Windows-Specific Ereader Software?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Gormagon

One can also use Sumatra for epub, mobi, cbr, cbz and txt files. There's really no need for calibre on Windows if you have Sumatra installed (and sort your ebooks in folders).

I would invite you to compare locating a book in my library of ~16,000 epubs using calibre's search to trying to locate the same book in a directory structure.

I tried building directory structures over a decade ago before I started using calibre. calibre made library maintenance, searching for books and pretty much any other library related tasks so much easier than trying to maintain a directory structure where locating an author in an anthology with ~20 authors was easily doable. Heck, the amount of characters for the author names alone exceeded the filepath/filename length limit of Windows. You could always try enabling the long path capability but that opens it's own can of worms with the number of programs that do not work with that capabilities.

BTW, just how easy is it to generate a catalog of the ebooks in your directory structure?

And for what it may be worth, I use both the calibre ebook viewer and Thorium to read epubs on my computers. Thorium is a lot more feature complete when it comes to reading ePub3 ebooks which is extremely handy when you are looking at issues with a fixed layout children's ePub3 ebook intended for the Apple store.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Gormagon

Since I'm not a fan of Calibre and more of a folder guy I would just go with folders and Sumatra on a Windows device, if I use it mainly for e-book reading.

The content of the folders can easily be checked and copied with Winmerge. Actually I use Winmerge to check and copy the music content of microSD cards for my DAPs (Digital Audio Players), so I would just do the same with epubs, pdfs, cbr, cbz etc.

Whereas my use case involves correcting metadata and covers before sending the ebooks to my ereaders. I also have a sideline in working on ebooks for people who are looking at publishing them for which I find calibre and Sigil to be valuable tools.

[Derell Licht]

I'm a bit late tailing into this thread, but would like to add my recent observations...

Normally, I *far* prefer reading my ebooks on my Kindle 6.8", but when I'm sitting at home, I've begun reading on my 30" computer monitor instead... so I've been looking for a good ebook reader for Windows 10. My basic requirements are:

1. a tabbed reader would be very nice, as I often have several documents and books open.
2. PDF support is not required, I already have a very powerful PDF reader for Windows... I just want epub variants, and possibly azw3, supported.
3. I definitely wish to set colors and fonts; I typically use script fonts for reading non-technical books.
4. I didn't realize that this could be an issue until I stumbled over SumatraPDF: yeah, the reader needs to be able to display footnotes, and smoothly transition back to main text.

Results:
> SumatraPDF: font setting is not available at all, unless I regress back to V3.2. Even in V3.2, it requires editing a text file. Color setting is bizarre; most of the interface is not actually settable in later versions (though V3.2 is nice). Current version looks *very* primitive, like it is written for Windows 3.1 or something.

Footnotes are *completely* broken, they just display a token message.

> Calibre: font settings don't seem to work in the viewer, though they did at some point in the past. Color settings I didn't test. No tabbed viewing, but can open multiple windows simultaneously, which is bearable if I don't have too many documents open.

Later note: also, Calibre is the only one of these three programs, that displays tables correctly... which is odd, given that this is probably ancient html code...

> FBReader: This is my current go-to epub reader for Windows... fonts and color settings are easy and intuitive. No tabbed viewing, but can open multiple windows simultaneously, which is bearable if I don't have too many documents open.

Footnotes are *perfect* ... point at the footnote number to pop up a little with the info, click on the footnote to open a separate page with nearby notes visible as well; back-arrow takes you right back to the document.

Support for the program is awkward; I would like to discuss the tabbed viewing issue with them, but the only support that I can find is a Telegram page, which shows all messages in a foreign language (Cyrillic, I think), and no obvious way to change it...