The open-source e-book management software Calibre has released version 9.16. This update introduces Kokoro text-to-speech support, which users can access by selecting the Piper backend in the reading settings. The developer notes that Kokoro provides more natural-sounding speech, particularly for English text, with automatic file downloads upon first use.
The update brings significant improvements to PDF handling, including better support for right-to-left text and multi-column layouts. It also resolves issues related to vertical text conversion and content loss when generating PDFs from multi-column HTML. Performance enhancements have been applied to library management tasks, such as software startup, bulk deletion, sorting, and tag browser refreshing.
Calibre 9.16 adds support for Camoufox in its built-in news downloader. This browser-based solution allows the software to fetch content from websites that block traditional automated downloads, with new rules enabled for publications like The New York Times, The Economist, and The Atlantic.
The editor now features a Check Book tool that allows users to ignore specific issue types and automatically updates CSS selectors when fixing invalid IDs. Additionally, the table of contents view now highlights the entry corresponding to the currently edited file. The update also includes support for newer Kobo firmware and various bug fixes.
