I could not resist and ordered myself a Christmas present, a Sony PRS-505 e-Book reader (it’s all Martin Pool’s fault! 
)
To use that with your own content, you need a software to convert existing e-book, HTML, PDF, and other formats to the formats that the PRS505 can understand. So I stumbled over calibre, which seems to be an awesome and complete solution for managing e-books. Of course I immediately went to package it.
The final package and Jaunty upload will still take a while, since the upstream source bundles a lot of libraries; I wrote the author about how he would prefer source changes to use the system packaged Python libraries instead, I hope I’ll get his agreement soon.
However, for those of you who already got one, or will during Christmas, here’s my own little present for you: My PPA contains preliminary, but working packages for Intrepid.
If you want to hack on the packages, I branched off the upstream trunk, loomified it to add some fixes and the packaging, and put it to Launchpad again as ubuntu branch (MOTU-owned).
Merry $END_OF_YEAR_HOLIDAYS everyone!
#1 by Darren on 2008/12/23 - 18:51
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Thank you! I had a script that updated the latest version for my wife but your PPA should be easier.
#2 by Joe Terranova on 2008/12/23 - 19:22
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The 505 actually reads pdf and txt natively, but that software is still awesome. Thanks for pointing it out and packaging it!
#3 by steven on 2008/12/23 - 19:41
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Hi… Martin…
I try to install calibre on my Intrepid 32 bit intel, and folowing the step-by-step calibra installation from http://calibre.kovidgoyal.net/download_ubuntu …
step 1: SUCCESS
sudo aptitude install python-setuptools python-imaging libqt4-core libqt4-gui python-qt4 python-mechanize imagemagick xdg-utils python-dbus python-lxml python-beautifulsoup help2man
step 2:SUCCESS
sudo easy_install -U calibre
step 3: FAIL and get error as following….
sudo calibre_postinstall
Trying to setup udev rules…
* Restarting Hardware abstraction layer hald [ OK ]
Setting up bash completion… failed
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “build/bdist.linux-i686/egg/calibre/linux.py”, line 188, in setup_completion
File “build/bdist.linux-i686/egg/calibre/ebooks/lit/from_any.py”, line 15, in
File “build/bdist.linux-i686/egg/calibre/ebooks/lit/writer.py”, line 31, in
File “build/bdist.linux-i686/egg/calibre/ebooks/lit/lzx.py”, line 15, in
AttributeError: ‘NoneType’ object has no attribute ‘Compressor’
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/usr/bin/calibre_postinstall”, line 8, in
load_entry_point(‘calibre==0.4.117′, ‘console_scripts’, ‘calibre_postinstall’)()
File “build/bdist.linux-i686/egg/calibre/linux.py”, line 451, in post_install
File “build/bdist.linux-i686/egg/calibre/linux.py”, line 322, in setup_completion
UnboundLocalError: local variable ‘manifest’ referenced before assignment
Can you help me ? why I get this error ? how I can fix it ?
Please let me know on my email send4m3@yahoo.com, if you don’t mind.
thank you…
steven
#4 by foo on 2008/12/23 - 20:04
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Can you put it in Debian too?
#5 by Rusty on 2008/12/23 - 23:23
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It reads PDF files out of the box. If you have the original text you’re even better if you can print to a pdf with a page size if 3.5″ wide by 5.5″ tall with no margins.
I will agree that PDFs that come from most publishers, with a targe of 8.5″ x 11″ format is a bit difficult to read though.
At least my experience is that it presents those documents very well. From a practical perspective it works like a paperback page reader. For some that’s not all that important though.
Foo – go read the licence agreement that comes with the PRS505 and see. I wouldn’t recommend using it to try to run crysis.
#6 by steven on 2008/12/24 - 04:07
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I make installation of calibra from their website, but find an error on the last step? and I am using Intrepid … Why did it happen ?
thanks
#7 by Martin Pitt on 2008/12/24 - 15:44
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Debian> As soon as I am happy enough with the package, I might consider it, at least into experimental. Main problem is that I do not have much time to look after bug reports in it, so if there is anyone who would want to co-maintain it, I’ll gladly appreciate.
#8 by David Prieto on 2008/12/25 - 01:42
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Cool, thanks a bunch!
#9 by Joe Terranova on 2008/12/27 - 03:10
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Thanks for the package. FYI, calibre also depends on python-qt4. I got hit with this error starting it: “ImportError: No module named PyQt4.QtCore”
Pingback: PRS-505: Got my new toy! « Martin Pitt’s Weblog
#10 by David Adams on 2009/01/14 - 02:55
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I’ve been trying to use Calibre for a few days now, and for some reason I’m having a problem, it doesn’t seem to want to detect the device, aka the send to device button is greyed out, can anybody make any suggestions of how to fix it?
tia,
David
#11 by martinpitt on 2009/01/18 - 11:20
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@David: Which eBook model do you use? Do you use the latest version from my PPA? Does “lshal|grep calibre” show anything?
#12 by Mike Epting on 2009/01/28 - 05:33
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Did you pull the package? I can’t find it in your PPA?
Kovid just doesn’t seem too interested in 64-bit versions of calibre on any platform.
Mike
#13 by martinpitt on 2009/01/28 - 12:23
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Yes, I removed it from my PPA, since calibre is now in Ubuntu Jaunty (a newer version).
#14 by Mike Epting on 2009/01/28 - 19:25
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Do you think Jaunty is OK to use on a machine that I depend on? I suspect it would be foolhardy to move ahead now.
Meanwhile, I’ve heard from Kovid and he is helping me figure out why I can’t install his binary version on Intrepid.
Thanks,
Mike
Pingback: Martin Pool: recent readings | Install and Use Ubuntu
#15 by Tom Lamparty on 2009/03/12 - 01:43
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Was just at the Calibre website and used the binary installer with Ubuntu intrepid, worked perfectly! There have been some changes made since Jan.!!
#16 by Danielle on 2011/06/04 - 22:42
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I seem to be late to this party, but I was also wondering if Calibre could be used on Debian too? Looking for a solid answer? Thanks.
-Danielle
Writer, Enviroselects.com
#17 by pitti on 2011/06/05 - 15:37
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Sure, I package/maintain calibre in Debian now, and sync them into Ubuntu.
#18 by Dave on 2011/06/14 - 10:34
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Awesome, thanks for this.