14 DAY TRIAL // The Calibre eBook reader, editor, and library management software has been upgraded to version 1.45 and comes with even more eBook editing features.
Calibre is mostly used as an eBook converter and reader, but the developer added the option to edit books just a few months ago. Since then, numerous changes and improvements have been made to this particular feature and it looks like there is a lot of work left to do.
Editing books is a very complex procedure and a lot of the Calibre components need to be used at the same time. This is one of the reasons the developer is making so many improvements in just one area of the application.
According to the changelog, in-context help has been added for HTML and CSS. Users can now right-click on any HTML/OPF/NCX tag name or CSS property and the editor will open some help for that item in the default Internet browser. The series and tags are now clickable, the performance has been improved by only writing changed fields to the database when clicking OK or Next and when converting from AZW3 files, and the application will use the high-quality version of the image if the source AZW3 file contains both low- and high-quality images.
Also, when right-clicking on a link in the editor, the application will add a menu entry to open the link, arrows have been added to the search and replace panel to open the list of recently used expressions, and a driver for Motorola Milestone X2 has been implemented.
The developer has also made a number of other changes. For example, the page-progression-direction property is now preserved when converting/editing/polishing AZW3 files, the searches on Yes/No columns using the terms (“blank,” “checked,” “unchecked”) have been fixed, a regression that caused ZSH completion to not be installed has been corrected, and the Woblink plugin has been updated in order to handle changes to the woblink website.
If you've decided to compile your own build of Calibre, be warned. It has many dependencies and it can be quite tricky. Fortunately, the developer also provides a complete list of dependencies, if you feel brave enough. He also has a very handy way of installing the application by entering a single command in the terminal, which can be found in the download section.
You can also check out our review of Calibre and download Calibre 1.45 from Softpedia, but keep in mind that this is just the source.