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How would I read the man page for calibre when it's installed from flatpak as below?

nicholas@gondor:~$ 
nicholas@gondor:~$ flatpak info com.calibre_ebook.calibre


calibre - The one stop solution to all your e-book needs


      ID: com.calibre_ebook.calibre
     Ref: app/com.calibre_ebook.calibre/x86_64/stable
    Arch: x86_64
  Branch: stable
 Version: 5.23.0
 License: GPL-3.0
  Origin: flathub


Collection: org.flathub.Stable
Installation: system
Installed: 360.9 MB
Runtime: org.freedesktop.Platform/x86_64/20.08
Sdk: org.freedesktop.Sdk/x86_64/20.08


  Commit: 13464e660f35716a725261af4b45d3abc199a3ce52ebdd9ee887c7ae623b5873
  Parent: 4f7f3b603f31cc781caf8260f887118a1bb466748891c9e122826728e25d3eed
 Subject: Update calibre-5.22.1-x86_64.txz to 5.23.0 (9184a3f3)
    Date: 2021-07-11 19:56:21 +0000


nicholas@gondor:~$
nicholas@gondor:~$ flatpak --version
Flatpak 1.8.2
nicholas@gondor:~$
nicholas@gondor:~$ man calibre
No manual entry for calibre
nicholas@gondor:~$

The search results I see are for how to use flatpak itself, which is only indirectly the question. No doubt the man pages are on the system itself.

Nicholas Saunders
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    To my knowledge, Flatpaks aren't required to install manpages. It's quite possible they won't install manpages for the various commands. – Thomas Ward Jul 27 '21 at 23:44
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    Nicholas... I've clarified my answer a bit... – heynnema Jul 28 '21 at 19:51
  • Many programs for example LibreOffice and okular are other apps with command line options and comprehensive man pages. I'd think that the flatpak vision could use a bit more user empathy. One of the big advantages of GNU/Linux and UNIX is the man page facility. Dropping it because a small group decide that GUI apps don't need man pages is a fine example of "Marketing Myopia" – will Apr 23 '24 at 13:34

1 Answers1

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calibre doesn't have man pages, if you've installed calibre v5.23.0 from their web page at https://calibre-ebook.com/download_linux. This is the recommended place to get the latest version of calibre.

Note: The flatpak version v5.23.0 from https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.calibre_ebook.calibre doesn't appear to have man pages either.

Note: At the https://calibre-ebook.com/download_linux web page, they indicate "Please do not use your distribution provided calibre package, as those are often buggy/outdated. Instead use the Binary install described below...".

If however, you've installed the older version of calibre v5.11.0 from the Ubuntu repos, or the Software app, it may in fact have man pages. Not recommended.

Start calibre. Click the HELP icon, or go to https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/ to view the calibre User Manual.

heynnema
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    Better wording is "calibre doesn't have a man page when installed using Flatpak." See https://packages.ubuntu.com/focal-updates/all/calibre/filelist for actual man pages inside deb-package. – N0rbert Jul 28 '21 at 18:26
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    @N0rbert I don't have calibre installed from the Ubuntu repos as it's an older version. That package may come with man pages. I have calibre directly from their web site at https://calibre-ebook.com/download_linux where they caution "Please do not use your distribution provided calibre package, as those are often buggy/outdated. Instead use the Binary install described below." and it has no manpages, just as the OP found out. I'll clarify my answer. – heynnema Jul 28 '21 at 19:24