A simple and lightweight alternative to Calibre.
As of now, I am halting development of 22. There are many different reasons why I've decided to throw in the towel. I have learned that ebook managers are much more difficult to get right than I had previosuly imagined. To support the wide array of formats and the many different intracacies of each would require more effort than I am willing to put forth at this time.
The most difficult aspect of the project is in regards to conversion and metadata editing. I have found Vala to be extremely lacking in terms of its libxml-2.0 library and it was painful trying to edit the ebook metadata using it. There is little documentation and a very small userbase for the library. I also have grown tired of Vala as a language. Similar to libxml-2.0 it has a small user-base and very little community support. I would prefer to spend my time in a language that I see has a more promising future and more relevance to my career.
I have also stopped using Elementary OS and I no longer wished to publish it only to the AppCenter. I currently use Manjaro XFCE with i3-gaps and I don't want to fiddle around making it look good on Elementary. The reasons for my switch include outdated software in the repositories, various bugs with the operating system that I have little hope will ever be fixed, and other small things.
Lastly, trying to maintain compatibility with Calibre proved near impossible. There is not much documentation about how Calibre formats it's libraries and what all the different fields in the metadata files it creates are used for. The only way would be to wrap Calibre's existing command line utilities, but that sort of defeats the purpose of the application.
Through the course of development I have learned what a tremendous application Calibre is. It is able to handle any format you throw at it and is a one-stop-shop for all ebook needs. I have been using it for years and if my only complaint is that it has a bunch of functionality that I don't use, then I am willing to keep using it. To develop a minimal version would require a rewrite of all of the existing and well-tested ebook conversion and editing code that already works perfectly with Calibre.
I learned a lot and had some fun attempting to develop such an application. I will always develop applications that I find personally useful and if something changes in the future, I am not against trying again.
- Evan
Calibre is overkill for the majority of my ebook management needs. All I really need is a way to edit the book's metadata, convert the book to kindle format if necessary, and manage books that are installed on my devices. I don't need any sort of "server" or ebook viewing / editing capabilities. Calibre has grown into a behemoth of an an application; the goal of 22 is to provide similar features with a much lighter application.
The library will follow the same folder and file structure as Calibre so you should be able to use either application interchangably and with your existing Calibre library.
- View your ebook library
- Manage ebook metadata
- Convert epub to mobi (Support kindles)
- Need to find a conversion library or write my own...
- Send books to e-readers