank you so, so much! This does the trick. I'm very, very grateful for your help!

All best wishes -- and Happy New Year!