calibre will become an official app in the coming weeks, at which point every version will be updated (automatically when using the PA.c Platform) and will be available generally same day/next day as the base app releases.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Is this still slated to become an official app soon? It seems to get updated pretty often, so I was waiting for it to become official so that the updater will catch the updates -- just wondering if I should bother waiting or get it now? Also, are there any plans for the updater to update these unofficial apps?
It's anyone's guess when this might get released officially, that's up to John.
I don't know how the package version is currently written, but if it's written correctly, the updater will allow you to update from a dev test to the official release.
The updater will not be supporting apps that are unofficial due to the dilemma of having unsigned / untested packages essentially being distributed by PortableApps.com.
I've looked into the update-ability of this, and as it currently stands, the package version will NOT support dev tests being updated if/when this goes official. The reason for this follows:
When a package is released officially here, it gets the same package version number as the base app. In this case, it would be 0.8.9.0*
In order to ensure updating to this value, the package version version of dev tests should be lesser than tthis value. For example, the current package version could be 0.8.8.991 and incremented thus: 0.8.8.992 for dev test 2, and 0.8.9.991 for the new version that has now been released*, and will be released by prapper as 0.8.10 dev test 1.
* According to the calibre website, 0.8.10 has been released, so this information will apply accordingly to the new version.
Any way to use local copy of calibre-portable-0.8.xx.zip?
I need to install/update calibrePortable on several offline computers. Is there any way I can force the installer to use a locally downloaded copy of the calibre-portable zip file? Failing that for the install part (I could just create a base/clean install on one machine to copy to the other machines), would it be possible to upgrade by copying the contents of the "Calibre Portable\Calibre" folder from the calibre-portable-0.8.xx.zip to "calibrePortable\App\Calibre"?
If you download the calibre-portable-0.8.xx.zip file and place it beside the Calibre Portable installer, the installer will use the downloaded file instead of going online for it.
Unfortunately, putting the installer and the zip side by side isn't going to work on this occasion so you'll have to replace the Calibre folder in App with the one from the zip and go from there.
Calibre Portable is up to 0.8.21 on the offical devrlopers website, unless your portable version uses the same version, may as well just use the offical portable, unless you have found problems with it, and if so, please share what the problems are
The official portable version of Calibre doesn't support the use of multiple libraries. It always uses "Calibre Portable\Calibre Library". If you add a different library, the official portable version uses the absolute path for that library. If you use it on a USB flash drive and get different drive letters on different computers, you'd have to change the path for the additional libraries every time you switch computers.
Unfortunately, Kovid isn't really interested in implementing this. I believe it was someone else who coded the calibre-portable executable included in the official portable version of Calibre.
8.2.21 from the calibre site supports multiple libaries
The default libary got corrupted on mine so i told it to use anothe folder and it works find, apart from having to tell it every time where the new library is, will get around to wiping the corrupt library and replacing it when i install 8.2.22 that i just downloaded in portable form from the calibre site
"it works fine, apart from having to tell it every time where the new library is"
That's exactly my issue with the official portable version. It doesn't "portabilize" additional libraries. In fact, if you rename the default calibre library, when you launch calibre-portable.exe again, you'll get a prompt to create/select a library.
The PortableApps version of calibrePortable works much nicer.
"Are there any features that dont work in the portable apps version that do work in the official portable?"
Nope. As far as I'm aware, prapper's version appears to be working fine. It's actually much nicer and refined compared to the official version. I don't see any reason for Calibre itself to work differently. It really only replaces calibre-portable.exe and the only function of that program is the "portabilization". I haven't done extensive testing, though. Only tried the library management, cover and metadata downloads, conversion and content server.
Ran installer and finished succesfully, but Calibre no work!
Ran installer and finished succesfully, but Calibre does not work!
Received the following error on startup:
---------------------------
calibre Portable (PortableApps.com Launcher)
---------------------------
calibre Portable cannot be started. You may wish to re-install to fix this issue. (ERROR: App\calibre\calibre.exe could not be found)
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------
The PortableApps.com installer is broken; I had the same problem on two different Windows 7 machines.
To fix it, manually download the latest portable version of Calibre from http://calibre-ebook.com/download_portable and unzip the file. Then copy the "Calibre" folder into your PortableApps\calibrePortable\App folder. After that, it should work again.
I just tested the installation & portability of "calibre Portable 0.8.xx Dev Test 2" with the latest release as of today (0.8.36) & all behave as normal. Have you tried reinstalling?
This is something I noticed just recently as I was checking for I/O bound processes. calibrePortable appears to read the all the contents Windows Fonts folder during start-up which causes high CPU utilization as well as disk thrashing. Neither the native Calibre install nor the official Calibre Portable install does this.
It wasn't really something I noticed before as I usually use calibrePortable on systems with SSDs but it does explain why systems with HDDs become unresponsive when I start up calibrePortable. On a system with 92MB worth of fonts, a bare calibrePortable install would cause 2.5GiB worth of I/O reads. Meanwhile, both native and official portable install would only have 30MiB worth of I/O reads. Any thoughts as to what may be causing it?
Sorry, I can't offer any insight here. calibrePortable is built from the official Calibre Portable zip download which contains exactly the same files as the extracted native Calibre install & the calibrePortable launcher.ini isn't doing anything fancy as far as I can see (but feel free to check "App\AppInfo\Launcher\calibrePortable.ini" for yourself).
If I run the official Calibre Portable I can see that it leaves (amongst other things) the "fontconfig\cache" folder in the system TEMP dir (which calibrePortable doesn't do) but, as I can't see what the official Calibre Portable EXE is doing, I'm none the wiser as to why that is, although it's probably no coincidence, given your problem.
Having said that, I don't experience any unresponsiveness & startup times seem the same with both the official Calibre Portable & calibrePortable (tested on HDD). If you can shed any light I'm more than happy to investigate further & add any changes you think may be necessary.
Again, sorry for not being of more help.
BTW: Regshot for calibrePortable is still clean for those interested.
I believe this is due to EVERY version of Calibre saving the font cache on the local machine. The local and official kinda-portable version leave it there though (making it not actually portable) whereas ours cleans it up. How about instead of deleting the font cache, you move it back into calibrePortable\Data somewhere each time so if you happen to use it multiple times on the same PC it won't need to rebuild the cache.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
This appears to be working quite well, thanks! Special request, would it be possible to store it in /Data/settings/fontconfig instead of /Data/fontconfig? Thanks again!
In fairness, there's no unresponsiveness in most of the systems I use (quad-core + SSD). It just so happens that the few systems I have with HDDs in them also had crappy processors (Atom, Zacate or Pentium 4) which exacerbated the problem. I've seen this happen on a Core 2 Duo E8600 w/HDD on occasion but only when there was also something running in the background (e.g. ProcMon, scheduled full anti-virus scan, etc).
Another thing, this issue doesn't really affect calibre start-up times. It appears calibre does the font caching in the background after the program has been fully loaded. However, while calibre is saving the font cache, launching new programs takes a long time. It's kinda like when you're trying to start up programs while Windows hasn't finished loading yet.
As for CALIBRE_TEMP_DIR, from memory, calibre only uses that for temporary files used in conversion, send to device, etc so it's basically just the equivalent of the calibre_0.8.xx_tmp_123abc folder.
Good! If you want it in the settings dir use this:
[DirectoriesMove]
settings\fontconfig=%TEMP%
hnzw.ruiAs for CALIBRE_TEMP_DIR, from memory, calibre only uses that for temporary files used in conversion, send to device, etc so it's basically just the equivalent of the calibre_0.8.xx_tmp_123abc folder.
That's right.
As far as this fix goes, it would be good if one of the PAL gurus could check out the %TEMP% dir when calibrePortable is running as backing up the non-existent "%TEMP%\calibrePortableTemp" dir to "%TEMP%\calibrePortableTemp.BackupBycalibrePortable" & doubling up the fontconfig folder in Data is probably not the correct behaviour. It works though, so that's the main thing & I'll put it into a new release soon.
No problem. Thanks for the quick response and fix!
Just a thought though, it's probably a good idea to leave %TEMP% running from the local temp folder. Tasks such as conversion, create catalog, send to device and save to disk can generate a lot of writes depending on library size and that can't be good for flash drives.
I get this error when I start calibre after installed on desktop (on Windows 7 64 bit machine):
---------------------------
calibre Portable (PortableApps.com Launcher)
---------------------------
calibre Portable could not start. To fix this you may install again.
ERROR: App\Calibre\calibre.exe could not find
---------------------------
Okey
---------------------------
"calibre Portable 0.8.xx Dev Test 4" no longer works
Although "calibre Portable 0.8.xx Dev Test 4" appears to download and install the program without displaying any error messages only 21 files actually get installed on my flash drive:
I noticed with Calibre v0.8.87, the online installer no longer appears to work. I did notice on sourceforge, that the usual zip file for the portable version, has become an installer of sorts named calibre-portable-installer-0.8.70.exe.
Bill G.
Frozen St. Paul, MN
land of the frozen mosquito
It looks like the zip has been replaced by a self-extracting EXE (un-extractable with 7zip). I'm going to update to a "launcher only" package so the upgrade procedure will involve downloading this file yourself & pointing it to your calibrePortable folder. There are no portability issues here (it won't leave any stray files on your system) & full instructions will be in the help file.
I hope this is an acceptable solution for everybody.
Prapper, first of all, thank you for doing Calibre Portable. I use it daily. From your instructions below, under the Updating calibre section, it sounds like one needs to download your installer and the calibre-portable-installer-0.8.70.exe file.
Download the latest version from this page (Download calibre portable).
However, your installer includes Calibre, and doesn't require the user to download from Calibre's web site at all. It's minor, but I figured I'd point it out.
Anyway, thanks again for doing this program, my friend. Peace...
Bill G.
Frozen St. Paul, MN
land of the frozen mosquito
I think prapper won't update Calibre Portable every week. So if you want to use the latest Calibre, you could follow these instructions. At least that's how I read between the lines. 8)
Man, this base app updates lots! It's currently at 0.9.6. Don't know if you're wanting to update or not, since your "upgrade" instructions work still, but just letting you know.
What do we need to do differently to be able to upgrade to Calibre 0.9.20? Either I did something wrong (I've never tried upgrading this myself) or the folders have changed with the Calibre Portable installer exe they put out. Thanks!
I just tested calibre Portable Launcher Dev Test 1 (upgrade & run) with the new calibre-portable-installer-1.0.0.exe. Everything works & regshot is clean.
That would seem to be a limitation of the self-extracting "calibre-portable-installer-*.exe".
> Will renaming the folder to "CP" cause any issues?
Not sure which folder you mean but running from something like this should work temporarily "D:\Dropbox\PortableApps.com\PA\CP" (or whatever). Rename it back once you've installed.
Or just run "calibre-portable-installer-*.exe" & extract the files to where you can, then move them so you have the folder Calibre Portable next to "calibrePortable.exe".
Or just run "calibre-portable-installer-*.exe" & extract the files to where you can, then move them so you have the folder Calibre Portable next to "calibrePortable.exe".
That's what I've been doing. Then I run PA Installer, to make my own PAF for my other computers.
Bill G.
Frozen St. Paul, MN
land of the frozen mosquito
Not sure what I'm doing wrong. When I run install-calibre-portable-*.exe, and choose "PortableApps" as my install folder, I get the following created in Portableapps\Calibre Portable\:
take the \Calibre\ folder from your install-calibre-portable-*.exe and move it to D:\Dropbox\PortableApps.com\PortableApps\calibrePortable\App replacing the one that is already there. If you want you can update the appinfo.ini file (it's just a text file) located in D:\Dropbox\PortableApps.com\PortableApps\calibrePortable\App\AppInfo as follows to make it display the correct version in the PA menu:
Find the [Version] section
make the PackageVersion entry read "PackageVersion=1.5.0.0" without the quotes
make the DisplayVersion entry read "DisplayVersion=1.5.0 Dev Test 1"without the quotes.
Save the file and refresh the PA menu
If this doesn't make sense, let me know, ok?
Bill G.
Frozen St. Paul, MN
land of the frozen mosquito
Very sorry, still confused. I really appreciate the help though.
It might be easier to just tell me how to do it from the beginning.
Step 1: delete all of my Calibre portable files and folders
Step 2: download Calibre portable from their website and install it on my C: drive (due to the character limit problem), creating C:\Calibre Portable\ , creating three \Calibre* folders within it.
Step 3-X: ??? where do I put and/or move the folders, files, and installers; where do I run them from; and in what order?
I download the latest dev version. I extract it. When I start calibrePortable.exe it gives me directly an error which explains that where is no \app\calibre\calibre.exe file. I loo at the directory \app\calibre. I notice that there is nothing on this folder
Please update calibre. They have update on 1.14 version.
I could well be missing something here, but as the directions say:
"if you have a portable program MyApp.exe, you could create a folder called X:\PortableApps\MyApp\ and place MyApp.exe and all its files within there. Then, just click Apps - Refresh App Icons within the PortableApps.com Menu and your new app will show up."
Thus you should be able to expand the latest Calibre release to a folder inside your PortableApps (I use "otherapps") and click refresh App Icons and you should be good to go. The issue some people may be having here is that the earlier version of Calibre may have been installed in the "regular" portable apps folder if it came from a .paf file. The .exe file may not work as cleanly as a .paf file, so either removing the older application folder or just installing one in parallel and work with them until you decide to remove the older folder might be the best option.
I haven't tried this so I don't know if it will work, but I am planning to and will get back to folks here. Any thoughts as to feasibility?
I finally have some experimental data. I double clicked on the downloaded file and extracted it to a folder I called Calibre2Portable on my desktop.
I initially created a folder of that name in my PortableApps folder, but my Windows 7 machine wouldn't let me download directly into the /PortableApps/Calibre2Portable folder (the name was too long), so I created a second, identically named, folder on my desktop, double clicked on the Calibre download, which 'installed' (extracted I think, since is labled as a portable application) the Calibre application into the desktop folder.
I then copied all the files from the desktop folder into into the PortableApps folder of the same name.
I then clicked refresh icons and voila, there it was, and it worked (and works) perfectly.
Any chance that a stable release can be created? Which would automatically check for a new version, download and install (as appropriate) the portable edition, before launching?
I installed Calibre Portable into my PortableApps launcher with no difficulty. I have a Mac running Parallels Desktop 9 with a Windows 2008 R2 x64 VM and Windows 7 Enterprise x64 VM, it runs fine in both.
I just opened the Get Info panel on the Mac for the folder labeled "PortableApps." Uncheck the box called "Locked." Copy any portable app you want into the folder. Go back and re-check the box called "Locked." Restart the PortableApps launcher (it can be running while you do all this). Start imported app.
Calibre Portable runs great this way. It isn't slow in any way unless I try to run the VM on my MBP. On my iMac it is very speedy, and runs great in both the Windows 2008 R2 x64 VM and Windows 7 Enterprise x64 VMs I use in vSphere 5.5 at work.
When Calibre comes out with updates they update the portable version at the same time. Just re-download and repeat the process above. Easy peasy.
With the latest upgrades to calibre 2.0 and now 2.1, the developer has switched to using QT5. There have been numerous problems reported particularly with XP. He is dropping support for XP and locking the program so it will not run under XP. The last XP compatible upgrade was 1.48.
Since calibre ships with multiple app entry points, it would be nice if the portable app did the same.
I would like to see an entry for starting the E-Book Editor and the E-Book Viewer directly from the PortableApps menu, without requiring me to first start the library.
calibre will become an official app in the coming weeks, at which point every version will be updated (automatically when using the PA.c Platform) and will be available generally same day/next day as the base app releases.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Finally. 0.7.54 has been "Pending..." on Sourceforge for a while now. Whatever that means.
You guys are awesome.
Any progress with this?
0.8.xx Dev Test 4 confirmed clean with the latest 0.8.67 version.
See release notes for changes.
Thank you for the update.
Watch out for 0.7.55 many people are complaining about strange screen issues. May be yet another update.
Hard work much appreciated.
See release notes for changes.
Developer has added many new features. Many new plugins require new updated plugin engine.
currently 0.80
This developer updates a lot, but updates are noticeable. Exiting times.
Thanks again for all hard work.
See release notes for changes.
See release notes for changes.
See release notes for changes.
Is this still slated to become an official app soon? It seems to get updated pretty often, so I was waiting for it to become official so that the updater will catch the updates -- just wondering if I should bother waiting or get it now? Also, are there any plans for the updater to update these unofficial apps?
It's anyone's guess when this might get released officially, that's up to John.
I don't know how the package version is currently written, but if it's written correctly, the updater will allow you to update from a dev test to the official release.
The updater will not be supporting apps that are unofficial due to the dilemma of having unsigned / untested packages essentially being distributed by PortableApps.com.
[eDIT: grammatical correction]
I've looked into the update-ability of this, and as it currently stands, the package version will NOT support dev tests being updated if/when this goes official. The reason for this follows:
When a package is released officially here, it gets the same package version number as the base app. In this case, it would be 0.8.9.0*
In order to ensure updating to this value, the package version version of dev tests should be lesser than tthis value. For example, the current package version could be 0.8.8.991 and incremented thus: 0.8.8.992 for dev test 2, and 0.8.9.991 for the new version that has now been released*, and will be released by prapper as 0.8.10 dev test 1.
* According to the calibre website, 0.8.10 has been released, so this information will apply accordingly to the new version.
Really? I did not know that. Thanks for the explanation
I think I'll just be keeping it simple for the moment though.
Thanks!
See release notes for changes.
See release notes for changes.
Prapper, it's awesome that you keep releasing updates for this app. Lets hope John can shed some light on the schedule to the official release.
See release notes for changes.
See release notes for changes.
See release notes for changes.
I need to install/update calibrePortable on several offline computers. Is there any way I can force the installer to use a locally downloaded copy of the calibre-portable zip file? Failing that for the install part (I could just create a base/clean install on one machine to copy to the other machines), would it be possible to upgrade by copying the contents of the "Calibre Portable\Calibre" folder from the calibre-portable-0.8.xx.zip to "calibrePortable\App\Calibre"?
Thanks!
If you download the calibre-portable-0.8.xx.zip file and place it beside the Calibre Portable installer, the installer will use the downloaded file instead of going online for it.
Unfortunately, putting the installer and the zip side by side isn't going to work on this occasion so you'll have to replace the Calibre folder in App with the one from the zip and go from there.
Is there a way to initiate an update when launching the app? Like hold down ctrl to download latest version?
Just run the installer again, it'll always download the latest version.
Calibre Portable is up to 0.8.21 on the offical devrlopers website, unless your portable version uses the same version, may as well just use the offical portable, unless you have found problems with it, and if so, please share what the problems are
Raptor25
Make that change! RIP MJ - King of Pop!
As prapper said above, just run the installer again and it will update to 0.8.21.
The official portable version of Calibre doesn't support the use of multiple libraries. It always uses "Calibre Portable\Calibre Library". If you add a different library, the official portable version uses the absolute path for that library. If you use it on a USB flash drive and get different drive letters on different computers, you'd have to change the path for the additional libraries every time you switch computers.
Unfortunately, Kovid isn't really interested in implementing this. I believe it was someone else who coded the calibre-portable executable included in the official portable version of Calibre.
The default libary got corrupted on mine so i told it to use anothe folder and it works find, apart from having to tell it every time where the new library is, will get around to wiping the corrupt library and replacing it when i install 8.2.22 that i just downloaded in portable form from the calibre site
Raptor25
Make that change! RIP MJ - King of Pop!
"it works fine, apart from having to tell it every time where the new library is"
That's exactly my issue with the official portable version. It doesn't "portabilize" additional libraries. In fact, if you rename the default calibre library, when you launch calibre-portable.exe again, you'll get a prompt to create/select a library.
The PortableApps version of calibrePortable works much nicer.
im guessing it uses the latest version anyway, since it uses an online installer.
Are there any features that dont work in the portable apps version that do work in the official portable?
Raptor25
Make that change! RIP MJ - King of Pop!
"Are there any features that dont work in the portable apps version that do work in the official portable?"
Nope. As far as I'm aware, prapper's version appears to be working fine. It's actually much nicer and refined compared to the official version. I don't see any reason for Calibre itself to work differently. It really only replaces calibre-portable.exe and the only function of that program is the "portabilization". I haven't done extensive testing, though. Only tried the library management, cover and metadata downloads, conversion and content server.
Ran installer and finished succesfully, but Calibre does not work!
Received the following error on startup:
---------------------------
calibre Portable (PortableApps.com Launcher)
---------------------------
calibre Portable cannot be started. You may wish to re-install to fix this issue. (ERROR: App\calibre\calibre.exe could not be found)
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------
PS:Tried on two different usb keys
did you try going to the official calibre site and downloading the portable version from there?
Raptor25
Make that change! RIP MJ - King of Pop!
The PortableApps.com installer is broken; I had the same problem on two different Windows 7 machines.
To fix it, manually download the latest portable version of Calibre from http://calibre-ebook.com/download_portable and unzip the file. Then copy the "Calibre" folder into your PortableApps\calibrePortable\App folder. After that, it should work again.
Just a notification of the latest release from calibre
Release: 0.8.32 [23 Dec, 2011]
From - http://calibre-ebook.com/whats-new
I did a new Installtion of the "0.8.xx Dev Test 2 (2011-11-01)"
But the Installtion faild for me on my USB Device
Zielverzeichnis: H:\PortableApps\calibrePortable
Bereite das Upgrade von calibre Portable vor.
Lade Calibre herunter...
Installiere calibre Portable...
Umbenennen: C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Temp\nssBEA.tmp\Downloaded\Calibre->C:\Users\A103896\AppData\Local\Temp\nssBEA.tmp\Downloaded\calibre-portable
Erstelle Verzeichnis: H:\PortableApps\calibrePortable\7zTemp
Zielverzeichnis: H:\PortableApps\calibrePortable\7zTemp
Dekomprimiere: 7z.exe
Dekomprimiere: 7z.dll
Zielverzeichnis: H:\PortableApps\calibrePortable
Erstelle Verzeichnis: H:\PortableApps\calibrePortable\App
ERROR: (calibre-portable > App)
Btw H:\PortableApps\calibrePortable\App is there...
I just tested the installation & portability of "calibre Portable 0.8.xx Dev Test 2" with the latest release as of today (0.8.36) & all behave as normal. Have you tried reinstalling?
I test it on Windows 7 64 bit. It works great.
See release notes for changes.
This is something I noticed just recently as I was checking for I/O bound processes. calibrePortable appears to read the all the contents Windows Fonts folder during start-up which causes high CPU utilization as well as disk thrashing. Neither the native Calibre install nor the official Calibre Portable install does this.
It wasn't really something I noticed before as I usually use calibrePortable on systems with SSDs but it does explain why systems with HDDs become unresponsive when I start up calibrePortable. On a system with 92MB worth of fonts, a bare calibrePortable install would cause 2.5GiB worth of I/O reads. Meanwhile, both native and official portable install would only have 30MiB worth of I/O reads. Any thoughts as to what may be causing it?
Sorry, I can't offer any insight here. calibrePortable is built from the official Calibre Portable zip download which contains exactly the same files as the extracted native Calibre install & the calibrePortable launcher.ini isn't doing anything fancy as far as I can see (but feel free to check "App\AppInfo\Launcher\calibrePortable.ini" for yourself).
If I run the official Calibre Portable I can see that it leaves (amongst other things) the "fontconfig\cache" folder in the system TEMP dir (which calibrePortable doesn't do) but, as I can't see what the official Calibre Portable EXE is doing, I'm none the wiser as to why that is, although it's probably no coincidence, given your problem.
Having said that, I don't experience any unresponsiveness & startup times seem the same with both the official Calibre Portable & calibrePortable (tested on HDD). If you can shed any light I'm more than happy to investigate further & add any changes you think may be necessary.
Again, sorry for not being of more help.
BTW: Regshot for calibrePortable is still clean for those interested.
I believe this is due to EVERY version of Calibre saving the font cache on the local machine. The local and official kinda-portable version leave it there though (making it not actually portable) whereas ours cleans it up. How about instead of deleting the font cache, you move it back into calibrePortable\Data somewhere each time so if you happen to use it multiple times on the same PC it won't need to rebuild the cache.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Right, it's in %TEMP%\calibrePortableTemp instead of just %TEMP%, I didn't see it there. I'll fix that today & we can give it a try. Thanks.
EDIT:
Help! If someone could test this I'd be most grateful
:-)
Comment out TEMP in [Environment] (otherwise fontconfig is moved here):
And add this:
It's the only way I can get it to work but watch the system %TEMP% dir. Custom code is out as %TEMP% is cleaned before Custom Code is run.
Is there a better way of doing this?
Maybe CALIBRE_TEMP_DIR?
Thanks. fontconfig still ends up in %TEMP%\calibrePortableTemp though.
This appears to be working quite well, thanks! Special request, would it be possible to store it in /Data/settings/fontconfig instead of /Data/fontconfig? Thanks again!
In fairness, there's no unresponsiveness in most of the systems I use (quad-core + SSD). It just so happens that the few systems I have with HDDs in them also had crappy processors (Atom, Zacate or Pentium 4) which exacerbated the problem. I've seen this happen on a Core 2 Duo E8600 w/HDD on occasion but only when there was also something running in the background (e.g. ProcMon, scheduled full anti-virus scan, etc).
Another thing, this issue doesn't really affect calibre start-up times. It appears calibre does the font caching in the background after the program has been fully loaded. However, while calibre is saving the font cache, launching new programs takes a long time. It's kinda like when you're trying to start up programs while Windows hasn't finished loading yet.
As for CALIBRE_TEMP_DIR, from memory, calibre only uses that for temporary files used in conversion, send to device, etc so it's basically just the equivalent of the calibre_0.8.xx_tmp_123abc folder.
Good! If you want it in the settings dir use this:
That's right.
As far as this fix goes, it would be good if one of the PAL gurus could check out the %TEMP% dir when calibrePortable is running as backing up the non-existent "%TEMP%\calibrePortableTemp" dir to "%TEMP%\calibrePortableTemp.BackupBycalibrePortable" & doubling up the fontconfig folder in Data is probably not the correct behaviour. It works though, so that's the main thing & I'll put it into a new release soon.
Thanks for reporting this issue.
No problem. Thanks for the quick response and fix!
Just a thought though, it's probably a good idea to leave %TEMP% running from the local temp folder. Tasks such as conversion, create catalog, send to device and save to disk can generate a lot of writes depending on library size and that can't be good for flash drives.
Yes, it is. Everything is still where it should be, only fontconfig is moved in & out.
See release notes for changes.
I get this error when I start calibre after installed on desktop (on Windows 7 64 bit machine):
---------------------------
calibre Portable (PortableApps.com Launcher)
---------------------------
calibre Portable could not start. To fix this you may install again.
ERROR: App\Calibre\calibre.exe could not find
---------------------------
Okey
---------------------------
It probably hasn't downloaded (it's an online installer yes?). I tested it, it works fine, try again.
Although "calibre Portable 0.8.xx Dev Test 4" appears to download and install the program without displaying any error messages only 21 files actually get installed on my flash drive:
I noticed with Calibre v0.8.87, the online installer no longer appears to work. I did notice on sourceforge, that the usual zip file for the portable version, has become an installer of sorts named calibre-portable-installer-0.8.70.exe.
Bill G.
Frozen St. Paul, MN
land of the frozen mosquito
It looks like the zip has been replaced by a self-extracting EXE (un-extractable with 7zip). I'm going to update to a "launcher only" package so the upgrade procedure will involve downloading this file yourself & pointing it to your calibrePortable folder. There are no portability issues here (it won't leave any stray files on your system) & full instructions will be in the help file.
I hope this is an acceptable solution for everybody.
Why not include calibre? It's open source, so there's no issue with repackaging.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
See release notes for changes.
Prapper, first of all, thank you for doing Calibre Portable. I use it daily. From your instructions below, under the Updating calibre section, it sounds like one needs to download your installer and the calibre-portable-installer-0.8.70.exe file.
However, your installer includes Calibre, and doesn't require the user to download from Calibre's web site at all. It's minor, but I figured I'd point it out.
Anyway, thanks again for doing this program, my friend. Peace...
Bill G.
Frozen St. Paul, MN
land of the frozen mosquito
I think prapper won't update Calibre Portable every week. So if you want to use the latest Calibre, you could follow these instructions. At least that's how I read between the lines. 8)
Correct! I have just Regshot-ed the whole update procedure & run the app. All clean with today's 0.9.0.
Man, this base app updates lots! It's currently at 0.9.6. Don't know if you're wanting to update or not, since your "upgrade" instructions work still, but just letting you know.
It would be nice if the updater code set the app version in the appinfo.ini.
I did this with a Trillian launcher, and have thought about making a manual updater for apps that frequently update.
Good idea. Done.
That app should be stable. It is the only app that can open all e-book formats...
See release notes for changes.
Yea! I forgot about this one.
I have it installed and a number of books with it.
What do we need to do differently to be able to upgrade to Calibre 0.9.20? Either I did something wrong (I've never tried upgrading this myself) or the folders have changed with the Calibre Portable installer exe they put out. Thanks!
To update, maybe you want to
a) download the current .msi from the original manufacturer from here:
http://calibre-ebook.com/download_windows
b) download Less MSIerables
direct .zip download here:
http://code4all.googlecode.com/files/Lessmsierables-20051110.zip
c) read the short words about usage of Less MSIerables here:
http://thebackroomtech.com/2009/05/20/the-best-msi-extractor/
d) extract the Calibre .msi file
e) copy the extracted contents into the \App\Calibre folder
f) done.
See release notes for changes.
I just tested calibre Portable Launcher Dev Test 1 (upgrade & run) with the new calibre-portable-installer-1.0.0.exe. Everything works & regshot is clean.
When I tried to install into my PortableApps folder in Dropbox, I got the error:
"Path to Calibre Portable (D:\Dropbox\PortableApps.com\PortableApps\calibrePortable\Calibre Portable) too long. Must be less than 59 characters."
Is there a workaround? Will renaming the folder to "CP" cause any issues?
That would seem to be a limitation of the self-extracting "calibre-portable-installer-*.exe".
> Will renaming the folder to "CP" cause any issues?
Not sure which folder you mean but running from something like this should work temporarily "D:\Dropbox\PortableApps.com\PA\CP" (or whatever). Rename it back once you've installed.
Or just run "calibre-portable-installer-*.exe" & extract the files to where you can, then move them so you have the folder Calibre Portable next to "calibrePortable.exe".
That's what I've been doing. Then I run PA Installer, to make my own PAF for my other computers.
Bill G.
Frozen St. Paul, MN
land of the frozen mosquito
Not sure what I'm doing wrong. When I run install-calibre-portable-*.exe, and choose "PortableApps" as my install folder, I get the following created in Portableapps\Calibre Portable\:
\Calibre\
\Calibre Library\
\Calibre settings\
calibre-portable.exe
I don't get what I expect from the help file, which is:
\App\
\Data\
Why?
Move Portableapps\Calibre Portable to Portableapps\calibrePortable. You should have Portableapps\calibrePortable\Calibre Portable.
take the \Calibre\ folder from your install-calibre-portable-*.exe and move it to D:\Dropbox\PortableApps.com\PortableApps\calibrePortable\App replacing the one that is already there. If you want you can update the appinfo.ini file (it's just a text file) located in D:\Dropbox\PortableApps.com\PortableApps\calibrePortable\App\AppInfo as follows to make it display the correct version in the PA menu:
If this doesn't make sense, let me know, ok?
Bill G.
Frozen St. Paul, MN
land of the frozen mosquito
Very sorry, still confused. I really appreciate the help though.
It might be easier to just tell me how to do it from the beginning.
Step 1: delete all of my Calibre portable files and folders
Step 2: download Calibre portable from their website and install it on my C: drive (due to the character limit problem), creating C:\Calibre Portable\ , creating three \Calibre* folders within it.
Step 3-X: ??? where do I put and/or move the folders, files, and installers; where do I run them from; and in what order?
Again, your help is appreciated.
I download the latest dev version. I extract it. When I start calibrePortable.exe it gives me directly an error which explains that where is no \app\calibre\calibre.exe file. I loo at the directory \app\calibre. I notice that there is nothing on this folder
Please update calibre. They have update on 1.14 version.
I just wanted to say i love Calibre and i wish it would be added to the official PortableApps programs. Anything i can do to contribute to that?
I could well be missing something here, but as the directions say:
"if you have a portable program MyApp.exe, you could create a folder called X:\PortableApps\MyApp\ and place MyApp.exe and all its files within there. Then, just click Apps - Refresh App Icons within the PortableApps.com Menu and your new app will show up."
Thus you should be able to expand the latest Calibre release to a folder inside your PortableApps (I use "otherapps") and click refresh App Icons and you should be good to go. The issue some people may be having here is that the earlier version of Calibre may have been installed in the "regular" portable apps folder if it came from a .paf file. The .exe file may not work as cleanly as a .paf file, so either removing the older application folder or just installing one in parallel and work with them until you decide to remove the older folder might be the best option.
I haven't tried this so I don't know if it will work, but I am planning to and will get back to folks here. Any thoughts as to feasibility?
I finally have some experimental data. I double clicked on the downloaded file and extracted it to a folder I called Calibre2Portable on my desktop.
I initially created a folder of that name in my PortableApps folder, but my Windows 7 machine wouldn't let me download directly into the /PortableApps/Calibre2Portable folder (the name was too long), so I created a second, identically named, folder on my desktop, double clicked on the Calibre download, which 'installed' (extracted I think, since is labled as a portable application) the Calibre application into the desktop folder.
I then copied all the files from the desktop folder into into the PortableApps folder of the same name.
I then clicked refresh icons and voila, there it was, and it worked (and works) perfectly.
Any chance that a stable release can be created? Which would automatically check for a new version, download and install (as appropriate) the portable edition, before launching?
I installed Calibre Portable into my PortableApps launcher with no difficulty. I have a Mac running Parallels Desktop 9 with a Windows 2008 R2 x64 VM and Windows 7 Enterprise x64 VM, it runs fine in both.
I just opened the Get Info panel on the Mac for the folder labeled "PortableApps." Uncheck the box called "Locked." Copy any portable app you want into the folder. Go back and re-check the box called "Locked." Restart the PortableApps launcher (it can be running while you do all this). Start imported app.
Calibre Portable runs great this way. It isn't slow in any way unless I try to run the VM on my MBP. On my iMac it is very speedy, and runs great in both the Windows 2008 R2 x64 VM and Windows 7 Enterprise x64 VMs I use in vSphere 5.5 at work.
When Calibre comes out with updates they update the portable version at the same time. Just re-download and repeat the process above. Easy peasy.
With the latest upgrades to calibre 2.0 and now 2.1, the developer has switched to using QT5. There have been numerous problems reported particularly with XP. He is dropping support for XP and locking the program so it will not run under XP. The last XP compatible upgrade was 1.48.
Since calibre ships with multiple app entry points, it would be nice if the portable app did the same.
I would like to see an entry for starting the E-Book Editor and the E-Book Viewer directly from the PortableApps menu, without requiring me to first start the library.
Not an easy task. But it is doable, has been done, and does work. Needs testers.
Dan "FloriDan" Carroll
Just an old hacker having fun.
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