Calibre ( pronounced /ˈkæl.ɪ.bə(ɹ)/, /ˈkæl.ə.bɚ/, or cal-i-ber) is a

cross-platform Within computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several Computing platform, computing platforms. Some ...

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a Software license, license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term ...

suite of

e-book An ebook (short for electronic book), also spelled as e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in electronic form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Al ...

software. Calibre supports organizing existing e-books into virtual libraries, displaying, editing, creating and converting e-books, as well as syncing e-books with a variety of e-readers. Editing books is supported for

EPUB EPUB is an e-book file format that uses the ".epub" file extension. The term is short for ''electronic publication'' and is sometimes stylized as ''ePUB''. EPUB is supported by many e-readers, and compatible software is available for most smart ...

and AZW3 formats. Books in other formats like

MOBI Mobi or MOBI may refer to: Companies * Mobi (company) mobi, Inc. is a wireless carrier founded in 2004 and based in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. The company provides service on each of the major islands of Hawaiʻi, as well as on the mainland Unit ...

must first be converted to those formats, if they are to be edited. Calibre also has a large collection of community contributed plugins.

History

On 31 October 2006, when

Sony is a Japanese multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at Sony City in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The Sony Group encompasses various businesses, including Sony Corporation (electronics), Sony Semiconductor Solutions (i ...

introduced its PRS-500

e-reader An e-reader, also called an e reader or e device, is a Mobile computing, mobile electronic device that is designed primarily for the purpose of reading digital e-books and Periodical literature, periodicals. Any device that can display text on ...

, Kovid Goyal started developing ''libprs500'', aiming mainly to enable use of the PRS-500 formats on

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

. With support from the MobileRead forums, Goyal

reverse-engineered Reverse engineering (also known as backwards engineering or back engineering) is a process or method through which one attempts to understand through deductive reasoning how a previously made device, process, system, or piece of software accompl ...

the proprietary Broad Band eBook ( BBeB) file format. In 2008, the program, for which a graphical user interface was developed, was renamed "calibre", displayed in all lowercase.

Features

Calibre supports many

file format A file format is a Computer standard, standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary format, pr ...

s and reading devices. Most e-book formats can be edited, for example, by changing the font, font size, margins, and

metadata Metadata (or metainformation) is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive ...

, and by adding an auto-generated table of contents. Conversion and editing are easily applied to appropriately licensed digital books, but commercially purchased e-books may need to have

digital rights management Digital rights management (DRM) is the management of legal access to digital content. Various tools or technological protection measures, such as access control technologies, can restrict the use of proprietary hardware and copyrighted works. DRM ...

(DRM) restrictions removed. Calibre does not natively support DRM removal, but may enable DRM removal after installing plug-ins with such a function. Calibre enables users to sort and group e-books by metadata fields. Metadata can be pulled from many different sources, e.g. ISBNdb.com; online booksellers; and providers of free e-books and periodicals in the US and elsewhere, such as the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

, ''

Munsey's Magazine ''Munsey's Magazine'' was an American magazine founded by Frank Munsey in 1889 as ''Munsey's Weekly'', a humor magazine edited by John Kendrick Bangs. It was unsuccessful, and by late 1891 had lost $100,000 ($ in ). Munsey converted it into ...

'', and

Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital li ...

; and

social networking A social network is a social structure consisting of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), networks of Dyad (sociology), dyadic ties, and other Social relation, social interactions between actors. The social network per ...

sites for readers, such as

Goodreads Goodreads is an American social cataloging website and a subsidiary of Amazon that allows individuals to search its database of books, annotations, quotes, and reviews. Users can sign up and register books to generate library catalogs and readi ...

and

LibraryThing LibraryThing is a social cataloging web application for storing and sharing book catalogs and various types of book metadata. It is used by authors, individuals, libraries, and publishers. Based in Portland, Maine, LibraryThing was developed b ...

. It is possible to search the Calibre library by various fields, such as author, title, or keyword. Full text search is available from Calibre 6.0 onwards. E-books can be imported into the Calibre library, either by

sideloading Sideloading describes the process of transferring files between two local devices, in particular between a personal computer and a mobile device such as a mobile phone, smartphone, PDA, tablet, portable media player or e-reader. Sideloading ty ...

files manually or by wirelessly syncing an e-book reading device with the

cloud storage Cloud storage is a model of computer data storage in which data, said to be on "the cloud", is stored remotely in logical pools and is accessible to users over a network, typically the Internet. The physical storage spans multiple servers (so ...

service in which the Calibre library is backed up, or with the computer on which Calibre resides. Also, online content can be harvested and converted to e-books. This conversion is facilitated by so-called ''recipes'', short programs written in a Python-based

domain-specific language A domain-specific language (DSL) is a computer language specialized to a particular application domain. This is in contrast to a general-purpose language (GPL), which is broadly applicable across domains. There are a wide variety of DSLs, ranging ...

. E-books can then be exported to all supported reading devices via

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard, developed by USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), for digital data transmission and power delivery between many types of electronics. It specifies the architecture, in particular the physical ...

, Calibre's integrated

mail server Within the Internet email system, a message transfer agent (MTA), mail transfer agent, or mail relay is software that transfers electronic mail messages from one computer to another using the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. In some contexts, the a ...

, or wirelessly. Mailing e-books enables, for example, sending personal documents to the

Amazon Kindle Amazon Kindle is a series of e-readers designed and marketed by Amazon. Amazon Kindle devices enable users to browse, buy, download, and read e-books, newspapers, magazines, Audible audiobooks, and other digital media via wireless networking ...

family of e-readers and

tablet computer A tablet computer, commonly shortened to tablet, is a mobile device, typically with a mobile operating system and touchscreen display processing circuitry, and a rechargeable battery in a single, thin and flat package. Tablets, being computers ...

s. This can be accomplished via a web browser, if the host computer is running and the device and host computer share the same network; in this case, pushing harvested content from content sources is supported on a regular interval (called 'subscription'). Also, if the Calibre library on the host computer is stored in a cloud service, such as Box.net,

Google Drive Google Drive is a file-hosting service and synchronization service developed by Google. Launched on April 24, 2012, Google Drive allows users to store files in the cloud (on Google servers), synchronize files across devices, and share files ...

, or

Dropbox Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by the American company Dropbox, Inc., headquartered in San Francisco, California, that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, personal cloud, and Client (computing), client software. Dropbox w ...

, then either the cloud service or a third-party app, such as Calibre Cloud or CalibreBox, can remotely access the library. Since version 1.15, released in December 2013, Calibre also contains an application to create and edit e-books directly, similar to the more full-featured editor tools of the Sigil application, but without the latter's

WYSIWYG In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for what you see is what you get, refers to software that allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed document, web ...

editing mode.

Associated apps

* ''Calibre Cloud'' (free) and ''Calibre Cloud Pro'' (paid), apps by Intrepid Logic that let one "access your Calibre e-book library from anywhere in the world. Place your calibre library in your Dropbox, Box, or Google Drive folder, and be able to view, search, and download from your library anywhere". As Jane Litte at ''Dear Author'' and John Jeremy at ''Teleread'' observe: This tool can be used to "create ne'sown Cloud of eBooks" and thereby read and allow downloads and emails from one's Calibre library via the Calibre folder in Box.net,

, or

. Because the Calibre-generated local wireless feed (

OPDS OPDS may refer to: * Open Publication Distribution System, a syndication format for electronic publications *Offshore Petroleum Distribution System, a U.S. Navy system for use with the Inland Petroleum Distribution System See also * OPD (disambig ...

) can only be accessed on devices sharing the same network as the Calibre library, this feature of the Calibre Cloud apps is particularly useful when away from one's home network, because it allows one to download and read the contents of one's Calibre library via the Calibre folder in Box, Dropbox, or Google Drive. * ''Calibre Companion'' (paid), an app by MultiPie, Ltd. Was recommended by calibre's developers, "brings complete integration with calibre on your desktop, giving you total control over book management on your device." John Jermey at ''Teleread'' notes this app can manage Calibre/device libraries as if one's mobile device were plugged into computer; however, unlike Calibre Cloud, Calibre Companion requires users to be at a computer and use the Calibre-generated local wireless feed (

). * ''Calibre Library'' (paid), an app by Tony Maro that allows one to "Connect wirelessly to your Calibre e-book library or other Stanza source. Browse and download your e-books on the go." This app's operations and benefits are similar to those offered by Calibre Cloud. * ''Calibre Sync'' (free), an app by Seng Jea Lee that "seamlessly connects to your Calibre Library and shows up as a connected device on Calibre. If Auto-Connect option is enabled, your device will attempt to connect to the Calibre Library when it is within the home Wi-Fi network. This allows Calibre to automatically update your device with the latest newspaper or magazines you have scheduled for download!" As with Calibre Companion, this app requires the device to be on the same network as the Calibre library. * ''CalibreBox'' (free and paid), an app by Eric Hoffmann that, like Calibre Cloud, accesses Calibre libraries from cloud storage. Unlike Calibre Cloud, it is limited to Dropbox, but CalibreBox supports more than one library at a time, and flexible sorting and filtering. Custom column support for the book detail view, sorting, and filtering by custom columns, and adding more than two libraries are restricted to paid users. The app is built on the design principles of Google's

Material Design Material Design (codename Quantum Paper) is a design language developed by Google in 2014. Expanding on the "cards" UI that debuted in Google Now, Material Design uses more grid-based layouts, responsive animations and transitions, padding, an ...

and is under active development. * ''Calibre-go'' (free), app by Litlcode Studios lets you access your Calibre e-book library from cloud storage and access the library through Calibre-go to browse, sort, search and read books on your mobile. Calibre-go supports multiple libraries across multiple accounts simultaneously. *Calibre Sync (paid), an Android app by BIL Studio that lets you access Calibre libraries from cloud storage (

OneDrive Microsoft OneDrive is a file-hosting service operated by Microsoft. First released as SkyDrive in August 2007, it allows registered users to store, share, back-up and synchronize their files. OneDrive also works as the storage Frontend and backe ...

Box A box (plural: boxes) is a container with rigid sides used for the storage or transportation of its contents. Most boxes have flat, parallel, rectangular sides (typically rectangular prisms). Boxes can be very small (like a matchbox) or v ...

, and Cloud), or from SD card. Calibre Sync supports multiple libraries across multiple accounts simultaneously, also allows users to browse, sort, search, filter and download books to read on devices.

References

External links

* * – official site {{DEFAULTSORT:Calibre (Software) 2008 software Cross-platform free software EPUB readers Free and open-source software Free software programmed in C Free software programmed in Python Linux text-related software Reference management software Software that uses Qt Software using the GNU General Public License

History

Features

Associated apps

See also

References

Further reading

External links