The quick start guide is something I’ve been neglecting for quite some time. When calibre 1.0 was released I really should have updated the guide at that time but I didn’t. This past week I decided that it had been long enough and the guide had to be updated.
I’m happy to say that before I updated it, the majority of the information in the guide still applied. This is a testament to the stability of calibre. While lots of new feature are still being added the overall usage of calibre has remained consistent over this time. This is a good thing because it mean users don’t have to re-learn calibre regularly.
This update to the quick start guide is a major update. Most if not every paragraph was touched. Information about features not present in calibre during the last update have been added. For example, the cover grid view and the e-book editor. Outdated information, such as a section about the PDB e-book format, has been removed.
I’ve updated the license on the guide as well. It’s still the same Creative Commons license but I’ve moved from version 3 to version 4. That said, the rights granted by the license haven’t changed.
I’m calling this release of the quick start guide the Fourth Edition. Previous releases didn’t have a version. They really should have. Thinking back about major updates this is probably (I can’t really remember) the fourth major update. Going forward I’m going to use an edition like most other books that get updates over time.
Not long ago I made a post stating that calibre’s new e-book editor is the successor to Sigil. I’m happy to say that I used the calibre e-book editor to update the Calibre Quick Start Guide. I didn’t just update the text but the entire structure of the book was updated. File names, locations, CSS, and HTML layout were all changed. The calibre e-book editor really is Sigil’s successor.
As usual the Calibre Quick Start Guide is included as part of calibre. It is still the first book in your library when creating a new, empty library. The fourth edition (update) is part of calibre release 1.25 (21 Feb, 2014). You can always directly download the latest version from the source repository.