2024-11-02, 15:48
I think that the previous attempts at making a viable ebook add-on have not been so fruitful because basically we have been trying to make Kodi do what it is not supposed to do. Let's admit the strengths and weaknesses: Kodi is excellent at being a catalog of any type, scraping online content, displaying video and audio content, handling databases, customizations, and a whole lot more, but poor at showing advanced text formatting and textual layouts needed by an ebook reader. It is not that the coders lack the skills, but rather that we would be trying in vain to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear by trying to make a Kodi ebook reader.
The solution: Use Kodi to scan a folder / source containing ebooks (PDF, epub, mobi, azw3, fb2, djvu, etc) to create a database of books. Then use the metadata to fetch book covers, descriptions, etc, scraping from an online source e.g. Amazon, Google Books, etc. Now use Kodi only as a Book Catalog. If reading has to be done, use an external reader (just like some of us use an external player like VLC for watching the videos and use Kodi as a movie catalog only). Since Kodi was never meant to be an ebook reader, as evident by the inherent limitations, let the heavy-lifting be done by the default book reader of the OS or device e.g. Adobe Acrobat or Sumatra in Windows, and let Kodi stick to what it does best i.e. cataloging and scraping.
In addition to books, research papers can be cataloged and their abstracts can be fetched from Google Scholar, JSTOR, or other online academic sources. In this way, it will become a really useful add-on for students, booklovers, and researchers: A modern, visually appealing catalog of books and scholarly publications! It will also help Kodi bridge the gap between entertainment and education, and build a good name and image for Kodi in the scholarly circles.
P.S.: Ebook support has been a popular feature request e.g. https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid...ight=ebook , and it appears that it was once marked as "DONE via Add-on" but the "ebook library/scraper" which is referred to, presumably suffered from the same defects as mentioned above, and hence, did not receive acclaim. It is no longer available at https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=141759 or https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=238835, but the following looks like the same one: https://github.com/robwebset/script.ebooks. It seems that it was once included in the official repo also, but later removed ( http://kodi.wiki/view/Add-on:EBooks )
The solution: Use Kodi to scan a folder / source containing ebooks (PDF, epub, mobi, azw3, fb2, djvu, etc) to create a database of books. Then use the metadata to fetch book covers, descriptions, etc, scraping from an online source e.g. Amazon, Google Books, etc. Now use Kodi only as a Book Catalog. If reading has to be done, use an external reader (just like some of us use an external player like VLC for watching the videos and use Kodi as a movie catalog only). Since Kodi was never meant to be an ebook reader, as evident by the inherent limitations, let the heavy-lifting be done by the default book reader of the OS or device e.g. Adobe Acrobat or Sumatra in Windows, and let Kodi stick to what it does best i.e. cataloging and scraping.
In addition to books, research papers can be cataloged and their abstracts can be fetched from Google Scholar, JSTOR, or other online academic sources. In this way, it will become a really useful add-on for students, booklovers, and researchers: A modern, visually appealing catalog of books and scholarly publications! It will also help Kodi bridge the gap between entertainment and education, and build a good name and image for Kodi in the scholarly circles.
P.S.: Ebook support has been a popular feature request e.g. https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid...ight=ebook , and it appears that it was once marked as "DONE via Add-on" but the "ebook library/scraper" which is referred to, presumably suffered from the same defects as mentioned above, and hence, did not receive acclaim. It is no longer available at https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=141759 or https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=238835, but the following looks like the same one: https://github.com/robwebset/script.ebooks. It seems that it was once included in the official repo also, but later removed ( http://kodi.wiki/view/Add-on:EBooks )
