14 DAY TRIAL // The Calibre eBook editor, converter, and viewer has been updated yet again and numerous features have landed in the latest version of this powerful application.
The Calibre developer is no longer releasing smaller and weekly incremental updates for his application and he seems to have opted for a more relaxed schedule. The version numbers of the application have also changed and now each new release reflects much better the large number of changes and fixes from new versions.
The same is true for Calibre 2.4.0, which was just made available by the developer. The new build has gathered quite a few new features, so the developer decided to make a bigger release than usual.
New features land in Calibre 2.4.0
A very interesting new feature has been added to Calibre and that is the option to generate covers for books. This method uses an algorithm created by the developer to provide unique and interesting covers each time.
"An all new random cover generation algorithm, which generates covers using many different color schemes and cover styles. Now when you click the Generate cover button in the Edit Metadata dialog a cover based on the book metadata is generated using random colors and styles. You can customize the random cover generation by long clicking the Generate Cover button, which will popup a dialog where you can create new color schemes and customize other aspects of the generated cover as well," writes the developer in the announcement.
A few other interesting changes have been made to the application. The saved searches pop-up is now dockable, the 'Mark selected text' menu entry will now change depending on the situation, it's now possible to use the Enter key to select the cover, and the DOCX support has been improved. Surprisingly enough, there is still no support for simple .DOC imports, so users will have to first convert to another format.
Also, a new feature that will definitely be very useful, especially for users who edit the eBook metadata, is the ability to undo the metadata import. This is a feature that was sorely missed and users will be very happy to have it.
As usual, there are also a large number of bug fixes, but most of them are minor. More details about this release can be found in the official announcement. You can download the source package for Calibre 2.4.0 from Softpedia.
We also have a review of the application online, if you want to check it, but it's for an older version and new features have been added since then.