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IainB
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« on: January 23, 2012, 08:32:43 AM » |
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| Original post: | 2012-01-23 | | Last updated: | 2013-03-22 |
Basic Info| App Name | Calibre | | Thumbs-Up Rating |  | | App URL | http://http://calibre-ebook.com/ | | App Version Reviewed | v0.9.16 (64-bit) | | Test System Specs | Win7-64 Home Premium | | Supported OSes | - Windows XP, Vista and 7
- Windows portable
- OSX
- Linux
| | Support Methods | - User Guide.
- Instructional videos.
- FAQ.
- User Forum.
| | Upgrade Policy | FREE - as and when available (Calibre is open-source software). | | Trial Version Available? | FREE. NO limitations. | | Pricing Scheme | FREE (Calibre is open-source software.) | | Screencast Video URL | Grand Tour introductory video |
Details of updated/new features, by version:New tool: "Edit ToC" that allows you to edit or create a Table of Contents easily in EPUB or AZW3 ebooks. [0.9.23]Using the Edit ToC tool, you can easily re-arrange the entries in an existing Table of Contents, change their text and even change the location they point to by simply clicking the new location in the book. To use this tool, go to Preferences->Toolbar and add the Edit ToC tool to the main toolbar. Then simply select the books you want to be polished and click the Edit ToC button. This tool is based on a new codebase, so there may be bugs. ______________________________________ New tool: "Polish books" that allows you to perform various automated cleanup actions on EPUB and AZW3 files without doing a full conversion. [0.9.19]Polishing books is all about putting the shine of perfection on your ebook files. You can use it to subset embedded fonts, update the metadata in the book files from the metadata in the calibre library, manipulate the book jacket, etc. More features will be added in the future. To use this tool, go to Preferences->Toolbar and add the Polish books tool to the main toolbar. Then simply select the books you want to be polished and click the Polish books button. Polishing, unlike conversion, does not change the internal structure/markup of your book, it performs only the minimal set of actions needed to achieve its goals. Note that polish books is a completely new codebase, so there may well be bugs, polishing a book backs up the original as ORIGINAL_EPUB or ORIGINAL_AZW3, unless you have turned off this feature in Preferences->Tweaks, in which case you should backup your files manually. You can also use this tool from the command line with ebook-polish.exe. ______________________________________ Allow adding user specified icons to the main book list for books whose metadata matches specific criteria. Go to Preferences->Look & Feel->Column icons to setup these icons. They work in the same way as the column coloring rules. [0.9.17]______________________________________ Complete rewrite of the PDF Output engine, to support links and fix various bugs [0.9.13]calibre now has a new PDF output engine that supports links in the text. It also fixes various bugs, detailed below. In order to implement support for links and fix these bugs, the engine had to be completely rewritten, so there may be some regressions. ______________________________________ 64 bit build for windows [0.9.9]calibre now has a 64 bit version for windows, available at: http://calibre-ebook.com/download_windows64 The 64bit build is not limited to using only 3GB of RAM when converting large/complex documents. It may also be slightly faster for some tasks. You can have both the 32 bit and the 64 bit build installed at the same time, they will use the same libraries, plugins and settings. ______________________________________ Experimental support for subsetting fonts [0.9.6]Subsetting a font means reducing the font to contain only the glyphs for the text actually present in the book. This can easily halve the size of the font. calibre can now do this for all embedded fonts during a conversion. Turn it on via the 'Subset all embedded fonts' option under the Look & Feel section of the conversion dialog. calibre can subset both TrueType and OpenType fonts. Note that this code is very new and likely has bugs, so please check the output if you turn on subsetting. The conversion log will have info about the subsetting operations. ______________________________________ Conversion: Add an option to embed a font family into the book. [0.9.4]The embedded font is used as the base font for all text that does not specify its own font family in the input document. Works only with output formats that support font embedding, principally EPUB/AZW3. Option is found under Look & Feel in the conversion dialog. You can ensure that the font is used for all text, regardless of the input document's styles by filtering out font family styles via the Filter Style Information option in the Conversion dialog. ______________________________________ For a summary of the major changes in calibre between 0.8 and 0.9, see http://calibre-ebook.com/new-in/nine [0.9.0]
______________________________________ Support for connecting MTP (non disk based) devices via USB, such as the Nexus 7 and the Kindle Fire HD (Windows Vista and newer and Linux only) [0.8.70]calibre can now detect and connect to devices that do not present themselves as USB disks to the operating system. Newer Android devices all use the 'MTP' protocol when connected via USB. calibre now supports devices using this protocol on both Windows (Vista and newer) and Linux. ______________________________________ E-book viewer: Support the display of mathematics in e-books. Supports both embedded TeX and MathML [0.8.66]The calibre ebook viewer can now display embedded mathematics (symbols, equations, fractions, matrices, etc.) in EPUB and HTML ebooks. For details, see: http://manual.calibre-ebo...com/typesetting_math.html______________________________________ A new wireless device driver. This allows connecting wirelessly to a device running a 'smart' calibre client [0.8.65]The wireless connection functions just as if the device was plugged into the computer by USB cable. Currently, Android devices are supported. See https://play.google.com/s...m.multipie.calibreandroid______________________________________ E-book viewer: Add a paged mode that splits up the text into pages, like in a paper book instead of presenting it as a single column. To activate click the button with the yellow scroll icon in the top right corner. [0.8.61]In paged mode, the ebook viewer no longer cuts off the last line of text at the bottom of the screen, and it respects CSS page-break directives. You can also set page margins and control the number of pages displayed on screen by clicking the Preferences button in the viewer and going to 'Text layout in paged mode'. ______________________________________ When searching, allow use of un-accented characters to match accented characters in all fields and all languages (not just authors and English as before) [0.8.60]The rules for matching un-accented characters are done in a language dependent way. So if your calibre interface language is set to English, n will match both n and ñ, but if it is set to Spanish, it will match only n, as in Spanish ñ is a separate alphabet in Spanish. This makes searching a little slower, so if you have a very large library you can turn it off via Preferences->Searching. ______________________________________ PDF Output: Full pagination support. No more cutoff bottom line. [0.8.57]Fixes a long standing bug in calibre's PDF Output that caused the bottom line of some pages to be partially cut off and prevented top and bottom margins from working. ______________________________________ Make the new calibre style default on Windows and OS X. [0.8.56]This change gives a more 'modern' feel to the calibre user interface with focus highlighting, gradients, rounded corners, etc. In case you prefer the old look, you can restore under Preferences->Look & Feel->User interface style ______________________________________ E-book viewer: The Table of contents panel now tracks the current position in the book. As you scroll through the book, the entry you are currently on is highlighted. [0.8.54]To see this feature in action, open the Table of Contents panel in the viewer by clicking the button with three blue lines on it. As you page through the book, the chapter you are reading currently is highlighted in the Table of Contents Panel. Obviously, this will only work if the book you are reading has a Table of Contents. You can also use the Ctrl+PgUp and Ctrl+PgDn keys to quickly skip between chapters. (Click image to enlarge.)  Intro:Calibre is a free and open-source library manager to view, convert and catalogue e-books. It runs across OS platforms (Linux, Windows and OS X). Calibre organizes, saves and manages e-books, supporting a variety of formats. It also supports e-book syncing with a variety of popular e-book readers and will, within DRM restrictions, convert e-books between differing formats. Formats: Calibre supports the conversion of many input formats to many output formats. It can convert every input format in the following list, to every output format: - Input Formats: CBZ, CBR, CBC, CHM, DJVU, EPUB, FB2, HTML, HTMLZ, LIT, LRF, MOBI, ODT, PDF, PRC, PDB, PML, RB, RTF, SNB, TCR, TXT, TXTZ
- Output Formats: EPUB, FB2, OEB, LIT, LRF, MOBI, HTMLZ, PDB, PML, RB, PDF, RTF, SNB, TCR, TXT, TXTZ
Devices supported: At the moment calibre has full support for the SONY PRS line, Barnes & Noble Nook line, Cybook Gen 3/Opus, Amazon Kindle line, Entourage Edge, Longshine ShineBook, Ectaco Jetbook, BeBook/BeBook Mini, Irex Illiad/DR1000, Foxit eSlick, PocketBook line, Italica, eClicto, Iriver Story, Airis dBook, Hanvon N515, Binatone Readme, Teclast K3 and clones, SpringDesign Alex, Kobo Reader, various Android phones and the iPhone/iPad. In addition, using the Connect to folder function you can use it with any ebook reader that exports itself as a USB disk. There is also a special User Defined device plugin that can be used to connect to arbitrary devices that present their memory as disk drives. See the device plugin Preferences -> Plugins -> Device Plugins -> User Defined and Preferences -> Miscellaneous -> Get information to setup the user defined device for more information. (From Calibre website "About - Features") Calibre is a free and open source e-book library management application developed by users of e-books for users of e-books. It has a cornucopia of features divided into the following main categories: - Library Management
- E-book conversion
- Syncing to e-book reader devices
- Downloading news from the web and converting it into e-book form
- Comprehensive e-book viewer
- Content server for online access to your book collection
Wikipedia - Calibre features:- e-books can be imported into the calibre library by either adding files manually or by syncing an e-book reading device.
- calibre supports all the currently commercially relevant file formats and reading devices. Most of these e-book formats can be edited, for example by changing the font or the font size and by adding a auto-generated table of contents. Next to editing, printing is also supported.
- calibre helps organizing the personal e-book library by allowing the user to sort and group e-books by metadata fields. Metadata can be pulled from many different sources (ISBNdb.com, Google Books, Amazon, LibraryThing). Full-text search including the whole library is possible.
- Online content-sources can be harvested and converted to e-books. This conversion is facilitated by so called '"recipes"', short programs written in a Python-based domain specific language (DSL).
- E-books can then be exported to all supported reading devices via USB or via the integrated mail-server. Mailing e-books enables e.g. sending personal documents to the Kindle family of e-book readers.
- The content of the library can be remotely accessed by web browser if the hosting computer is running. In this case pushing harvested content from content sources is supported on a regular interval (subscription). If the hosting computer is not always on, a hosted calibre solution[1] can help. In this case the library is not accessible but the subscriptions are pushed to the reading device on schedule.
Who this app is designed for:People who: - Need a library manager;
- Require the library manager to view, convert and catalogue e-books;
- Require the library manager to manage the ebook deployement to various reading devices.
The Good:Seems to be very effective in what it does (I am still putting it through its hoops). I am using it together with Qiqqa, which has some overlap with Calibre, but the two generally seem to complement each other. Good GUI ergonomics, though I initially found it rather counter-intuitive (because I charged in and started using it before reading the user guide). The needs improvement section:The main observation I have here is that when I initially gave Calibre a very large library to start with, it locked up all of the CPUs in my Intel i7 processor, and the system seemed to freeze. Reboot time. (However, other subsequent comments in this discussion indicate that it is not a common problem.) I have not yet figured out whether you can confine the CPU utilisation to (say) just one or two CPUs (as you can do in Qiqqa, which had a similar initial problem - now fixed). Why I think you should use this product:Seems to be an excellent product. If you are looking for a decent open-source library manager to view, convert and catalogue e-books - and across platforms (Linux, Windows and OS X) - then I would suggest that Calibre could well be worth a look-see. How does it compare to similar apps.:I have no basis of experiential comparison, other than the Qiqqa reference management system (mentioned above). Conclusions:- An excellent piece of software, and well-supported by its developer.
- I was rather blown away with what this software did, and how well it did what it does.
- Seems very impressive, and I have kept it to manage my library from hereon.
- Ability to "pull" metadata from many different sources is very useful.
- Ability to "harvest" online content-sources and convert them to e-books is a brilliant idea (not yet tested by me).
- Ability to de-DRM ebooks and translate them into other, non-proprietary formats for reading on other eReaders/software is a real bonus.
Links to other reviews of this application: |
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« Last Edit: March 22, 2013, 05:51:17 AM by IainB; Reason: Updated 2013-03-22. »
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cranioscopical
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« Reply #1 on: January 23, 2012, 09:42:51 AM » |
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I find Calibre to be excellent. Thanks for the review IainB! (How large was the large library?) See also here, on DC. |
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Chris
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40hz
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« Reply #2 on: January 23, 2012, 12:33:16 PM » |
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+1 with Cranioscopical! I've been using it heavily for over a year now and I find it exceptionally useful. I've even set it up for a few clients, all of whom have given it rave reviews. And financial contributions. One is currently experimenting with its webserver capabilities to see if it could function as their private corporate e-library system. Also kudos for that mention of Qiqqa. That's another essential research tool that deserves to be much better known than it is. |
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« Last Edit: January 23, 2012, 12:38:37 PM by 40hz »
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skwire
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« Reply #3 on: January 23, 2012, 12:48:49 PM » |
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I use Calibre to convert most any e-book format into EPUB format for use on my phone. Works very very well in this regard.
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TucknDar
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« Reply #4 on: January 23, 2012, 01:41:53 PM » |
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Another calibre fan here. Recently bought a Kindle, and Calibre is great for managing my book collection, and converting epub files to Kindle-ready mobipocket format. Highly recommended!
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IainB
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« Reply #5 on: January 23, 2012, 03:23:22 PM » |
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(How large was the large library?) See also here, on DC. (Apologies for omitting the library size) the one that "froze" Calibre is 1,174 files, 2.8Gb in total size. I do not know what proportion of those files Calibre would be able to translate/manage. It was a relatively smaller part of my overall library, but I called it large because it seemed to be large enough to bring Calibre to its knees. The link you gave was interesting - thanks. I had not seen that before. I usually try to scan DCF for prior reviews/references of any software that I am thinking of doing a review of, but I was being maddeningly interrupted at the time I was researching Calibre, and, this probably distracted me sufficiently to use the wrong search term (I probably used something like "Calibri") and thus I entirely missed the reference you gave.  Interestingly, that thread also mentions CPU utilisation in a comment by J-Mac |
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IainB
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« Reply #6 on: January 23, 2012, 03:37:59 PM » |
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...I've even set it up for a few clients, all of whom have given it rave reviews. And financial contributions... ... One is currently experimenting with its webserver capabilities to see if it could function as their private corporate e-library system. Also kudos for that mention of Qiqqa. That's another essential research tool that deserves to be much better known than it is. Oddly enough, I am considering suggesting it for a client of mine (a property management company specialising in apartment block bodycorp administration) - along with Qiqqa. They have a huge library and a big DM (Document Management) problem, due to a lot of their output and company records being in .PDF format. Their current DM practices and use of IT are anachronistic (which is putting it mildly), and there will be a significant cost attributable to that - one which I estimate could be reduced by approx. 80% by the more intelligent application of technology and automation. |
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40hz
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« Reply #7 on: January 23, 2012, 03:51:20 PM » |
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Oddly enough, I am considering suggesting it for a client of mine (a property management company specialising in apartment block bodycorp administration) - along with Qiqqa. They have a huge library and a big DM (Document Management) problem, due to a lot of their output and company records being in .PDF format.
Must be the real property industry and it's relatives.  Mine is a mortgage broker service. Same deal with them. Tons of transmissions and scans. All in PDF. Luck! If I hear anything worth repeating I'll let you know. |
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cranioscopical
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« Reply #8 on: January 23, 2012, 08:07:37 PM » |
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Library size: (Apologies for omitting the library size) the one that "froze" Calibre is 1,174 files, 2.8Gb in total size. I do not know what proportion of those files Calibre would be able to translate/manage.
...
Interestingly, that thread also mentions CPU utilisation in a comment by J-Mac
Thanks for the info. Calibre is looking after 1.3Gb for me and I've seen no problem at all. It's almost amazingly fast on all of my machines. Either I've simply been lucky or the threshold for trouble is >1.3Gb. |
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Chris
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Daleus
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« Reply #9 on: January 24, 2012, 06:33:02 AM » |
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I got myself a Kobo eReader late last fall, about the same time that I ran across Calibre. I got it originally because I wanted to be able to carry around my collection of out of print Traveller rules books.
Well, *that* was a disappointment - for old stuff like those Traveller books, you get image scans of pages and not real pdf documents. Still, if I don't mind going blind occasionally (over 50 eyes) I can still read them. I later discovered a program that would actually OCR scan a pdf file and give me the text! Awesome, and I am now converting my collection to text, so that I can re-lay it out and convert to ePub which is the native format for the Kobo, although it handles others.
Of course, I am totally foolish to spend this much time on such a project, quite likely *more* time than I will spend reading the blasted things. Yay OCD!
So, I have been adding to Calibre about a dozen at a time, as I get them converted. I also have been combing the Gutenberg Project for old out of print science fiction and recently added from there, a collection of Charles Dickens books. I actually read A Christmas Carole over the holidays, after being a devoted fan of the 1950's movie starring Alistair Simm. It was fun to discover the movie does not stray far from the book.
So, so far, my experience with Calibre has been flawless. It's ability to handle copious eBook formats in it's library, it's ability to convert between them, being cross-platform *and* (haven't tried this one yet) it comes with a server you can run on your network and use wirelessly to reload your reader has me bowled over!
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Daleus, Curmudgeon-at-Large
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Daleus
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« Reply #10 on: January 24, 2012, 06:36:52 AM » |
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Looking back over this thread, I wonder has anyone done a review of Qiqqa?
I followed the link to their site, but as I am not an academic, I'm not certain I would have a use for this program.
I'm going to download it anyway such is the power of a DC recommendation - I'll try *any* program you folks suggest, to see just what it can do for me.
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Daleus, Curmudgeon-at-Large
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cranioscopical
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« Reply #11 on: January 24, 2012, 01:43:57 PM » |
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(over 50 eyes)
Wow, with >50 eyes you sure must read fast! |
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Chris
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J-Mac
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« Reply #12 on: January 25, 2012, 05:32:58 AM » |
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I tried running this on my previous computer and it would constantly lock-up my system. Then again that PC had graphic card conflicts that often caused problems with certain programs. Anyway after importing a lot of PDF ebooks Calibre was spinning out of control - 50-60% CPU usage & a big chunk of memory. Couldn't shut it down without going into safe mode.
New 'puter now - maybe I'll give it another try.
Thanks!
Jim
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J-Mac
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IainB
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« Reply #13 on: January 27, 2012, 02:05:15 AM » |
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Looking back over this thread, I wonder has anyone done a review of Qiqqa?
I don't think so, but I have been thinking of doing a proper Mini-Review, having used Qiqqa for a few months now. It's a superb document and information/reference management system. |
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IainB
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« Reply #14 on: February 06, 2012, 05:42:10 PM » |
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New Calibre Release: 0.8.38 [03 Feb, 2012] available: See all new features of v0.8 here.Changelog - Release: 0.8.38 [03 Feb, 2012]:New Features
Implement the ability to automatically add books to calibre from a specified folder.
Closes tickets: 920249
calibre can now watch a folder on your computer and instantly add any files you put there to the calibre library as new books. You can tell calibre which folder to watch via Preferences->Adding Books->Automatic Adding.
Conversion: When automatically inserting page breaks, do not put a page break before a h1 or h2 tag if it is immediately preceded by another h1 or h2 tag.
Driver for EZReader T730 and Pint-of-View PlayTab Pro
Closes tickets: 923283, 922969
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app103
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« Reply #15 on: February 14, 2012, 06:21:29 PM » |
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I used to be a user of My Ebook Library until the services and community associated with the application shut down, and you could no longer retrieve book information from the internet.
I tried Calibre as a possible replacement but quickly uninstalled it when it insisted on destroying my well organized book collection by moving all my books into a single folder. That was a deal breaker for me.
Have they done anything to make that optional yet? I want to keep my books right where they are, organized in folders by subject (non-fiction) or author (fiction).
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IainB
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« Reply #16 on: February 14, 2012, 10:47:12 PM » |
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@app103: The version of Calibre I am using does not move anything around, but copies (duplicates) your documents (Word and PDF) into a folder, and changes the filenames a bit:
Example: C:\Users\[User]\Calibre Library\[Author ID]\Document file name.ext
Calibre also puts metadata in that folder, and seems to include any other files that it thinks might be related/relevant - e.g., as the cover page.
It appears not to scan and OCR PDF files with images containing text, so you will search in vain for (say) the string "toffee cats" that is in such a file.
By comparison, Qiqqa does that brilliantly. lt builds its own (duplicate) library of your PDF documents, with the PDF image documents all apparently OCR-scanned in the process and made text-searchable. Very handy. I'm not sure that it handles Word docs though.
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« Last Edit: February 15, 2012, 05:42:56 AM by IainB; Reason: Minor syntax correction. »
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elvisbrown
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« Reply #17 on: February 15, 2012, 03:30:55 AM » |
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I've been using Calibre since I bought a Kindle and quite frankly for what it does there is not much better available. However there are a couple of things that it doesn't do too well. I am talking about 95% brilliant and 5% could be better to give you some idea of scale of my comments. LibrariesIt doesn't manage large libraries at all well, I'm talking about 1000+ books (I'm on i7 with 8GB) and I am not sure it was ever intended to cope with libraries that big in the first place. I think the storage needs to be ported to a proper database structure instead of the folder method that's being used now. Kindle CollectionsKindle Collections is an extension for Calibre and I find it can be hit and miss at times. I use it to organise my collections but when I restart the Kindle it is seldom the way I organised it. Small change in return for what it does do well like manage metadata, covers and the downloading of news is worth it just for that alone. I have made donations for both Calibre and Kindle Collections and I would urge anyone using it regularly to the same. KindleanI have just purchased Kindlean which does nothing but manage Kindle collections and it is beautiful, functional and efficient. Alfa Ebooks ManagerI've been looking at this for managing my library. It is the best I have seen so far. The free version really doesn't do much but point out what the paid version would do. The full version is not cheap ($40) but if it did what it says it does it is probably worth it. The only problem I have struck is that on one of my laptops (both Win7 64Bit) it throws .Net errors when it tries to start then fails completely. Spending that much money on a product that won't even start makes me nervous even though the other laptop runs it perfectly. To sum up I think I need three applications because I haven't found one application that does everything well. - Calibre to manage what goes from my library to my Kindle
- Kindlean to manage the collections on the Kindle
- An Ebook Library manager as yet undecided.
Thanks for the article on Calibre :-) |
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I started out with nothing and still have most of it left
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Daleus
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« Reply #18 on: February 15, 2012, 06:35:50 AM » |
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(over 50 eyes)
Wow, with >50 eyes you sure must read fast! Doh! Yeah. And it takes hours to clean my glasses when I've been out in the rain. |
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Daleus, Curmudgeon-at-Large
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app103
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« Reply #19 on: February 15, 2012, 10:13:01 AM » |
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@app103:[/b] The version of Calibre I am using does not move anything around, but copies (duplicates) your documents (Word and PDF) into a folder, and changes the filenames a bit:
Example: C:\Users\[User]\Calibre Library\[Author ID]\Document file name.ext
So I'll need to buy another hard drive just for Calibre?  Does it at least give you the option not to put all of that on your OS drive? |
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wales
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« Reply #20 on: February 15, 2012, 11:19:57 AM » |
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I had not heard of Qiqqa, had a look and it appeared something for me. However after download and attempting to install on xp service pack 3 the error "service pack 2 required"
Please can anyone help?
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40hz
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« Reply #21 on: February 15, 2012, 12:46:11 PM » |
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I had not heard of Qiqqa, had a look and it appeared something for me. However after download and attempting to install on xp service pack 3 the error "service pack 2 required"
Please can anyone help?
@wales - That's got to be frustrating. Especially since you have SP3 already installed. For installation issues, your best bet is to put that question directly to Qiqqa since their developers would have a better idea what's causing the problem is and how to solve it. Their support link is here: https://getsatisfaction.com/qiqqa  |
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wales
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« Reply #22 on: February 15, 2012, 01:54:35 PM » |
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Thank you for your reply. I have contacted qiqqa and a no reply email has said that they are busy and will try to answer my question asap.
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gwynevans
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« Reply #23 on: February 15, 2012, 02:09:46 PM » |
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So I'll need to buy another hard drive just for Calibre? Does it at least give you the option not to put all of that on your OS drive? eBooks aren't all that big, so it's a reasonable choice to take a copy of them into it's library tree, rather than try & track changes that would occur if it just tried to reference them 'outside'. I've currently only got just over 1000 books in mine, and the library around 912MB (Mostly ePub, rather than PDF though). One advantage not mentioned is that using Stanza on the iPad or the browser on a Kindle, I can access them wirelessly via Calibre's server & WiFi! It does allow you to choose where to place the library (and to have more than 1 if desired), including moving an existing library tree around. |
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IainB
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« Reply #24 on: February 15, 2012, 04:01:02 PM » |
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- Ability to "pull" metadata from many different sources is very useful.
- Ability to "harvest" online content-sources and convert them to e-books is a brilliant idea (not yet tested by me).
re: calibre: Ok, I just gave it a workout. What it does (i.e go out and get a feed at a scheduled time, download it, and create an ebook out of it) works quite well. per the developer of calibre: The news downloading feature, one of calibre's most popular, has an interesting story behind it. I used to subscribe to Newsweek, back when it was still a real news magazine. But one fine day, Newsweek simply stopped being delivered to my house and no matter how much time I spent on the phone with various sales reps, it simply would not start again. Since I'd just got my first e-book reader at the time, I decided to add the ability to download and convert websites to calibre. From the beginning, I decided to make it as modular as possible, so that other people could contribute "recipes" for different news sites. The calibre cookbook has kept on growing and now calibre has recipes for over three hundred news sources in many different languages. The limitations, however, are annoying. Each feed gets made into its own book. You can't combine feeds using the standard scripts provided by calibre. I'm guessing you could if you were to combine them in you own script. But that defeats some of the convenience being sought. The other problem is that a new book gets created for each source each time the "get news" button is pushed. So if you were tracking 10 feeds daily, on Monday you'd find 10 books in your library list. When it ran again on Tuesday you would then have 20 books in your library unless you deleted Monday's run. Not a real problem since you could just select all and delete. But what happens when you add something in that only gets checked weekly - and for which you want to keep a few back issues on hand? Since calibre doesn't allow you to set up folders, it starts getting excessively "manual" keeping your newsrack pruned. Which, in all fairness, may only be a problem for tech news junkies like me. I'm in the habit of closely tracking about 30 feeds daily - and well over a hundred additional between those I peruse on a weekly or monthly basis. So having somewhere between 100 and 150 "books" in my library just for that doesn't really work for me. I suppose I could do it using a portable installation of calibre which would be used just for feeds and act as a super-newsreader. But it's kind of a kludge. And it still doesn't combine multiple feeds into a single book. I don't want a library's periodical room. I want a geek's version of Reader's Digest.What I was hoping for was something that could support a few different collections of RSS feeds. Something that could take three different feed lists and use them to produce a daily newspaper, a weekly journal, and a monthly magazine, all on an fully automated basis. calibre can't do that. But it's soooo close it makes me want to scream. But that won't accomplish anything worthwhile. So now I'm firing up my email program and composing an extremely polite message to calibre's developer Kovid Goyal to ask what it would take to get that capability added. |
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