Alternative to calibre

[sp000n]

Wow, you folks are rabid. I'm sure there's room somewhere for those of us who won't put up with Calibre's inability to manage catalogs without rearranging one's directory structure.

My machine's Windows but I'm interested in an alternative too... Tommy, the documentation/description for your program is just a bit over my head.

[Tommy]

Originally Posted by sp000n

Tommy, the documentation/description for your program is just a bit over my head.

Well, sorry, but gibberish like that is what you get if you let the developer write the documentation himself

I attach the current version of Catalog (again as zipped jar) here and maybe you'll find the documentation a bit better to digest... But still it's not complete and doesn't include all the latest changes.

Since the last post of an executable the prefs have been largely extended. (See below for some hints and check the online documentation.)

A few words on the "Drag'n'Drop" capabilities:

• If you drop a file over one on the lists, this file will be added and some attempts are made to extract meta data out of the file. If that's not possible, based on the file name some guess is made to provide those meta data.
  
• If you are in change-mode for the currently selected book, you can also Drag'n'Drop an image onto the image-pane. If the file being dropped is recognized, it will be shown (no big surprise but nice to have).

Preferences

• General:
  1. Here, you can specify the language you want to use (Currently only English and German, as mentioned above)
  2. You'll have to specify the path to your eBook (For me this is /Volumes/SONY505/database/media/books/)
  3. Finally, unless you have an Iliad you'll have to provide the correct plugin (that's the part that does the actual copying of the books to your eBook-reader)
     Curretntly there's Catalog.devs.Device for the Sony (which only copies the file to the locatation specified under eBook-Path)
     The default is Catalog.devs.Iliad and along with the book also copies the image and an additional file with the book's meta-data.
• Viewers
  Should you want to have a look at the book you can specify a program to be launch to display the book.
  (If you are using a Mac, I'd recommend to leave this uncustomized and let the Mac's inbuilt open-command do the job.
• Conversion
  With this version something like a framework to convert files is now present. The documentation is quite elaborate on this. Again, similar to the 'Viewers' Catalog itself doesn't do the conversions, but only calls "third-party" programs.

Finally, a few words to cnf who started this thread and asked for something capable of creating collections or playlists and handling the content on the 505. Well, I'm afraid Catalog is not the tool you're looking for, however the UI might be different enough as to give it a try But still it's mainly a cataloging software!

Regards,
Tommy

[cnf]

This seems to be a hopeless quest... I have reverted to just using the sony software to manage my collections on the reader, and do everything else manually...

Sad, but I can not find anything that even remotely takes my fancy...

[BlackVoid]

Originally Posted by MrDrWatson

When you install Calibre you define a directory for it, when it adds a book, it creates a directory inside the directory you have defined with the author's name.

I dislike Calibre too and the above is one of the reasons. Why create a directory for each book? It makes the management MUCH more difficult if you want to do anything outside Calibre.

So what is the real use of it?
- It converts books, but its conversion is much inferior to BookDesigner. (BD is capable of transforming PDFs without losing paragraph information).
- It transfers books to the reader, but the software provided with the Reader already does that with preformatting.
- It manages books but not in a good way (each book has its own dir, that is a WASTE). I manage my own book in directories by author. Why would I duplicate my collection with Calibre? It just does not make any sense. There are no options to change this.

On top of all this, Calibre is also slow and has an unfriendly interface. When converting you have to type in manually the author and the title. In BD, that is a few clicks with the mouse.

Instead of solving these glaring problems, the author is content on adding features that are pretty useless, like emailing ebooks to your Reader. Why would I want to do that???

Unfortunately I do not have a good suggestion for a MAC, but for conversion try BookDesigner.

[gwynevans]

> MUCH more difficult if you want to do anything outside Calibre.

That's what the export features are for...

> - It converts books, but its conversion is much inferior to BookDesigner.

Well, how's BD at outputting ePubs, or in fact, doing anything on Macs or Linux?

> - It transfers books to the reader, but the software provided with the Reader already does that with preformatting.

True, but the Sony software's not that hot on series & tag management. It's finally on Macs, but not linux, AIUI.

> - It manages books but not in a good way (each book has its own dir, that is a WASTE).

Just think of it as a database that happens to be in a format that you can easily investigate - NOT as a structure for you to directly use.
(I think this is where you're starting to over-reach - "a WASTE" - I mean, really!)

> Why would I duplicate my collection with Calibre? It just does not make any sense. There are no options to change this.

So don't - it's not mandatory. Either don't use it at all, stick to the command-line tools or even just import a file, convert it, export it then delete it from Calibre's library.

> On top of all this, Calibre is also slow and has an unfriendly interface.

Define "slow" & "unfriendly"? If someone really finds it too slow or want a better GUI, they have the choices of updating it themselves, making suggestions as to how things could be improved or even paying someone to update it, but for most people, it's "good enough"...

> When converting you have to type in manually the author and the title.
On the command-line, maybe - not via the GUI unless something very odd's happening...

> In BD, that is a few clicks with the mouse.
BD's got it's own issues though, hasn't it...

> Unfortunately I do not have a good suggestion for a MAC, but for conversion try BookDesigner.

How's that work on a Mac, again?

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by BlackVoid

Why create a directory for each book? It makes the management MUCH more difficult if you want to do anything outside Calibre.

Because each book can have multiple formats. You can have a book with a .pdf, .lit, .mobi, .epub etc. Putting those all in the same folder makes sense and is more organized than just dumping them all into a single folder for the author.

Originally Posted by BlackVoid

- It transfers books to the reader, but the software provided with the Reader already does that with preformatting.

This is only a valid statement for a Sony using an LRF/LRX file. It doesn't apply to PDF, ePub, txt, etc.

It also modifies the metadata in the ebook file to match your edited metadata which the Sony library software (that does pre-index LRF/LRX books does) doesn't do.

Originally Posted by BlackVoid

- It manages books but not in a good way (each book has its own dir, that is a WASTE). I manage my own book in directories by author. Why would I duplicate my collection with Calibre? It just does not make any sense. There are no options to change this.

It's not a "WASTE". If you want to mange your ebooks files using Windows Explorer or Finder, go for it. Of course, you can't see or edit the metadata. You can't put in a summary. You can't tag the ebooks. You can't search them with metadata just on the file name. You can't convert them with a simple click of a button. Do you really think gaining all those features is a waste?

Originally Posted by BlackVoid

Instead of solving these glaring problems, the author is content on adding features that are pretty useless, like emailing ebooks to your Reader. Why would I want to do that???

Consider that the author is writing this program for himself, not for you. Then he shares it and helps a lot of people with it out of the goodness of his heart. He also has accepted patches for stuff that he said weren't important to him.

Originally Posted by BlackVoid

So what is the real use of it?

Hey, if you don't like it, don't use it... or submit a patch so it works more the way you want it to.

BOB

[BlackVoid]

Multiple formats: still does not make sense to use multiple directories. The filename is the same, the extension is different. Very easy to filter in one directory. An additional directory level is one more unneeded step of navigation.

This is a Sony forum, we are not talking PDFs. And LRF on the Sony is much better than epub.

Metadata - I do not see the point in using it for a personal collection. I convert a book before I read it and rarely read it another time. If I want more info there is always google.

"You can't convert them with a simple click of a button": well, you cannot do that with Calibre unless you already gave all the data. Converting a well formatted book takes more time with Calibre than with BD. And correcting a badly formatted book in Calibre is not even possible. In BookDesigner it is.

"Consider that the author is writing this program for himself, not for you. Then he shares it and helps a lot of people with it out of the goodness of his heart." - That's fine, but it does not mean I have to like it.

I do not even have Calibre installed (I tried different versions a few times). I was only posting to point out that there is an alternative for conversion. Many on these forums only know about Calibre and then complain about PDF conversion quality.

BTW, In my opinion it is a very bad thing that Sony does not provide a conversion tool for the Reader. It is a shameless tactic to drive you to their bookstore - which I could not use even if I wanted to from my country. But, I would never buy their DRM constrained stuff anyway. Customers will likely be burned when they drop LRF support.

[pilotbob]

Black void...

So, I guess I am confused. If you are perfectly happy with using your OS file manager to organize your ebook files and using BD to do your conversions then I'm a bit confused as to why you would want a program even like calibre.

BTW: There is another ebook file manager tool that works within your file system. I don't recall the name of it, but it is out there somewhere. Perhaps someone here can point you to it.

BOb

[HarryT]

BD does a much better job of creating LRF books than Calibre does.

My normal "workflow" for creating eBooks is:

1. Use BD to create the book and make the LRF version within BD.
2. Export the book as HTML from BD, and use Mobipocket Creator to create a MobiPocket version.
3. Import the Mobipocket version into Calibre, and use Calibre to convert to ePub.

Step 2 and 3 of the above take perhaps 5 minutes in total. Calibre is a SUPERB tool for creating ePub books, although I don't personally use it as a "Library Manager".