Arch Linux

bhrgunatha

Member

Registered: 2009-12-16

Posts: 103

[Solved] calibre ebook-viewer not working correctly

In the last few days the ebook-viewer packaged along with calibre has started behaving strangely by inserting gaps or spaces randomly all over books. Calibre itself and the other tools seem to be OK.

EDIT: Screenshots
Calibre's ebook-viewer: http://i.imgur.com/ypGBTlI.png
Calibre's ebook-editor: http://i.imgur.com/WnPjFkx.png (Note - no spaces in the source files or rendering of the page)

After looking around for a bit - I've discovered that the newest version of calibre switched from the regular releases (which on Arch stopped at version 1.40) to beta releases (Arch package version 1.204.1-2).
It seems the official Arch package is now the beta of calibre.

I've tried downgrading to previous version and the newset one that works is the 1.40 version.
I would very much like to have the latest, official version of calibre rather than the old 1.40.

Unfortunately calibre seems like a complex beast.

I suspect the problem is with qt5-webkit (that I guess is what is rendering the book.)
This must be a **new** dependency as I don't have a version installed before August 3rd when calibre was upgraded.

$ grep -i qt5-calibre /var/log/pacman.log
...
...
[2014-08-03 11:34] [PACMAN] upgraded calibre (1.40.0-1 -> 1.204.0-1)

$ grep -i qt5-webkit /var/log/pacman.log
[2014-08-03 11:34] [PACMAN] installed qt5-webkit (5.3.1-1)

I don't have an older version - I only have qt5-webkit-5.3.1.

Calibre dependencies

    chmlib
    icu
    imagemagick
    libmtp
    libusbx (libusb)
    libwmf
    podofo
    pyqt4-common
    python2-apsw
    python2-chardet
    python2-cherrypy
    python2-cssselect
    python2-cssutils
    python2-dateutil
    python2-dnspython
    python2-html5lib
    python2-lxml
    python2-mechanize
    python2-netifaces
    python2-pillow
    python2-psutil
    python2-pyqt5
    python2-six
    qt5-svg
    qt5-webkit
    shared-mime-info
    ipython2 (optional) - to use calibre-debug
    python2-pycountry (make)
    qt5-x11extras (make)

There seems to be a strange mix of qt4 and qt5 here:
pyqt4-common, python2-pyqt5, qt5-svg, qt5-webkit, qt5-x11extras

What I would like is to have the latest version of calibre 1.47 and have it nicely integrated with Arch rather than just install it somewhere in my home directory and maintain it manually.

Unfortunately I'm stumped and I have no idea how to do that.

Is anyone else having problems with the beta calibre and its ebook-viewer?
Can anyone offer some suggestions or help out?

Last edited by bhrgunatha (2014-08-08 06:39:16)

firecat53

Member

From: Lake Stevens, WA, USA

Registered: 2007-05-14

Posts: 1,542

Website

Re: [Solved] calibre ebook-viewer not working correctly

I'm not seeing the issues you showed (granted, I only spot checked about a half dozen books in our library). Have you attempted their binary install? Writing a PKGBUILD to run their installer probably wouldn't be too difficult if you want to track it with pacman.

Scott

---

Github

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 13,729

Re: [Solved] calibre ebook-viewer not working correctly

Calibre 1.xx simply won't build with current versions of pyqt4. The official package had to either stay at 1.40 or jump to the 2.0 betas. The maintainer decided to package the betas.

It's working perfectly here. I wonder if it's simply a font problem.

Last edited by Scimmia (2014-08-06 15:00:14)

bhrgunatha

Member

Registered: 2009-12-16

Posts: 103

Re: [Solved] calibre ebook-viewer not working correctly

I'm not seeing the issues you showed (granted, I only spot checked about a half dozen books in our library). Have you attempted their binary install? Writing a PKGBUILD to run their installer probably wouldn't be too difficult if you want to track it with pacman.

Scott

It happens to me for any book I open. I might use the binary installer, but I'd prefer to try to find what the cause is and fix that. It's an option though at least, thanks.

bhrgunatha

Member

Registered: 2009-12-16

Posts: 103

Re: [Solved] calibre ebook-viewer not working correctly

Calibre 1.xx simply won't build with current versions of pyqt4. The official package had to either stay at 1.40 or jump to the 2.0 betas. The maintainer decided to package the betas.

It's working perfectly here. I wonder if it's simply a font problem.

I've tried changing fonts (both Serfi and Sans Serif) and sizes but it's the same for any font I choose at any size.
Since 1.40 uses pyqt4 and calibre now won't work with that, then perhaps its a problem on my system with the mix of qt4 and qt5.
Maybe I'm missing some vital qt5 library?

$ pacman -Qs qt5                                                                                            

local/attica-qt5 5.0.0-1 (kf5)
local/libdbusmenu-qt5 0.9.3+14.10.20140619-1
local/phonon-qt5 4.7.2-1
local/phonon-qt5-gstreamer 4.7.2-1
local/polkit-qt5 0.112-1
local/pyqt5-common 5.3.1-1
local/python2-pyqt5 5.3.1-1
local/qt5-base 5.3.1-1 (qt qt5)
local/qt5-declarative 5.3.1-1 (qt qt5)
local/qt5-location 5.3.1-1 (qt qt5)
local/qt5-quickcontrols 5.3.1-1 (qt qt5)
local/qt5-script 5.3.1-1 (qt qt5)
local/qt5-sensors 5.3.1-1 (qt qt5)
local/qt5-svg 5.3.1-1 (qt qt5)
local/qt5-webkit 5.3.1-1 (qt qt5)
local/qt5-x11extras 5.3.1-1 (qt qt5)
local/qt5-xmlpatterns 5.3.1-1 (qt qt5)

Last edited by bhrgunatha (2014-08-07 02:41:28)

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 13,729

Re: [Solved] calibre ebook-viewer not working correctly

The only qt5 packages I have installed that you don't are qt5-graphicaleffects, qt5-tools, and qt5-translations.

bhrgunatha

Member

Registered: 2009-12-16

Posts: 103

Re: [Solved] calibre ebook-viewer not working correctly

So I've tried many variations of the suggestions and finally found a solution (although I can't understand why it works).

Open a book in the ebook-viewer.
Click the "Restore Defaults" button.
Reset my font choice and size selection.

Everything is back to normal.

I also deleted 2 themes I had saved previously.
My only guess is that there was some setting in the theme that has changed and using the old theme setting (from v1.40 and before) caused this problem with the new beta version.