>   Calibre might be a good choice for the end user.
>   There's a lot of knobs you can turn.

dakretz said:
>   For all but a quite small subset of end users,
>   that reads like a non sequitur to me.

as written, it is a non sequitur.

don't make users think about options (a.k.a. "knobs")...

but after a slight rewrite,
the sentence _does_ make sense

calibre is an excellent choice for most end-users,
because it can do lots of different conversions --
all via rewrites to/from calibre's native format --
and its defaults usually produce acceptable output.

so users generally get ok output without thinking.

however...

there are also lots of ways to _change_ the defaults,
in the situations where the output can be improved.

so calibre does a good job of servicing most users...

nonetheless, a fairly big subset of people find calibre
is not to their liking, for one good reason or another.

one such group are those who do not like the output,
for reasons that may be practical or esthetic or both.

another group are e-book creators who dislike how
calibre rewrites their underlying code so extensively.

so the extensive rewrite cuts both ways.

and so it is...  if you are one of the people who like
what you get out of calibre, then use it to your liking.

if calibre doesn't do it for you, then go look elsewhere.

which is how it is with _most_ tools, right?

-bowerbird