There are open source programs that are so superior in quality to their proprietary alternatives that they are benchmarks in their sector. This is the case of Blender, OpenShot and the one we are talking about here. But, as everything can be improved, Calibre improves support for PDF.
If you don't know this program you should know what it is A Swiss Army Knife for those of us who read ebooksIt has a collection manager, an epub format editor and an e-book reader.
Calibre improves PDF support
Among other things, version 7.20 of Calibre, which has been with us for a few days now, includes something that I have been wanting for a long time when converting from PDF to other formats. The new PDF conversion engine includes a document detector that allows you to find and remove headers and footers. To compensate, the new output engine allows you to use the WIDTH_PIXELS and HEIGHT_PIXELS variables to set the width and height of the header/footer area in templates.
The PDF format, named after the acronym for "Portable Document Format", was created by the Adobe company although it is an open standard. Its popularity is due to the fact that it allows documents to be displayed in the same way even when devices and platforms change. Any PDF document will maintain its original layout of text, images, graphics and other elements, without any modifications. This makes it the most widely used format for distributing text and graphics documents,
Additionally, they incorporate security options such as digital signatures and opening after entering a password.
Hardware compatibility
One of the advantages of Calibre is the ability to export books from the collection to e-book readers. This new version Improve the driver to make it compatible with the Tolino Shine 5. This is an e-ink device, a 6-inch screen and WiFi connectivity.
Reading experience
To improve the reading experience of books with illustrations, this new version Enhance the Crop Image tool by adding a new control which gives users the power to adjust the aspect ratio of images. For those who prefer to listen, the Read Aloud feature has been enhanced by allowing users of the Piper TTS engine to set an additional pause at the end of each sentence.
Content synchronization
We have already said that one of Calibre's strong points is sharing content with ebook readers or other devices using the browser. This new version fixes some bugs.s such as the one that prevented books with non-ASCII file names from being downloaded in the Kindle browser when using the /mobile view, and the one that occurred when embedding server-side HTML inside a third-party iframe. Other bugs that are no longer around are the one that blocked copying a book to another library if we hadn't included the author in the destination database, and the one that existed with the Piper read-aloud backend, making it incompatible with voices named with non-ASCII characters.
Content search
The program allows us to download articles from various places to read them offline. In version 7.20 new sources were added such as NYT Magazine and RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland. At the same time, the news sources of National Geographic, Science Journal, The Wire, Nikkei Asia Magazine, Swarajya, Mainichi, Nautilus, Times Literary Supplement, Saechsische Zeitung, India Today and Scientific American have been corrected.
Caliber Installation
Calibre versions for Windows and Mac can be downloaded from page of the project. In Linux we can find it in the repositories or by using the commands:
sudo -v && wget -nv -O- https://download.calibre-ebook.com/linux-installer.sh | sudo sh /dev/stdin
Or in Flatpak format
flatpak install flathub com.calibre_ebook.calibre
The field of ebook readers for Linux is singularly well stocked, with some titles dedicated to managing collections as well. Sigil is decidedly better as an editor. But Calibre's tools are good enough in every department. And when it comes to converting files, it's second to none.