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Comment by Buttons840 | Hacker News Reader

Does it manage my "library" for me?

I can open PDFs on every OS I've ever used. Like, just open the file, find a PDF file in some directory and open that PDF file and see a render of the PDF.

I've never found anything that can do the same for ebooks without also trying to manage my "library". Like, if I just want to peek at a random epub file it will add it to my "bookshelf" automatically and makes that a very prominent part of the program.

Can I use this to just open an epub file?

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Zathura and okular can do it, as well as Sumatra on windows, but they suffer from ugly defaults. The best reader is koreader (kobo device in my case) as it let you customize the reading experience.

I tried creating a reader (macos) based on mupdf (koreader also used it) and it’s definitely possible to have an epub viewer. I also dislike bookshelf type software if they try to manage the files as well (a simple database can be fine). So far. I just use these to check the epub file and do the reading on the kobo instead (or convert to pdf if I want annotations (ipad)).

It's worth noting that KOReader is available for desktop Linux users, both as a Debian package and AppImage. The interface is better suited to touch screens though. I suspect that is why noone has bothered to port/build it for other desktop operating systems.

Its what I use on a Linux tablet because of the better touchscreen UI. Foliate did not work as well.

Zathura will by default keep a history and your position in each document, which I personally don't like (I want it to start from the beginning each time) but you can change this with 'set database "null"' in the config file. I tried zathura for pdfs a while ago but went back to evince due to the nice feature of showing all search results in a sidebar when you search. Unfortunately evince doesn't support epub. My zathurarc so far is:

  set database "null"
  set adjust-open "width"
  set scroll-wrap false
  set font "monospace light 24"
  set statusbar-home-tilde true
  set window-title-home-tilde true
  set window-title-page true
  set guioptions "v"
  map [fullscreen] <PageDown> scroll full-down
  map [fullscreen] <PageUp> scroll full-up
  map [normal] <PageDown> scroll full-down
  map [normal] <PageUp> scroll full-up

The font option just seems to cover the interface font (which is tiny if you don't set it) and guioptions "v" means no default status bar but always a vertical scroll bar. Page up and down use viewable pages instead of the default document page.

I was also just looking for an epub reader due to this Humble book bundle on game design that mostly only has epub:

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/all-about-gaming-mit-pres...

Foliate's core function is an ebook reader and not library management. Once installed you can double click your epubs to open them on foliate - it will not move around your stuff.

There is a library view in the app but it is mostly a history of recently accessed files.

Ironically, the best ebook reader that just worked like you said was Microsoft Edge when it had its own engine, before it became "Chrome but even worse".

On Linux, I prefer to use MuPDF for just opening any epub file.

That was originally a PDF reader, but it has been working for some time also with epub files.

It renders the pages not only very fast, but also better than any other epub reader that I have tried (all the others seem to make worse choices about the relative sizes of various page elements).

Atril works the same way as well.

Calibre works exactly the way you suggest, so I'm not sure why you haven't found it.

It comes with an app called ebook-viewer that doesn't do anything except view ebooks. It doesn't automatically add it to the calibre library management.

Calibre's built in ebook viewer is very ugly.

I use it for everything but actual reading.

> Calibre works exactly the way you suggest, so I'm not sure why you haven't found it.

JFC, that's not how the installation and the first run of Calibre works at all. I'd write "I'am not sure why you think people would think calibre is first a manager library and not a book reader after installing it" but I'd be lying.

I think Calibre advocates forgot what it's like to setup it for the first time and what a messy ugly process it is for new timers. A containerized version needs VNC access to set it up and perform some un-intuitive UI actions https://docs.linuxserver.io/images/docker-calibre/#applicati...

I've used https://www.kavitareader.com/ but it's not perfect either, this space could be "disrupted" by a Plex like product with opensource + licensed offerings but the target market is pretty small I think.

nix-shell -p calibre

I'm not sure what the container is for...

Yeah I'm currently running Calibre, which works fine for my needs, but my gripe is that it takes up around 1gb of space on my tiny old system.

Can someone please tell me the diskspace requirement for Foliate?

Foliate itself is about 12 MB.

However, it needs flatpak runtime. If you already have different flatpak apps, this is not an issue, it is going to be shared with them, but if this is going to be your first-and-only flatpak app, you need to add few hundreds MB.

Thanks!

I'm pretty sure I already have flatpak, and enough space to run both Calibre and Foliate to compare them.

Calibre reader default to auto changing the opened file.

But it brings a densely featured library manager along with it. The OP seems to just want something to open books.

So? Don't run the command for the library manager. No one is forcing you to open it. They are completely independent commands. You might as well complain that all you want to do is list directories but linux only provides coreutils which also includes chcon and I don't want to run chcon.

I love Calibre, even calibre-web, which I can use as an ebook store by modifying the URLs in my Kobo eReader so that I can download ebooks from my server directly from the eReader over WiFi.

I use Calibre to manage my collection, create book covers if I need to for non-boo k documents, web for organising and occasional looking up of things, and eReader for reading.

Just recently setup some ebook software on my linux laptop trying not only use Apple for everything these days.

Calibre was the very first thing I tried but it seems like it was going to be a time sink. I can't quantify that precisely maybe because of the design? I didn't seem like I could just get going easily.

Foliate was the next thing I tried and seemed perfect. Easy to start, limited options, good design. It was a lot closer to what I was used to on my mac.

I'm sure Calibre probably does a bunch of things perfectly and I should revisit it, but that's the experience coming from a novice.

I like foliate, certainly one of the slicker options out there, but yes it does have the behaviour you describe.

I do have need of a library, but there's not much point for me if it's just one or two types of document. I've just moved to the new Zotero 7 beta, which has epub support, has always managed PDFs and web snapshots, and since Zotero 6 has supported rich annotation.

Perfect setup for me. One library containing all my notes, citations and reading.

I'm actually working on something like this:

https://github.com/project-kiosk/kiosk/tree/v3

I'm still deep in the trenches, though. That project is like my personal zen garden of deadline-free software development, so don't expect a release soon. Happy if someone would be interested in contributing, though :)

Check out sioyek, it’s great and can open epubs like normal pdfs:

https://sioyek.info/ https://github.com/ahrm/sioyek

Sioyek uses the MuPDF engine, which supports EPUB: https://mupdf.com/

I stumbled over it but didn’t installed it because the website doesn’t mention the ebook functionality.

“Sioyek is a PDF viewer with a focus on technical books and research papers”

Nightmarish with a tablet.

> I can open PDFs on every OS I've ever used.

I can't do that, on windows, or linux. I loved the experience that evince on ubuntu gave me for comics/manga some years ago (what I want: continuous pages, no menu or scrollbar visible, centered, fixed width, variable width, scrollbar on edge hover to show progress), and nothing that I've tried comes remotely close.

I was able to come close with HTML + CSS so I am partially content.

- - -

A recent big failure of mine is to find a music player on F-Droid, to listen to albums, that

  - is capable to play a song, 
  - is capable to seek in the song
  - doesn't need access to every media file ever on my phone, only the actual file (either by popping up the file chooser, or the file is opened from an another program)

I've checked at least 15 of them, and I think it is possible. I've found multiple examples that can do two (video players that don't need access to every file, can go forward/backward but refuse to play songs, also music players that don't need access to every media file, but can't jump to a position). I eventually had to give up on this one.

I'm pretty sure VLC (from f-droid) does what you want. It might prefer to have full file access, but you can just deny that and just open files from a file browser or whatever.

Is it working for you? It is not working for me, it keeps demanding permissions. It might be something specific to my phone, but also unlikely, since there are video and audio players that can play videos and audio without any permission at all.

Just tested, TLDR yes it works.

Steps:

0. Uninstall VLC (I just did this to reset its permissions+config)

1. Install VLC (3.5.4 from fdroid)

2. Open VLC

3. It'll start with a splash screen, click next.

4. Next screen is VLC asking what permissions you want to give it. Pick the leftmost of the 3

5. Finish the setup wizard

6. It prompts for notification permission, which I allowed

7. You should be at a screen titled "Permission not granted", with 2 buttons. Click the right button to pick a file

8. Use the system file dialog to pick a file

9. It plays

I don't have "2 buttons" on the screen titled "Permission not granted", and no file dialog. Also not working, when asking VLC to play the file from another program. Must be a bug or incompatibility somewhere. Also this must be the reason why I wasn't able to find a music player on F-Droid then :| Thank you for checking!

Just be aware, that music player without file access won't be able to traverse/list directories, so playlists won't work. This is a limitation of any file-picker based file access (e.g. flatpak applications on linux, accessing files via portals have exactly the same limitations). As the sibling comment says, it is possible to run vlc this way, but be aware of the limitations.

MPV for Android seems to meet all your criteria for audio playback: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/is.xyz.mpv/

That does the trick, thank you!

koreader is very polite about this, unlike calibre.

Calibre has a 'standalone' ebook viewer component.

maybe there’s a firefox extension you could use that when you set the default file opener it works like that? or drag and drop it on firefox with an extension.

FBReader does this on MacOS

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