Ubuntu/Linux library loading very slow

[Mauro]

Hi,
I have a library of more than 2000 titles mostly in MobiPocket ".prc"
fornat.
The Library takes just about forever to load (when I click on the
Library icon FBReader freezes for ~3min!)

Is this normal?
What can I do to shorten the load time (if anything)?

TiA
Mauro

[Andrew Neil Ramage]

Ditto on this comment. I have FBReader on my Nokia 770 and my EeePC -
when I click the library icon (Eee PC) or use Library>Open the first
time in a session it scans the whole SD/MMC card. This is not so bad on
the Eee PC - I only have a 512M SD card in it but I have a full 1G RSMMC
card in the Nokia. Scanning this (there are Mobipocket, HTML and .PDFs
on the Nokia) takes a very long time. If I finish a story in one
session (ie, I haven't put the machine to sleep or turned it off) the
library loads instantly.

I think that the library list should be written to the FBReader system
directory and only changed when Add Book is selected. This way you only
have to read one file which contains the state of the library as at the
last time the program was used. This file should be written and closed
when a file is added (or possibly manually selecting rescan) so that
time is not wasted between sessions. (Or if, as happens with my Nokia
when it is getting low in battery power, the machine reboots.)

Andrew

[AlanW]

A work around would be to remove the directory or directories
containing the .prc files from the books path (under the General
settings tag). Actually, what I do is edit the directory name:

e.g. change /media/mmc1/Books to /media/mmc1/BooksNO

That way it is easy to change the path back if you want to rescan.

I don't remember if doing this removes the automatic additions from
the library, but it probably does.

A similar approach would be to have a separate directory for your
current ebooks, and only include this directory in the path. Just
move files into and out of this directory (outside FBReader) to manage
them.

These are just work arounds. Since I don't think deleting files is
common, I would favor automatically adding new ebooks (should be
quick) but then having them stick until some kind of manually
initiated garbage collection step to remove deleted files.