BookCAT vs Calibre

2024. Calibre added support for new Kobo color e-readers



Ebook management software Calibre has updated its Kobo driver to add support for the new color Kobo devices. Besides, the new version of the software includes other new features. In the Edit book dialog now you can add a setting to control cursor width under Preferences->Editor settings. The Regex-function mode allows to show a confirmation popup when closing the function editor when there are unsaved changes. Spell check now allows to exclude words in ALL CAPS or with numbers or in camelCase/snake_case from the list of words. The search now allows easy inverting the current search via the right click menu on the search box.


2023. Calibre 7.0 adds innovative notes feature, audio EPUB support



Kovid Goyal, the mastermind behind the wildly ingenious Calibre, has dropped Calibre 7.0 into the digital ether—a new stable version of the much-beloved, cross-platform, open-source e-book organizer that has kept readers and their libraries in delightfully structured chaos. In this spectacularly brainy update, users now have the thoroughly useful ability to attach notes festooned with links, images, and whimsically formatted text to authors, series, publishers, and tags. But wait, there’s more! Calibre 7.0 boldly steps into the sonic unknown with "Audio EPUB" books, where text is read aloud by recorded voices—though Linux users may encounter a small, patent-induced hiccup on that front. And, for a finale that would make even the most bureaucratically inclined Vogon swoon, the update finally answers long-standing pleas by allowing "data" files to tag along with your books, managed with a simple, glorious right-click. Revolution, thy name is Calibre 7.0.


2023. Calibre improves metadata editor



Calibre has released a new version 6.17, which brings several new features and enhancements. One notable addition is the support for WOFF format fonts and CID keyed fonts in font subsetting, resulting in further reduction of file sizes. Additionally, when data files are present, the book details now include a convenient link to open the data files folder. The template language has been upgraded with various functions that allow users to query the extra files associated with a book. In the Edit book feature, users can now compress images in the WEBP format. The comments editor has also been improved, offering buttons to easily create links to data files and folders when inserting a link. Furthermore, users can now display the id, formats and path columns through Preferences, allowing for more customization. A new button has been added to the trash bin, enabling users to easily clear its contents. Lastly, the metadata editor now utilizes a dedicated editor with a preview option for custom columns that store Markdown formatted text.


2023. Calibre now allows to read books aloud with more voices



New Calibre's update brings more voices to Read Aloud feature. It works only on Windows because uses Microsoft speech subsystem. When Read aloud is speaking, you can make the control bar translucent so that words under the bar are visible. There is a number of other new features. Spell check dialog now allows Up and Down arrow keys to work regardless of focus. Edit book feature now allows automatic fixing of various simple CSS errors. And File browser allows using keyboard shortcuts to re-order the spine. Also from the library you can now open the book folder easily. Add by ISBN feature now allows adding using identifiers other than ISBN as well. The update is bundled Qt to 6.4 this means calibre on macOS is now only supported on Big Sur and newer.


2022. Ebook catalog software Calibre 6.3 fine-tunes full text search



In several updated Calibre developers added some new improvements and bug fixes for full-text search, introduced in version 6. They added a button to re-index a book - useful if the book's contents have been changed outside calibre. Search queries start supporting quoting using "docstrings" for easier escaping. The search now ignores soft hyphens when extracting searchable text from books (though you will have to re-index your library to take advantage of this). The e-book viewer now allows searching for nearby words using a new "Nearby words" search mode. New fts_search and fts_index commands allow to perform full text searching from the command line.


2022. Calibre 6.0 now has text to speech and full text search



Calibre has just released a major update to its ebook management software. The standout feature is Full Text Search; Calibre can now optionally index all the books in your library, allowing you to search your entire collection for a specific word or phrase. To use this new function, click on the FT button to the left of the search bar. This will enable you to index your library and, once indexing is complete, perform searches. Another significant new feature is Read Aloud, which will use your computer's default voice assistant to read any ebook in your collection. This includes Google Assistant, Siri, Alexa and Cortana. You can even adjust the playback speed for those who prefer to speed it up or slow it down. Calibre also now supports CPU architectures, including Apple Silicon, without the need for Rosetta translation. This is a major enhancement, as the app is now optimized for the M1 and M2 chips in Apple laptops and Apple Studio computers.


2021. Calibre added support for the 11th Gen Kindle Paperwhite 5



Ebook management software Calibre has just added support for the brand new Kindle Paperwhite and you can now manage your e-readers collection when having it plugged into your PC or MAC. Furthermore, this release adds support for EPUB 3 landmarks in the Set Semantics tool under the Edit Book component and moves the option that allows Calibre to recognize numbers when sorting from Preferences > Tweaks to Preferences > Behavior. Calibre is one of the best ebook management software in the world, millions of users use the program. It can do some powerful stuff, such as fetch missing metadata on ebooks that you downloaded from the internet, such as book covers. It has an ebook viewer, which can edit titles, can download magazines from the internet and import your collection of books from your PC right to the e-reader, at the click of a button. Calibre


2020. Calibre 5 adds highlighting to ebook viewer



Cross-platform eBook management, reading and editing software Calibre saw a new release. There has been a lot of work on the calibre E-book viewer. It now supports Highlighting. The highlights can be colors, underlines, strikethrough, etc. and have added notes. All highlights can be both stored in EPUB files for easy sharing and centrally in the calibre library for easy browsing. Additionally, the E-book viewer now supports both vertical and right-to-left text. calibre has also moved to using Python 3. This is because Python 2 was end-of-lifed this year. This should be completely transparent to calibre users, the only caveat being that some third party calibre plugins have not yet been ported to Python 3 and therefore will not work in calibre 5


2019. Calibre 4.0 improves Content server



The new version of popular ebook management software Calibre is making its Content server ever more capable. It has gained the ability to Edit metadata, Add/remove books and even Convert books to and from all the formats calibre itself supports. It is now a full fledged interface to your calibre libraries. Besides, the new version is built on the new web browser engine Qt WebEngine. The change to use Qt WebEngine has entailed a complete rewrite of various parts of calibre, including the E-book viewer, PDF Output, Book details etc. Every attempt has been made to preserve features and functionality in a backwards compatible way, see below for a list of some known incompatibilities.


2019. Calibre adds support for the Nook Glowlight Plus 7.8



Calibre has just announced that they have official support for the new Barnes and Noble Nook Glowlight Plus. This means when you plug the e-reader into your PC via the USB cable, it will now be recognized. This new is good news for anyone who uses the software and has their own collection of ebooks, comics, magazines or newspapers they want to read on their Nook.


2018. Calibre added support for the Kindle Paperwhite 4



Ebook management software Calibre has introduced support for the new Amazon Kindle Paperwhite 4. This means your device will now be recognized by the program, allowing you to transfer documents, ebooks, manga, PDF files and various other content directly to your Paperwhite. Additional new features include metadata plugboards (which allow the definition of plugboards that also modify comments metadata) and a new keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+M) in the E-book viewer for switching between paged and flow mode. Calibre is compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux. It offers extensive metadata support, so if an ebook you downloaded from the internet has the book title listed instead of the author, or is missing cover art, this can be easily corrected with a few clicks.


2017. calibre 3.0 improves Content server



Ebook catalog software Calibre 3 has been released today. The most significant new feature is a completely revamped Calibre Content Server. This Content Server lets you wirelessly browse your Calibre books on any modern smartphone or tablet and even read the books directly in your phone’s browser. The books are stored in offline storage on the device, so you don’t need to keep Calibre running or maintain a constant internet connection to read them. Additionally, Calibre 3 now natively supports high-resolution (Retina) displays, offers the option to install various icon themes (with many available to suit different preferences) and can convert all the supported book formats to Microsoft Word (DOCX) files. Alongside the support for conversion from Word, you can now seamlessly switch between Word documents and e-book formats to your heart’s content.


2014. Calibre 2.0 gets ebook editor



Kovid Goyal has released the latest version of his ebook manager Calibre 2.0. The most significant new feature is an e-book editor, which can edit e-books in both the EPUB and AZW3 (Kindle) formats, offering numerous powerful tools and features designed to make e-book editing easier. In addition to the ability to edit books, the software now includes a new "Compare Books" tool that allows you to view all the differences between two books, highlighted and side-by-side. Calibre has long supported connecting to Android phones and tablets on all operating systems except macOS. This gap has now been addressed. You can simply plug in any Android phone or tablet on macOS and Calibre should automatically detect and connect to it, just as it already does on Windows and Linux. Additionally, you can now set up simple rules to display emblems (small icons) next to book covers in the cover grid. For instance, a heart icon next to books you have rated highly or a check mark next to books you have read and so forth. There is also a new tool called Mark Books that can be used to temporarily mark books. The mark appears as a small pushpin icon next to the book and all marks are automatically cleared when Calibre is restarted.


2013. Book library program BookCAT is discontinued



FNProgramvare, the company behind BookCAT, is shutting down and discontinuing its software. As a result, BookCAT will no longer receive support from the developer. Current users can still download the most recent versions. BookCAT was a robust database application designed to catalog and manage personal, club, school, church, or business libraries. Users could efficiently catalog their books by retrieving information from the Internet. A comprehensive set of data fields allowed users to track a broad range of details. Meanwhile, other major players in this sector, such as Collectorz and Alfa Ebooks Managers, are seizing this opportunity to offer seamless data export from BookCAT.


2013. Calibre 1.0 is available for download



WoW! Seven years after it was first released, the free ebook management software Calibre has reached version 1.0. According to the author (Kovid Goyal), lots of new features have been added to the library organizer in this new version — a grid view of book covers, a new faster database backend, the ability to convert Microsoft Word files, tools to make changes to ebooks without needing to do a full conversion, full support for font embedding and subsetting,  an easy to use tool to edit the Table of Contents in ebooks, rewritten PDF Output engine, new tool "Polish books" that allows you to perform various automated cleanup actions on ebooks.


2013. Calibre Server - access your book collection via the Internet



Probably you didn't know it, but Calibre includes the inbuilt web server - Calibre Content Server for remote library management. Besides it can download and send you the books by email. The Calibre server makes your ebooks available to the gadgets within your home or office wireless network. And if you can set up port forwarding on your router - you access your library from a remote location. You can set a password to restrict access. By default access is unrestricted. The content server lets you see the whole Calibre database on your device, which is great, although if you have a lot of books in your library - it can be slow and you have to keep hitting the “Next” button to advance to the next group of books hour after hour. Using this approach you are using the device to choose the books to download. This approach is effective if you’re just browsing your Calibre database looking for a book to download to your mobile device. But if you wish to use the search power of Calibre to locate books that meet specific criteria to download, then Calibre Server is useless. ***


2012. Calibre DRM removal plugins for Kindle, Nook, Kobo, PDF, EPUB and other ebooks



DRM (Digital rights management) is a technology for access control that is used by ebook publishers and inhibits uses of ebooks that were not desired or foreseen by the content provider. When you buy an e-book with DRM you don't really own it but just have a permission to use it in a manner dictated to you by the seller. DRM limits what you can do with e-books you have "bought". Often people who buy books with DRM are unaware of the extent of these restrictions. These restrictions prevent you from reformating the e-book to your liking, including making stylistic changes like adjusting the font sizes, although there is software that empowers you to do such things for non DRM books. People are often surprised that an e-book they have bought in a particular format cannot be converted to another format if the e-book has DRM. So if you have an Amazon Kindle and buy a EPUB book sold by Barnes and Nobles, you should know that if that e-book has DRM you will not be able to read it on your Kindle. ***


2012. Book library software Calibre gets a modern new look



The latest version of e-library organizer Calibre 0.9 features a new "modern" appearance. This update provides a more contemporary look to the interface with emphasis highlighting, gradients, rounded corners and more. The refreshed e-book viewer includes a new "paged" mode, where the text is divided into pages. This allows you to view multiple pages on the screen simultaneously. Calibre can now connect wirelessly and via USB to Android devices. Modern Android devices often use a specific "MTP" protocol when connecting through USB. Calibre now supports this protocol on Windows (Vista and later) and Linux. Another new feature is Calibre Portable, which keeps the Calibre library and settings bundled with the Calibre program. This means you can store the entire setup on a USB drive and take it with you. Calibre's conversion engine now fully supports Amazon's new KF8 format. It can convert KF8 books to other formats and convert other formats to KF8. To convert to KF8, set the output format in the Calibre conversion dialog to AZW3.


2011. Video: Calibre Tutorial about its features and interface


Kovid Goyal, the creator of the popular home library management software Calibre created this video tutorial called "How to use Calibre - a look at its features and user interface". It shows some tips of how to optimize your usage of the program user interface. The main window interface consists of four areas: the book list (shows the books in your library), library browser sidebar (allows to browse your collection by various categories like series, publishers, rating...), book detail view (shows the book cover, formats available, comments..) and the upper search bar (allows to find books in your calibre collections). The user interface areas can be risized and hidden. You can also rearrange/hide columns in the book list. Watch the video about this robust library management software.


2011. Book management program Calibre integrates with book websites



The latest version of book manager Calibre 0.8 can now search across numerous web stores like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones and others for e-book editions of the book you want. The results are shown sorted by price, making it easy to find the most affordable edition to add to your collection. This feature, like the rest of Calibre, is plugin-based, so expect new stores to be added in the future. When downloading covers for a single book, Calibre will now retrieve covers from all available online sources and let you choose the one you prefer, rather than making the choice for you. Additionally, you can now perform search and replace operations on the book list in your Calibre library using the Bulk Metadata Edit tool and create complex file names from book metadata when exporting books from the Calibre library. The new Virtual Columns feature allows you to add custom metadata fields and automatically populate them from Calibre. For instance, you can add an ISBN column or a column to display the formats the book is available in.