book organization

[msamp]

I have my books all nicely arranged in my file system, with folders for fiction, non-fiction, subfolders for authors and subjects, etc. Is there any way to use Freda and take advantage of my already existing organization, and not waste disk space by making a duplicate copy in a different location? This seems SO OBVIOUS to me but i can't find a decent epub reader that does this. Ebookdroid is great, but is not supported on Windows. Cover for windows also behaves sensibly, but does not have full epub support. Can Freda do this somehow?


thanks!
mike

[jim_chapman]

I have my books all nicely arranged in my file system, with folders for fiction, non-fiction, subfolders for authors and subjects, etc. Is there any way to use Freda and take advantage of my already existing organization, and not waste disk space by making a duplicate copy in a different location? This seems SO OBVIOUS to me but i can't find a decent epub reader that does this. Ebookdroid is great, but is not supported on Windows. Cover for windows also behaves sensibly, but does not have full epub support. Can Freda do this somehow?


thanks!
mike

Hi Mike, and thank you for the question.  I can quite understand why you think it's a reasonable thing to ask for, but actually it's not as straightforward as you might hope.  The basic problem is that these days the design of operating systems (Windows for instance) is all about keeping your computer and your data safe.  The operating system is very careful about what it permits applications to do - and a case in point is that, in general, Windows applications (like Freda) are only given very limited access to your file system.  Specifically that means that Freda is allowed to access files:
1) In its own private folder, which will be something like C:\Users\YOURNAME\AppData\Local\Packages\5957Turnipsoft.freda_ypmq2qh89vmny\LocalState
2) Anywhere else on the system, only if you have just (in the last few minutes) picked that file out, using the system's 'Pick a File' popup.

So when you launch Freda, open the folder icon and pick a book from some spot like "mybooks\fiction\carroll\alice.epub" in your Documents folder, Freda can access the book and display it, and it will appear in Freda's bookshelf.  But if Freda did not make its own copy of the book file, then the next time you tried to resume reading that book, selecting it from Freda's bookshelf, Freda would be unable to open it, because Freda's temporary permission to access the book file would have expired.

It's possible for applications to be granted broad permission to access your file system, without asking for permission every time.  But to make this work nicely the application developer has to go through an expensive and complicated approval process.  This process is really not practical for small independent developers like me.  It's all the more difficult because Freda is really intended to be installed from the Microsoft Store, and safety/security standards are even more onerous for Store apps.

There are answers to these problems (trivially, I could just build a hacker-friendly version of Freda, designed for side-loading on Windows, expected to run with admin privilege, and signed with a suitable hacked-up certificate that you'd install in your 'Trusted People' certificate store - but it would really be a tool for experts only, and actually quite dangerous for the average user, because it would open a huge security hole in your PC).  So it's a topic that I do come back to from time to time, in case there might be a better answer one day.

The good news is that in practice epub files are quite small - a library of a thousand books would typically fit into a few gigabytes - which is to say it would take up less that 1% of the disc space on a PC.  So, though Freda is wasting disc space by making duplicate copies of books, disc space is at least a fairly cheap and plentiful thing ;-)

[msamp]

I have my books all nicely arranged in my file system, with folders for fiction, non-fiction, subfolders for authors and subjects, etc. Is there any way to use Freda and take advantage of my already existing organization, and not waste disk space by making a duplicate copy in a different location? This seems SO OBVIOUS to me but i can't find a decent epub reader that does this. Ebookdroid is great, but is not supported on Windows. Cover for windows also behaves sensibly, but does not have full epub support. Can Freda do this somehow?


thanks!
mike

Hi Mike, and thank you for the question.  I can quite understand why you think it's a reasonable thing to ask for, but actually it's not as straightforward as you might hope.  The basic problem is that these days the design of operating systems (Windows for instance) is all about keeping your computer and your data safe.  The operating system is very careful about what it permits applications to do - and a case in point is that, in general, Windows applications (like Freda) are only given very limited access to your file system.  Specifically that means that Freda is allowed to access files:
1) In its own private folder, which will be something like C:\Users\YOURNAME\AppData\Local\Packages\5957Turnipsoft.freda_ypmq2qh89vmny\LocalState
2) Anywhere else on the system, only if you have just (in the last few minutes) picked that file out, using the system's 'Pick a File' popup.

So when you launch Freda, open the folder icon and pick a book from some spot like "mybooks\fiction\carroll\alice.epub" in your Documents folder, Freda can access the book and display it, and it will appear in Freda's bookshelf.  But if Freda did not make its own copy of the book file, then the next time you tried to resume reading that book, selecting it from Freda's bookshelf, Freda would be unable to open it, because Freda's temporary permission to access the book file would have expired.

It's possible for applications to be granted broad permission to access your file system, without asking for permission every time.  But to make this work nicely the application developer has to go through an expensive and complicated approval process.  This process is really not practical for small independent developers like me.  It's all the more difficult because Freda is really intended to be installed from the Microsoft Store, and safety/security standards are even more onerous for Store apps.

There are answers to these problems (trivially, I could just build a hacker-friendly version of Freda, designed for side-loading on Windows, expected to run with admin privilege, and signed with a suitable hacked-up certificate that you'd install in your 'Trusted People' certificate store - but it would really be a tool for experts only, and actually quite dangerous for the average user, because it would open a huge security hole in your PC).  So it's a topic that I do come back to from time to time, in case there might be a better answer one day.

The good news is that in practice epub files are quite small - a library of a thousand books would typically fit into a few gigabytes - which is to say it would take up less that 1% of the disc space on a PC.  So, though Freda is wasting disc space by making duplicate copies of books, disc space is at least a fairly cheap and plentiful thing ;-)

---

I have my books all nicely arranged in my file system, with folders for fiction, non-fiction, subfolders for authors and subjects, etc. Is there any way to use Freda and take advantage of my already existing organization, and not waste disk space by making a duplicate copy in a different location? This seems SO OBVIOUS to me but i can't find a decent epub reader that does this. Ebookdroid is great, but is not supported on Windows. Cover for windows also behaves sensibly, but does not have full epub support. Can Freda do this somehow?


thanks!
mike

Hi Mike, and thank you for the question.  I can quite understand why you think it's a reasonable thing to ask for, but actually it's not as straightforward as you might hope.  The basic problem is that these days the design of operating systems (Windows for instance) is all about keeping your computer and your data safe.  The operating system is very careful about what it permits applications to do - and a case in point is that, in general, Windows applications (like Freda) are only given very limited access to your file system.  Specifically that means that Freda is allowed to access files:
1) In its own private folder, which will be something like C:\Users\YOURNAME\AppData\Local\Packages\5957Turnipsoft.freda_ypmq2qh89vmny\LocalState
2) Anywhere else on the system, only if you have just (in the last few minutes) picked that file out, using the system's 'Pick a File' popup.

So when you launch Freda, open the folder icon and pick a book from some spot like "mybooks\fiction\carroll\alice.epub" in your Documents folder, Freda can access the book and display it, and it will appear in Freda's bookshelf.  But if Freda did not make its own copy of the book file, then the next time you tried to resume reading that book, selecting it from Freda's bookshelf, Freda would be unable to open it, because Freda's temporary permission to access the book file would have expired.

It's possible for applications to be granted broad permission to access your file system, without asking for permission every time.  But to make this work nicely the application developer has to go through an expensive and complicated approval process.  This process is really not practical for small independent developers like me.  It's all the more difficult because Freda is really intended to be installed from the Microsoft Store, and safety/security standards are even more onerous for Store apps.

There are answers to these problems (trivially, I could just build a hacker-friendly version of Freda, designed for side-loading on Windows, expected to run with admin privilege, and signed with a suitable hacked-up certificate that you'd install in your 'Trusted People' certificate store - but it would really be a tool for experts only, and actually quite dangerous for the average user, because it would open a huge security hole in your PC).  So it's a topic that I do come back to from time to time, in case there might be a better answer one day.

The good news is that in practice epub files are quite small - a library of a thousand books would typically fit into a few gigabytes - which is to say it would take up less that 1% of the disc space on a PC.  So, though Freda is wasting disc space by making duplicate copies of books, disc space is at least a fairly cheap and plentiful thing ;-)

awesome answer - thanks!