
Show HN: LibreRead 1.0 – Self-Hosted Free Ebook Reader - mysticmode
https://libreread.org
======
TAForObvReasons

        Features
        - Built using Golang
    

More general commentary: For people actually using the software, is the
implementation language really a feature?

EDIT: to be clear, I'm not attacking go as a language but rather the general
trend of citing the implementation language as a feature when the audience is
more than just "developers"

~~~
FootballMuse
For the end user? No. For the self-hoster making the decision on whether or
not to pick this solution? Yes.

The same goes with "Easy Installation". The end user doesn't care if the
install or easy or hard.

You have to consider the dependencies, resource requirements, and
manageability of anything you host.

~~~
robk
Or just containerize and don't think about that :)

~~~
nxc18
Containers can be just as much of a pain in the ass to set up as anything
else. I’ve had instances of much better experiences setting up software
running out of container than in container.

~~~
maxaf
A lousy Dockerfile or missing docker-compose.yml will do that. Just because
someone took the time to lump together _a_ container doesn't mean it's the
right one or that it would be reasonably useful to someone seeking to take
advantage of the containerized software.

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sundarurfriend
Looking at the demo (why does it _show_ the demo login details to have us
copy-paste it, instead of autofilling it or even auto-logging in?), I feel
like they tweaked the mobile interface a little bit and serve it for the
desktop, and called it 'responsive design'. Basic actions like 'Add new books'
are hidden in a hamburger menu over at a corner, easily overlooked on a
desktop, and the menu fills up the whole screen when expanded, despite having
only four options.

I like the idea, but an explanation or a FAQ would be much more useful than a
small list of vague bullet points. It looks like it takes PDFs and epubs and
serves them as HTML - but PDF conversion is particularly tricky and prone to
failure. Are there options to tweak the conversion like in Calibre, to work
around badly formatted PDFs (which seems to be most of them)? How does it
handle figures, or tables that are too large for a given mobile screen? Can it
fetch covers and/or metadata for books if necessary? Answering some use-case
questions like these can give users a better feel for the scope and goals of
the project.

~~~
smhenderson
_It looks like it takes PDFs and epubs and serves them as HTML - but PDF
conversion is particularly tricky and prone to failure._

When I clicked a PDF link it opened in FireFox's PDF viewer. Thought that was
odd/a bug. I checked it out because I would like a ePub/PDF reader that works
on any machine I have access to and can connect to a machine running this but
at first glance it needs a little work. Still, I'll check in a few weeks from
now, it's a good idea if they can overcome the issues you mentioned and make
sure things render consistently.

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orblivion
If this gets good reception, would you consider adapting this for
Sandstorm.io? Seems like it would be fitting:

[https://apps.sandstorm.io/genre/Media](https://apps.sandstorm.io/genre/Media)

------
acabal
Awesome project!

I see you're using ebooks from the project I lead, Standard Ebooks, in your
front page screenshot. Glad to see you're liking our work, and keep up your
own good work!

Drop me a line if you need any help with epub compatibility/quirks :)

~~~
mysticmode
Thank you! Standard Ebooks is a great project. I personally download and read
books from there and also used it for a lot of testing in LibreRead.

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rahimnathwani
I really like full-text search for books. Currently I use:

\- Safari Books Online: expensive, and only works with books on their platform

\- Recoll: libre/free, and can search a local book collection. Built as a
desktop app, although there's at least one web client[0]

If either LibreRead or one of the Recoll web UIs can match the speed and UI of
Safari's full-text search, I'll be very happy.

[0] I haven't tried it, because it didn't occur to me to look for one until
today: [https://github.com/koniu/recoll-
webui](https://github.com/koniu/recoll-webui)

~~~
aperrien
If you get a chance, try DocFetcher[0]. I use it for my personal calibre ebook
library at home, and I love the fact that between it's independent indexing
and the calibre portable distribution, I have a completely portable library on
my network.

[0]
[http://docfetcher.sourceforge.net/en/index.html](http://docfetcher.sourceforge.net/en/index.html)

~~~
rahimnathwani
Thanks. Tried it yesterday. It works well for my use case.

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cdancette
It would be great if we could integrate it with some ereader (kobo, Kindle).

I don't really like reading ebooks on my desktop or mobile

~~~
cseelus
Yeah, that would really be great.

Just yesterday I wanted to order the new Kindle Oasis because I think the
hardware is perfect (good to hold, physical buttons, …) but was told by a
coworker just before ordering it can‘t open .epub files.

Edit: Thanks for all the tips about .epub + Kindle. I just found out that
there also is an option to install Software like KOReader[1] if one wants to
go the Jailbreak route.

[1]
[https://github.com/koreader/koreader](https://github.com/koreader/koreader)

~~~
hexis
No Kindles can, they're based around Mobi, which is a quick file conversion
away from an epub.

~~~
spookyuser
It's quick to convert but I've had varying results going from epub -> mobi,
especially with calibre. What's worked for me the best has definitely been
kindlegen but it's still not perfect.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
In the Calibre settings, did you specify the exact version of the Kindle you
have as the output device? With that set correctly, and not just left as the
default, it has been years now since I had any formatting issues going from
epub > mobi/azw to read books on my Kindle Paperwhite.

~~~
spookyuser
Thanks, I actually don't think I've done this so I'll give it a shot!

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hammerandtongs
If this were designed to seamlessly interoperate with Calibre (a filesystem
and sqlite3 iirc) this would be potentially useful to me.

I could more confidently selfhost a web version of my calibre library for
reading and bookmarking. Calibre has a web version but I'm not confident in it
and would be uninclined to host it even in a sandstorm instance for example.

The memory issues of libreread, as indicated by others, are too much for
hosting in a friendly way with other apps. The value of full text search isn't
nearly good enough to warrant the memory usage. Aim for < 60MB serverside.

Calibre has an large amount of features that are critical for people actually
trying to maintain an ebook library. Those features have been added and
polished over a decade. I'm very doubtful they can be replicated in a
reasonable timeframe.

Valuable to see people making things in this area though! Cheers.

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thisisit
I have been using Google Books for my reading. And that is just for one reason
- all my highlights and notes are stored in Google Docs. You can use the doc
to build your summaries or quickly read through all the highlights/notes.

I have yet to find a reader which can do this.

~~~
superquest
Thanks for sharing this. I've been quite frustrated by the low portability of
Kindle annotations lately ...

~~~
tristanho
I hate to self-promote on HN, but I recently developed a service which should
help with this exact problem: [https://readwise.io](https://readwise.io)

Would love any feedback, if you have it :)

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lostmsu
You could make a reader as a static website: just sync data to Google Drive /
Dropbox / OneDrive. I have a simple EPub reader doing exactly that:
[https://h5reader.azurewebsites.net/](https://h5reader.azurewebsites.net/)

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gravypod
Does this track current page in PDFs? I had a quick look and it seems like
this feature is supported for epub files.

I maintain, for personal use, a self-hosted web service that does something
similar to this. In my custom service I split each PDF into a collection of
images. This lets me download limited sets of the book (10-page chunks) for
quick load times and also lets me remember which page was the last one I was
reading.

A similar feature in something like this would be cool. Automatically extract
the image from the page, transcode it into the best format supported by the
browser, and remember which page is being read (regardless of the source book
format).

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bane
This is really nice and I'm definitely planning on giving it a looksee. I
currently use Ubooquity since it's a very simply no-fuss reader that works
fantastic on tablets and has pretty good format support. I currently have
about 40,000 books, magazines and comics setup under it and I like generally
how it works (with a few small problems that aren't deal breakers). Installing
it involves running a jar file and that's it, so this looks pretty heavy to
get setup.

One thing I really wish I could do with it (LibreRead or Ubooquity) is "add"
books from the internet archive to it either as virtual links that simply
opened up to the IA reader on their site, or with an option to download
locally within the reader interface.

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JustSomeNobody
Nice. This has been on my side project ToDo list for some time. I may need to
clear that off now.

Thanks for this.

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motdiem
I like the idea of having full text search, though I wonder how it behaves on
large libraries... Calibre is great for managing a library, but not so much at
searching through a large amount of books....

~~~
ThinkingGuy
I had the same reaction after trying the demo. I have tens of thousands of
e-books, and have been looking for some kind of self-hosted, web-based library
system like this. Calibre has come close; I've also experimented with various
digital repository software. If the LibreRead's search function just searched
for books by default (by title/author/keyword), perhaps with full-text search
as an advanced option, it would be just the solution I've been searching for.

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one87
1GB memory min. That's heavy :/

~~~
leggomylibro
An epub file is basically a web page; HTML/CSS rendering ain't cheap.

~~~
softawre
I _love_ that we've come far enough that we need 1GB to process the most basic
HTML/CSS.

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dsr_
Off the top of my head, this needs:

Table of Contents support with working links; per-user storable bookmarks;
font and color control; margin control; multiple methods of page turning; a
non-bookshelf library index (I have over a thousand authors, most of whom have
more than one book -- any interface needs to be usable by someone with a
library of ten thousand books); and probably a partridge in a pear tree.

But it looks like a good core on which to build.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Due to sheer volume of books, I have no intention to _browse_ my ebooks at
this juncture personally. Search is the only option if you're in the 10k book
range, IMHO.

LibreRead supports both metadata search and full-text search. (Though the
latter requires a lot more RAM.)

~~~
nerdponx
What if you categorize and tag your collection? I like lots of overlapping
tags, and I like using tags to filter. I personally hate search.

~~~
arstin
Yea I usually don't even know exactly what I'm looking for. I'd love an ebook
reader which can nail something roughly like the experience of browsing
library stacks.

~~~
asciimo
I would love a reading room with a projector that turns a blank wall into a
bookcase. It could interact with software on a tablet to "pull" books off the
shelf and browse them on the tablet. It could even be responsive to gestures
to roll, sort, etc. It seems like we have all the technology to something like
this; calibre, Kinect, camera and projector?

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rkachowski
I'd really like a project like this that could read mobi files. There's also
calibre-web[1] which also has a nice mobile interface and also doesn't support
mobi. I don't know what it is about the structure of this file that is so
resistant to be parsed.

[1][https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-
web](https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web)

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cmurf
_Keep all your ebooks in one place. Access it on any device._

But then it supports PDF and EPUB, neither of which are directly supported by
Kindle, they have to be converted first. So is LibreRead converting to AZW, or
to HTML such that the Kindle's permanently experimental web browser can
display it?

~~~
JustSomeNobody
If it isn't, using Calibre to batch convert isn't hard (DRM free books, that
is).

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Tharkun
Can I use it to store/read nasty formats and nasty DRM from actual ebook
vendors like Amazon and Kobo?

~~~
ythn
No because DRM like Adobe ADEPT is very mysterious and only authorized
ereaders are given access to it. I highly doubt they would allow an open
source ereader to implement ADEPT.

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jcoffland
I'd line to have an high quality TTS engine integrated with the ereader.
Google's TTS API would work well for this.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Implementing a Google API would mostly defeat the point to providing a self-
hosted alternative: Google would be able to mine text from your eBook library,
hence being able to identify (using their own) which books you have and are
reading.

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realusername
Is there any way I can help with some translation? I would use it for people
who don't speak English at all.

~~~
mysticmode
Sure, Please come to the chat room or email info [at] libreread.org

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rplnt
It works with the epub book in the demo, but with the pdf one, it just opens
the whole pdf file in my viewer.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
It's easy to miss this, but that PDF viewer in your browser is customized! For
example, look at the "edit metadata" button on the top towards the right side.

~~~
rplnt
The books are gone now. Anyway, I would prefer the server to give me the book
page by page (or some sort of segment) as I had to wait for it to load
completely (which took some time in this case). I also lost the UI, the
listing was different, etc...

Not sure how feasible it is with pdfs though. Maybe I would just not include
them in the demo, I don't think it's a common ebook format anyway.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I suspect someone deleted the samples from the demo. :/

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Quanttek
short question: what can you people recommend as eBook reader for one's
computer? One that allows me to mark stuff and add comments? So far most
readers I saw were low in usability or feature-set. Bonus if also available on
mobile

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xchip
Nice! Why did you use golang over other programming languages?

~~~
mysticmode
I initially implemented this app in python, but then seeing the complexity of
deployment made me shift to golang. The result is a single binary deployment
associated with static files.

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avryhof
I'll stick to Calbre

~~~
sigzero
Calibre is a great piece of software.

