Beta testers for calibre 3.0 needed

[kovidgoyal]

Hi all,

After almost three years of on-and-off development, calibre 3.0 is now ready for beta testing!

Please run the beta as you would normal calibre and report any problems you encounter in this thread. I have been personally using the beta calibre on linux as my normal calibre for several months now with no problems. There are no changes to the database/conversion/viewing/editing/user interface code so those should all work just as before. That said, always be safe by backing up your data before trying out the beta.

Thank you for your help in making calibre 3 possible!


The major new features are:

Spoiler:

1. All new Content server.
   
   • You can now read books directly in a web browser, even when there is no internet connection. This means you no longer need to use an app on your phone/tablet to read books. Instead you can directly connect to the calibre server and read books in the browser itself. The books are stored in offline storage so you can read even when the network is not available.
     
   • The server can show multiple calibre libraries
     
   • The server supports multiple user accounts. And you can control which libraries each user can access.
     
   • The server can now make changes to your calibre libraries (adding books, editing metadta, etc.). Currently this feature can only be accessed using the calibredb command line tool. A web user interface for it will be added in the future.
     
   • The server is very new and will have many missing features. These will be added over the course of normal calibre development after calibre 3. Feel free to request new features as part of your beta feedback. A list of features I intend to add in the future is here: https://github.com/kovidgoyal/calibr...e/srv/TODO.rst
2. High DPI (Retina) monitor support
   
   This is automatic if you have a High DPI monitor, calibre's interface should get scaled appropriately. You can turn it off via Preferences->Look & Feel->Adjust for high resolution screens

Backwards incompatibility:

Spoiler:

• The Content server was completely re-written. While I have tried hard to make sure the APIs used by third party programs that connect to calibre remain compatible, there is likely to be some breakage. Also, no changes you made to any server options will be preserved. For example, if you changed the port from the default of 8080, it will be reset to 8080. You will have to redo the configuration.
  
• Because the content server can now make changes to calibre libraries, you can no longer run calibredb.exe, calibre-server.exe, calibre.exe together, as they are all capable of modifying calibre data. Instead of running calibre.exe and calibre-server.exe, use the embedded server inside the main calibre program. calibredb.exe can now connect directly to a running calibre server (either calibre-server.exe or the server running inside calibre). See https://github.com/kovidgoyal/calibr.../custom.py#L99 for details on how to do that.
  
• On linux calibre can no longer uses the system Qt theme/style plugins as they cause hangs/crashes on some systems. This means calibre might look a little different from other applications on your system. You can force the use of the system theme by setting the environment variable CALIBRE_USE_SYSTEM_THEME, but do so at your own risk.
  

How to install the beta

Spoiler:

Betas for all platforms are available here: https://download.calibre-ebook.com/betas/

They have version numbers starting with 2.99. You can install them just as you would a normal calibre. If something goes wrong, simply un-install and go back to using the current calibre release.

On Windows, you can also use the calibre portable beta to test things in an isolated way.

On macOS you can simply install calibre.app somewhere other than /Applications and run it separately from your main calibre install.

On Linux you install the beta by un-tarring the tarball into some empty directory, for example, in a terminal:

mkdir calibre-beta && tar xvf /path/to/downloaded/tarball.tar.xz -C calibre-beta

and then run the beta as:

calibre-beta/calibre

Known issues

Spoiler:

• The new Content server is a very large piece of software written from scratch over several years (~ 20,000 lines of code). As such, it is bound to have problems, especially given the wild diversity of browsers out there. I have tested it on Chrome and Firefox and I know that it does not work well with Microsoft browsers (Internet Explorer and Edge) which are missing features it needs. But, there are many other browsers out there for which I dont have the resources to test, most prominently, Safari on macOS/iOS.
  
• On windows, calibre is now built with Visual Studio 2015 (upgraded from Visual Studio 2008). While this should cause no problems, there might be issues, especially on older windows, like Vista.
  

[BetterRed]

Installed Windows portable, welcome wizard did its normal thing, portable started, showed the splash, and hung - Windows reports program not responding, so I terminated it. Here's the splash



No other calibre was running - this was immediately after a WU reboot. My calibre 64 bit (2.84), and a previously installed calibre portable (2.83) are working fine.

Might as well ask something I intended asking, assuming its not there already. Could there be an option to use a nominated browser rather than than the system default e.g. I would nominate ==>> C:\Program Files (x86)\QupZilla\qupzilla.exe.

BR

[kovidgoyal]

A browser for what?


As for the hang,
Run it with

calibre-debug -g

and post the output

[Terisa de morgan]

I've installed calibre portable, edited a book and use some functions. No problem... aside of the details font has changed.

[kovidgoyal]

@Terisa Changed to a different font or changed in size?

[Terisa de morgan]

It looks like different font, but I can be wrong. I'll check in detail at home, and I'll be back to you.

[nqk]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

As for the hang,
Run it with

calibre-debug -g

and post the output

It would hang when I launch Calibre-portable.
If I go to the Calibre folder and run the Calibre.exe, it loads fine.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

A browser for what?


As for the hang,
Run it with

calibre-debug -g

and post the output

Even if calibre-debug -g works? If I start calibre-portable, it'll hang, when I run calibre-debug -g it'll start the application. (just making sure if that's what you'd expect, trying to get the output from my tablet to mobileread is a pain, so I prefer to only do it if it really helps).

One big plus, from what I've seen with the calibre-debug: scrollbars! The current calibre is almost impossible to use on a portrait screen

Edit: same situation as nqk: calibre-portable hangs, calibre.exe doesn't.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

A browser for what?


As for the hang,
Run it with

calibre-debug -g

and post the output

A browser for the server when its run from within the GUI, I don't like having my workhorse browser (firefox) cluttered with calibre library pages.

How do I run calibre-debug for a specific instance of calibre portable. It always runs the installed version - i.e. the one in the path.

Meanwhile I'll try the 32bit version

BR

[kovidgoyal]

Odd calibre-portable.exe works fine on my computer.

What kind of hang is it? Is it using CPU? WHat happens if you wait for five minutes, does it stay hung?

[kovidgoyal]

@BR: calibre portable is 32bit.

And you can use whatever browser you like with the server.

If the issue, as others have reported is only with calibre-portable.exe, calibre-debug will not help.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by nqk

It would hang when I launch Calibre-portable.
If I go to the Calibre folder and run the Calibre.exe, it loads fine.

- but with my regular configuration and libraries

BR

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

@BR: calibre portable is 32bit.

And you can use whatever browser you like with the server.

If the issue, as others have reported is only with calibre-portable.exe, calibre-debug will not help.

It hangs forever, well 5 minutes, in the "Loading books" phase. CPU load is ~25%

I'm accustomed to startup times of < 20secs on a +100K book library.

I wonder if it has to do with existing environment variable settings, mine are:



Windows 10 64bit 1607, up to date as of 2 hours ago.

BR

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Odd calibre-portable.exe works fine on my computer.

What kind of hang is it? Is it using CPU? WHat happens if you wait for five minutes, does it stay hung?

It uses around 40% CPU and I'll connect my power supply and see if it'll ever finishes...

Windows 10.0.15063, 64 bit

[kovidgoyal]

Hmm if it is using CPU then it's likely not a permanent hang. Can one of you use Process Monitor and see what it says about what the process is doing?

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/...ssmonitor.aspx