Calibre - ebook management

Submit portable freeware that you find here. It helps if you include information like description, extraction instruction, Unicode support, whether it writes to the registry, and so on.
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webfork
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Re: calibre

#31 Post by webfork »

This program hasn't seen a lot of love on the site due to a cluttered interface but I thought I'd point out this program recently celebrated a decade in development and put out new icon set, which is good news.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/calibre- ... 9851.shtml

It was followed by another update with updates for PDF and DOCX:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/calibre- ... 4911.shtml

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Re: calibre

#32 Post by webfork »

Two calbre-related items:

1. A feature I wasn't aware of: the calibre Content server
The calibre Content server allows you to access your calibre libraries and read books directly in a browser on your favorite mobile phone or tablet device. As a result, you do not need to install any dedicated book reading/management apps on your phone. Just use the browser. The server downloads and stores the book you are reading in an off-line cache so that you can read it even when there is no internet connection.

2. An alternative. Since there are so many folks frustrated by Calibre on these forums, I decided to dig into another solution.

Epub Converter http://www.pdfmate.com/epub-converter.html
Converts eBooks to EPUB, PDF, Mobi and many other output formats and supports directly converting to the format that suits to specific device like Kindle, iPad, Nook, Sony eReader, Kobo, etc.
  • Support eBooks from Kindle/Nook/Sony/Kobo/Google Play and more
  • Convert eBooks to EPUB/PDF/Mobi
  • Save all metadatas after conversion
  • Automatically scan the device; Easy-to-use interface
Status: untested

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Midas
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Re: calibre

#33 Post by Midas »

Quick note for those who do Java (cof, webfork): Jeboorker migh be a possible ebook manager alternative -- check https://github.com/meerkatzenwildschein/jeboorker.

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Re: calibre

#34 Post by webfork »

Midas wrote:possible ebook manager alternative -- check https://github.com/meerkatzenwildschein/jeboorker.
Cool, thanks for that

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Re: calibre

#35 Post by webfork »

A friend of mine recently gave me a strong endorsement for calibre if you own one of the Nook ebook devices. It evidently both solved a lot of problems and saved a lot of time versus other default software.

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Re: calibre

#36 Post by billon »

Link to qBittorrent GitHub Wiki in the calibre's entry? What?
webfork, what are you doing?

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Re: calibre

#37 Post by webfork »

billon wrote: Wed Jun 10, 2020 6:32 pm Link to qBittorrent GitHub Wiki in the calibre's entry? What?
My fault -- I was working on the qBittorrent post at the same time as the calibre entry update and got my links switched around.

---

EDIT:

I modified the entry a bit more. For brevity I listed out only the major features, but I'm really impressed by the tools and functions available inside calibre. The ebook editor function alone has a remarkable number of tools from regular expressions, HTML comparison, content report, a good DOCX and ODT import, error check, and multi-file search and replace.

If you deal in ebooks or if you own a tablet or ebook device that's not in use, this is probably well worth your time.

The author is very clear about PDF conversion being very poor, but I do wish there was a bit more functionality available here. Many ebooks I seem to get access to are only in that format.

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Re: calibre

#38 Post by Midas »

*sigh* I really wish a better alternative would come along -- it really discourages me to see bad software winning because there's no competition. On a brighter note, at least iTunes is no more...

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Re: calibre

#39 Post by webfork »

Midas wrote: Thu Jun 11, 2020 7:14 am *sigh* I really wish a better alternative would come along -- it really discourages me to see bad software winning because there's no competition. On a brighter note, at least iTunes is no more...
I also really disliked this program when I last tested it years ago, but it's improved a lot. I'd certainly prefer not to have the everything-in-one-windows library function ala your iTunes example, but it's workable.

As for iTunes ... weird that I missed the news on that. I absolutely abhorred that program.

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Re: Calibre - ebook management

#40 Post by webfork »

After some digging for e-book readers, I found that calibre comes closest to checking off all my personal wishlist for a .EPUB reader

* Table of contents
* Some way to make annotations, ideally with notes for research
* Worthwile search function with wildcards or regex
* Dark mode (light text on a dark background)
* Full screen mode
* Functional with touch-screens
* Voice-to-text function that lets you jump to a given place in the text, not just start from the top everytime you click play
* Open source

Annotations browser goes a step further by working on multiple files AND multiple formats (including PDF or EPUB). Fantastic for research.

Image
Annotation listings

Problems:

* Some files wouldn't let me modify the viewer font

Wishlist

* Ability to invert images so that images containing text were also in "dark" mode.

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