you know, I’m a fan of ebooks and I think that Haiku would benefit on having Calibre and a good communication bus for the most commons readers out there
I know there’s an incomplete Calibre recipe on HaikuPorts (it’s a very complex application to port, I see), I hope that more can be done on that.
Said that, I would like to donate two ebook readers I’ve hanging here to whom would take the task of completing the Calibre recipe and a reliable comm bus for connecting them on Haiku.
Ofc this is not a committment it’s a donation. But i would enjoing seeing these in my lifetime so if someone is interested, I only ask to be responsible
These are the guys:
A good old Sony PRS-650
It’s an old guy but I think it could be useful anyway since I’ve jailbreaked it uncovering the hidden android under the hood. Could be useful for dev and debugging IMHO
An almost new Aura H20
Unfortunately the e-ink panel is a bit damaged on the lower left corner, but the device is otherwise perfectly usable if you increase the text margin (to not overlap the damaged area, u know). I don’t like to donate worn stuff, but this is a damned expensive device I think it could still be useful even if not perfect (in facts I still use while travelling).This was not jailbreaked, but the SD card was replaced with a bigger one (that’s when I damage the panel…yeah…it is damned fragile). It can be easily chrooted, now. Pls bear in mind that it is not water-proof anymore
if interested, let me know!
PS for whom who are interested, I’ve switched to Kindle so…yes, I’ll not directly benefit from the port
Nice idea. Both on Calibre and on donation possibility.
I think that it may depend on the Kindle version, but all the Kindle versions i had (i think that v2 to v6) can be used with Calibre, communicating ok in Windows, using the Mobi format.
So you might still get usable software for your hardware.
Calibre porter here.
No, it isn’t complex, it just have plenty python dependencies, and i’m way too lazy to write proper recipes for them, as i already explained in an other thread.
There is no need for donating readers, but one (more) have to sit down and do the boring recipes for python modules.
They aren’t hard to create, almost all the python recipe looks like the same, so everybody can do them. Instead donating and waiting til lsomebody bites the bullet, just do the recipes for them.
Just a small notes: calibre uses dbus to recognize the attached hw, so Calibre never recognized my reader (i’m not sure where it goes wrong, i assume it is dbus and/or libusb, this needs debugging). But library-operation, metadata-editing, reading and conversion working nicely (at least worked at that time).
My patches upstreamed for Calibre, Kovid Goyal merged them, but it aged a bit, so it needs some patching here and there, but nothing impossible.
So if you got time, write recipes for the required missing python modules. For inspiration HaikuPorts already have plenty, you can study them.
I’m conflicted. I use Calibre ever once in a while under Linux, and I do like having it on Haiku, so it’s one less reason to boot another OS. OTOH I think Calibre is a horrible, horrible app to use.
It have way too much features, wich i disable, so the whole GUI is just the Library-list, no icons, no other panels.
I don’t like it either, but works and works well, i think i use only 10% of the features, i drop the file on the window, it gets added to the library and i send it to the device, and if it needed Calibre automatically converts it to a usable format. That’s all, i don’t add covers, doesn’t change the metadata, don’t use Calibre as reader, just autoconvert and push to device.
I can imagine a small native program with only theese features. I think it is possible to take the converter engine as-is, and weld a Haiku GUI around it. It is just a bunch of python scripts, nothing else.
For auto-convert the device-recognition code needs to be liberalized too.
I also don’t like it very much. Too overcrowder, without a good design and with a pedantic upgrade policy. But at the end of the day, it’s the best library manager AND communicator AND epub creator AND ebook converter AND (…) out there
i agree that a native app using those python scripts would be nice but I’m not sure if one can extract headless components from Calibre and use elsewhere. In terms of License, I mean…
One can make nicer icons, I just recoloured one, but I have no artistic veins.
(At the Haiku main iconset contest my iconset got some votes, and while i still think that was my peak-performance, somebody else can make much-much better. Ofc, i made them with Photoshop, that’s why it so hyper-realsitic, non-flat, skeuomorph.)
Calibre on Haiku will be good for everyone!! I like Calibre for its conversion tools and general epub management. I do not use the online services…so I cannot comment on those parts of Calibre. I look forward to its completion…
Please take care not to comment on old posts it isn’t good netiquette. Of course sometimes there are exceptions to this if you have something especially substantial to add that people that were in the old thread may want to know, but generally don’t do it. An alternative do doing this would have been to comment on how Calibre currently functions in a new thread.
it’s a donation. But i would enjoing seeing these in my lifetime so if someone is interested, I only ask to be responsible
