Anyone who forks Calibre and gives it a useful GUI; or creates what people actually need (X-to-Y format shifting tools) without all the weird cruft that Calibre has (original article fails to mention that "add books" creates a bunch of folders in odd places) would be very popular.
Not only is the Calibre UI awful, but the HTML it generates internally (e.g, when converting to ePub) is seriously nasty. I wouldn't be surprised if it significantly slowed down book opening / display on some devices.
Part of the problem, though, is simply that there's no really good common "interchange format" for ebooks. All of the currently available formats (ePub, MOBI, HTML, PDF, FB2...) are effectively meant for direct consumption by some sort of device or another, so converting them to other formats is a messy process. I'm currently working on a simple new format for authoring (fiction) books in, as well as tools for converting this to all the other formats that matter; anyone interested in helping? :)
The format I'm planning to use as the intermediate is basically just a restricted subset of HTML. I'm primarily targeting fiction texts with this format, so advanced formatting isn't generally necessary.
Agreed. I've used Calibre for a long while now, originally for my PRS-505 and now using it for my Story HD, but sometimes it's painful doing simple tasks because of all the added kludge they've added throughout the years.
Which, alas, requires installing Calibre in the first place.
The lack of command-line tools that avoid pulling in hundreds of QT dependencies that I do not need (not to mention Calibre itself) is rather annoying.
Anyone who forks Calibre and gives it a useful GUI; or creates what people actually need (X-to-Y format shifting tools) without all the weird cruft that Calibre has (original article fails to mention that "add books" creates a bunch of folders in odd places) would be very popular.