Calibre 0.7.33
Reviewing 0.7.28 (Nov 17, 2010)
My reviews on FileForum are often critical to the extent that anyone who reads them might conclude that I've never anything good to say about any software. Well, they'd be wrong: good software deserve good reviews and calibre is a beauty--one of the best!
Even in its current pre-version-1 form, calibre is already wonderful software; and with further development, tweaks and additional plug-ins there's little doubt in my mind that it'll become truly great software. For knowledge workers calibre easily has the potential to become a killer app because it has the wherewithal to make a PC truly useful by making it easy for users to find and connect with all sorts of disparate information whether it's all on the user's PC or not.
Simply, calibre allows a user to easily find information whether it's an e-Book (Kindle etc.) or whether it's stored within files formatted as PDF, DOC or HTML etc.--to mention just a few of the many diverse file formats that it handles with ease. And it does this by using various methods including filenames, tag information and other forms of metadata.
calibre, however, is not disk word indexer (as say X1 etc. is) and should not be thought of that way. calibre is perhaps best thought of as carrying out the functions of a traditional librarian but doing so with information that's on your PC rather than with physical library books. Librarians not only know how to effectively use the library's catalog to find wanted titles then locate them quickly and efficiently but also they perform many other book-related management services such as obtaining new books, managing the lending, provide photocopying services etc. calibre does the equivalent thereof on your PC, and it does it very effectively, ergonomically, and with style and panache.
Some background and supporting arguments
-------------------------------------------------------------
Why do I consider calibre such important software you may well ask. Essentially because PC filing systems are so archaic and inefficient at finding user information and calibre significantly helps to overcome these file system limitations. It's outrageous that over 30 years after the introduction of the PC, that finding information on a PC can be more akin to potluck with a lucky dip than that of a systematized electronic filing and retrieval system. The filing functions of operating systems such as Windows and the supposedly more sophisticated Linux etc. just manage files and not their associated content--they find, store and launch files in the correct application etc. but they do so without reference to the information (data) that those files contain. In a way calibre can be perceived of as providing that connection, it bridges the gap to the file's actual data content by making efficient use of its metadata.
Filing systems within Windows, Linux etc., use only the most primitive of metadata, file size, create date etc., and O/S link information doesn't help much either as it does not usually travel with the file once it leaves the O/S to travel across the Net. For example, the text file 'hello_world.txt' does not leave one computer and arrive at another complete with an integrated file encapsulation system including integrated metadata and certificate compartments. (Sure there are schemes where metadata is integrated with the data prior to transmission, for instance many AV files use metadata to provide information about the performance etc., even MS DOC files fall into this category but such schemes are often both secret and proprietary and the metadata is only read by the application rather than by a universal metadata interface that is controlled by the operating system.)
Not only is this inefficient and stone age primitive but also it leads to all sorts of operating system security vulnerabilities, as files in such a systemless arrangement can and do roam around anywhere within the O/S's jurisdiction with impunity (from say an external memory stick to the inside of Window's \system32 directory yet they do not have to account to the operating system for their contents which perhaps may be viruses).
As far back as when Vista was first mooted, Microsoft said it was going to integrate a database-based filing system into Vista called Win-FS but very unfortunately this MS promise turned out to be just much hot air. (Even back when Microsoft first proposed Win-FS, filing systems with integral relational database management, RDBMS, were not a new concept. Decades earlier, IBM used an integrated database scheme in OS/400, the O/S of its AS/400 minicomputers (now the iSeries).)
Suffice to say, calibre goes much of the way by providing a sophisticated environment that manages file metadata to a point far and beyond anything that Windows can do by itself including database replication/backup and a means for users to seamlessly integrate user-defined metadata. Moreover, in addition to core features, calibre integrates file format conversion utilities and also supports a plug-in subsystem infrastructure that allows for any number of functional extensions/additional features.
calibre is both very extensive and well thought out software. As such, to provide a comprehensive detailed review of its features is well outside the scope of this review, to attempt to do so would not do the software justice. My suggestion is that users set up a test environment and evaluate calibre's many options and features for themselves.
With respect to this version of calibre, my conclusions were reached using this test environment:
- Raw (input) data: 93.3GB (consisting of intermixed files HTML, PDF, TXT, MP3 etc., etc.)
- Total no. files: 92,391 spread over 3689 folders.
All files were imported in one contiguous operation by pointing calibre at a single directory in which all files and subdirectories were contained. calibre imported the files by copying and or converting copies to a new separate directory (all originals were left intact).
The only significant problem I encountered was when calibre tried to import damaged PDFs that previously had been rescued from a crashed drive. The damaged files caused calibre to stop importing (thus we've an on-error bug which fails to jump the fault).
All up, calibre is a remarkable package and I'd urge FileForum readers to try it.
Posts
Leave a Comment