This looked intriguing, so I gave it an install. Upon first run, it prompted me with a login prompt for some kind of online service, and could find no way to just run this software installed on my local computer without logging into someone else's cloud service.
I see some discussions here proposing this as a Calibre replacement, but how can a frontend to a cloud service replace genuine desktop software?
You both should do the bare minimum amount of research before asking these questions or insulting the project. It would take you one whole click to find the server code.
> The Company may use Personal Data for the following purposes: For the performance of a contract: the development, compliance and undertaking of the purchase contract for the products, items or services You have purchased or of any other contract with Us through the Service.
Sounds problematic, could go as far as trading user data to other companies.
> For business transfers: We may use Your information to evaluate or conduct a merger, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution, or other sale or transfer of some or all Our assets, whether as a going concern or as part of bankruptcy, liquidation, or similar proceeding, in which Personal Data held by Us about our Service users is among the assets transferred
I was just about to make a submission for the excellent Flow E-reader ( https://www.flowoss.com ) , which I discovered today. Browser based, books stored in localstorage, ridiculously fast UI, cloud via your dropbox. So, basically what Librum promises, but already completely functional.
Let's make E-books a fully integrated part of the web experience! There's just a few gaps to bridge. It could be done with PDF, so it can be done with ePUB.
A number of e-book platforms are discussed on my blog, which dives deeply into the technical nuances of a few[1]. Ultimately, I typeset a classic from Standard EBooks[2]: Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde[3].
I suppose I'm not the only one wondering whether this could replace Calibre for me. Most features seem to be there, but will it allow me to sync ebooks to my Kobo device?
I was intrigued by the clean interface enough to download it. Then I was asked to create an online account...
Anyway, I think it replacing calibre depends on how much advanced features one uses. Calibre in more than 15 years old and has a lot of "speciality" plugins.
Unless you have a seriously good reason for not supporting one of the other alternatives to Calibre (such as this project), please just support that project with your efforts?
If you do have a good reason, then please prioritize unit testing, proper release engineering, requiring documentation be included with patches, and proper UX (including, but not limited to, respecting the conventions of the host OS) that is usable by real-world users who don't obsess over managing their library.
Not having to spend an hour configuring stuff so I can sync my reading position and shelves from my e-reader...and then another hour configuring sync to a service like goodreads - would be just swell.
Not the person you're replying to but I am a user of Calibre --
1. Automatic ingesting and conversion of book files (download a pdf, epub, mobi, even something with DRM to a specific folder and it's available for reading/transfer automatically)
2. One (or more if being selective) click loading onto an e-reader (with auto format conversion)
3. Plugins or native feature DRM removal for purchased ebooks. Also plugin support for reading different file types, tying it all in to the main app seems clunky, better to have auto-installed file-type plugins and the abstraction/freedom plugins bring
4. Automatic/semi-manual/full-manual metadata control. Being able to scan the internet for new covers, isbns, category tags, blurbs, etc and selectively choose what to add is perfect while still retaining the options for grab everything or enter everything by hand too
5. Full text search of all file formats, as well as field-specific metadata search
6. Semi-manual curation with tag filtering and virtual libraries (saved searches basically, very powerful in combination with tags and ratings)
7. Highlight/quote saving. This is something which I do a lot on the e-reader and have been meaning to find a plugin to load them back into Calibre. Native support (in your app) would be fantastic
8. Keyboard shortcuts, theming, all those other nice little features that are less calibre-specific
edit - adding more as I thought on this longer:
* Cover and table views - it's nice to see the book covers yet also the compact editing and selection of a text-only table is essential. Sorting by title, author, publish, upload/ingest date, rating, etc is also quite important
* Folder/file based data storage. Having database files for extra metadata or internally needed stuff is a-ok yet it's so nice to be able to go into a folder named after the author and copy out a file in any of the converted formats. Automatically updating the metadata in the file itself (title, author, publish date, etc) and standardizing the file names is also key
* Book editing. This is less important early on since it's a big feature yet it's nice to be able to go in and fix typos from OCR or take out extra whitespace (or copyright warnings). A global reformatter or format aware find/replace is also quite handy for standardizing across multiple download sources (h2 vs h1 for chapter titles, weird indenting at the start of sections, dividers done with ---, <hr>, or custom images, etc). Style editors are nice yet less important since reader apps/devices generally handle most of this
* Image background removal. If you have a dark mode or sepia or even better custom theming in the book reader view, there will be images and custom dividers with white backgrounds that would look better inverted or with transparent backgrounds. This is a tricky one, since some images don't make sense to invert or tweak to the theme, yet done well it's a really nice feature
Where do y'all get ebooks from? I've been getting ebooks from Amazon and using Calibre to convert them to epubs, but I'd love it if I could just buy DRM-free epubs. Lots of authors seem reticent to do that. (Brandon Sanderson being an exception; none of his works are DRM'd, at least they shouldn't be.)
I prefer to buy eBooks directly from the author, with a fallback to sites like leanpub.
The process sucks though: you typically get a zip, which contains .epub, .mobi, and .pdf. And the naming is bogus, with spaces sometimes replaced by underscores or hyphens, and sometimes with the author's name and sometimes not. So you have to unzip the file, get the contents, decide whether to keep them all or not, move them somewhere else, and then have your reader(s) realize that they're there, and try not to get dupes in the "shelf" view, and deal with the crappy metadata, and, and, and ...
It'd be super nice if we got some standards here! It's not like Amazon has to adopt them -- they're a separate ecosystem. But if all the "indie" eBook publishers did the same thing, the reader apps could make this so much less painful.
Yet again a plug for Epubor Ultimate, which claims to, and in my experience, does remove DRM from pretty much any EPUB or PDF, and works on Kindle books as well. The workflow is much simpler than with the DeDRM plugin for Calibre, and so far it has survived at least one change in Kindle encryption. I have used it on books from Kobo, ebooks.com, and Amazon.It is pretty much the only non-free software I own, and it lets me have a completely free library.
epubor just uses the calibre derdrm plugin internally, without even acknowledging that, thereby stealing the word of the maintainers of the dedrm plugin.
Depending on where you're from, checking out books from your local library via overdrive/libby might work for you. I don't know if it's standard for all models, but Kobo e-readers have builtin overdrive support.
I suspect a lot of authors don’t have much choice. Big authors and people who self-publish sure, but a lot of people struggle to get published and I imagine a sizable fraction of publishers who don’t specifically cater to geek audiences would just drop a book and move on to one of the other hundreds of submissions if someone insisted on a drm free release.
I have allowed amazon e-books into my firewall after I vet they are from a publisher I can trust... I do not have interest in allowing books from strangers into my firewall. Some authors on amazon have posted their books DRM-free (Brandon Sanderson is an example).
I usually check to see if the publisher sells the e-book directly. If so, I will consider buying there. Usually amazon has a cheaper price, and I buy from them and strip the DRM.
I've been rather happy with Librera, although when reading foreign languages, I prefer KOReader for its locally installed dictionary lookups (you have to add them). Note that these are both reader software, first, and not advanced library management packages (as far as I know).
The last I checked, Librera also had two versions on the Play store, with the paid pro (or whatever) version sending a few dollars towards the Ukrainian developer. Who's been donating to the defense efforts since the war started. Or was; that language now appears to be gone from the web site.
Anyway, for those not familiar with FDroid and/or who want to contribute to development other that via PayPal -- or, looks like now that would be Patreon.
I'd like projects like this to include some kind of rationale for their existence. This reader sounds fine, but what's wrong with Calibre and LibreraFD?
Also, the attitude in the Calibre community to even minor UI suggestions, at least in my experience, amounts to "if you think there's any room for improvement, you're wrong and should leave forever".
Not the original commenter, but I totally agree with you -- no one needs to justify free software at all; the more the merrier. I do think that there's something to be said for clarifying why one might use one over the other in a space with multiple options or one clear winner (which I think Calibre is right now). Offering some improvements, problems that are fixed, etc. explicitly could help users make a jump or understand their options better.
That's absolutely a nice to have, though -- free software for the sake of free software is excellent, and always justification enough.
Because if you want to "sell" your software so that people download the application and even contribute to the project, you should give them a reason. Otherwise, why would someone use this (or even bother to take a look at it) instead of an alternative that is decade-old and trusted?
Well that's fine, that's a perfectly good rationale, but it would be helpful to actually state it. Once it's out there with some effort to get other people's attention, why not say what is supposed to make it interesting? I like Calibre even if its UI is a bit quirky. It's not perfect and I'd look into something new if there is a concrete reason to do so, but I have better things to do than investigate every possibility without such reasons.
>Why should they have to justify providing free software?
They don't, but they have to be honest about what they're presenting. There's this shitty motte-and-bailey situation in open source where their website ( https://librumreader.com/ ) looks like marketing for a serious application - but the moment you treat it like a serious application, people are like "it's free, why are you treating it like a serious application?".
Look:
>Simplicity
>Focus on what actually matters, using a simple and straight forward interface.
>Your time is too valuable to be wasted on complex applications.
What does the tone here convey? Is it "this is just a cool project I wrote"?
Readit News
I see some discussions here proposing this as a Calibre replacement, but how can a frontend to a cloud service replace genuine desktop software?
And it reads a bit like an ad: "productive ... simple and straightforward".
These are dark patterns... I wouldn't be surprised if it will became a paid service. Buyers beware.
https://github.com/Librum-Reader/Librum/issues/95#issuecomme...
https://github.com/Librum-Reader/Librum-Server
Sounds problematic, could go as far as trading user data to other companies.
> For business transfers: We may use Your information to evaluate or conduct a merger, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution, or other sale or transfer of some or all Our assets, whether as a going concern or as part of bankruptcy, liquidation, or similar proceeding, in which Personal Data held by Us about our Service users is among the assets transferred
And also just outright selling the data.
Nice.
Let's make E-books a fully integrated part of the web experience! There's just a few gaps to bridge. It could be done with PDF, so it can be done with ePUB.
[1]: https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2020/04/11/project-gutenberg-p...
[2]: https://standardebooks.org/
[3]: https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2020/04/28/typesetting-markdow...
Anyway, I think it replacing calibre depends on how much advanced features one uses. Calibre in more than 15 years old and has a lot of "speciality" plugins.
I’m working on building a replacement for Calibre that is backwards compatible. I’d love to hear what you expect in that kind of tool.
If you do have a good reason, then please prioritize unit testing, proper release engineering, requiring documentation be included with patches, and proper UX (including, but not limited to, respecting the conventions of the host OS) that is usable by real-world users who don't obsess over managing their library.
Not having to spend an hour configuring stuff so I can sync my reading position and shelves from my e-reader...and then another hour configuring sync to a service like goodreads - would be just swell.
1. Automatic ingesting and conversion of book files (download a pdf, epub, mobi, even something with DRM to a specific folder and it's available for reading/transfer automatically)
2. One (or more if being selective) click loading onto an e-reader (with auto format conversion)
3. Plugins or native feature DRM removal for purchased ebooks. Also plugin support for reading different file types, tying it all in to the main app seems clunky, better to have auto-installed file-type plugins and the abstraction/freedom plugins bring
4. Automatic/semi-manual/full-manual metadata control. Being able to scan the internet for new covers, isbns, category tags, blurbs, etc and selectively choose what to add is perfect while still retaining the options for grab everything or enter everything by hand too
5. Full text search of all file formats, as well as field-specific metadata search
6. Semi-manual curation with tag filtering and virtual libraries (saved searches basically, very powerful in combination with tags and ratings)
7. Highlight/quote saving. This is something which I do a lot on the e-reader and have been meaning to find a plugin to load them back into Calibre. Native support (in your app) would be fantastic
8. Keyboard shortcuts, theming, all those other nice little features that are less calibre-specific
edit - adding more as I thought on this longer:
* Cover and table views - it's nice to see the book covers yet also the compact editing and selection of a text-only table is essential. Sorting by title, author, publish, upload/ingest date, rating, etc is also quite important
* Folder/file based data storage. Having database files for extra metadata or internally needed stuff is a-ok yet it's so nice to be able to go into a folder named after the author and copy out a file in any of the converted formats. Automatically updating the metadata in the file itself (title, author, publish date, etc) and standardizing the file names is also key
* Book editing. This is less important early on since it's a big feature yet it's nice to be able to go in and fix typos from OCR or take out extra whitespace (or copyright warnings). A global reformatter or format aware find/replace is also quite handy for standardizing across multiple download sources (h2 vs h1 for chapter titles, weird indenting at the start of sections, dividers done with ---, <hr>, or custom images, etc). Style editors are nice yet less important since reader apps/devices generally handle most of this
* Image background removal. If you have a dark mode or sepia or even better custom theming in the book reader view, there will be images and custom dividers with white backgrounds that would look better inverted or with transparent backgrounds. This is a tricky one, since some images don't make sense to invert or tweak to the theme, yet done well it's a really nice feature
I prefer to buy eBooks directly from the author, with a fallback to sites like leanpub.
The process sucks though: you typically get a zip, which contains .epub, .mobi, and .pdf. And the naming is bogus, with spaces sometimes replaced by underscores or hyphens, and sometimes with the author's name and sometimes not. So you have to unzip the file, get the contents, decide whether to keep them all or not, move them somewhere else, and then have your reader(s) realize that they're there, and try not to get dupes in the "shelf" view, and deal with the crappy metadata, and, and, and ...
It'd be super nice if we got some standards here! It's not like Amazon has to adopt them -- they're a separate ecosystem. But if all the "indie" eBook publishers did the same thing, the reader apps could make this so much less painful.
Kobo and Google Play Books also offer DRM-free books, but you have to look at the book details (further down the book page) to see this information.
[1] https://libreture.com/bookshops/
[2] https://weightlessbooks.com/
[3] https://www.smashwords.com/
(free) archiveofourown.org
(free) tthfanfic.org
(paid) https://www.humblebundle.com/books
(paid) https://www.fanatical.com/en/bundle/books
Tons more...
https://www.overdrive.com/
I usually check to see if the publisher sells the e-book directly. If so, I will consider buying there. Usually amazon has a cheaper price, and I buy from them and strip the DRM.
[0] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.foobnix.pro.pdf.reader/
The last I checked, Librera also had two versions on the Play store, with the paid pro (or whatever) version sending a few dollars towards the Ukrainian developer. Who's been donating to the defense efforts since the war started. Or was; that language now appears to be gone from the web site.
Anyway, for those not familiar with FDroid and/or who want to contribute to development other that via PayPal -- or, looks like now that would be Patreon.
https://librera.mobi/
For those who asked: Humble Bundle is another source of DRM-free ebooks.
That's absolutely a nice to have, though -- free software for the sake of free software is excellent, and always justification enough.
They don't, but they have to be honest about what they're presenting. There's this shitty motte-and-bailey situation in open source where their website ( https://librumreader.com/ ) looks like marketing for a serious application - but the moment you treat it like a serious application, people are like "it's free, why are you treating it like a serious application?".
Look:
>Simplicity
>Focus on what actually matters, using a simple and straight forward interface.
>Your time is too valuable to be wasted on complex applications.
What does the tone here convey? Is it "this is just a cool project I wrote"?