Glo Annotations support and export

[gioele]

Hello,

I have few questions about annotations support for the new Kobo Glo.

• Do the Kobo Glo support annotations on generic ePUB books?
• Is it possible to export the annotations to a PC? (With a tool that works on Linux, possibly.)
• Do the Kobo support free-hand annotations (circles, signs) like the Sony PRS-T1?

[davidfor]

Annotations are supported on ePubs.

The only way to automatically get them out is via calibre. But, they are stored in an XML file that can easily be copied out and examined.

No to free-hand support.

[dicks]

Originally Posted by gioele

[*] Is it possible to export the annotations to a PC? (With a tool that works on Linux, possibly.)

You can extract the annotations from the sqlite database of the Kobo.
This shell script works for the Kobo Touch, I think it will also work
for the Glo. You should adapt the kobodir definition to the mount point
of the device (or directory containing a copy of the device contents).

#!/bin/sh
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Extract the bookmark annotations from the Kobo database.
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------

kobodir=/media/KOBOeReader
db="$kobodir/.kobo/KoboReader.sqlite"

sqlite3 "$db" 'select VolumeID,StartContainerPath,Text,Annotation from Bookmark;' |
awk -F'|' 'BEGIN{OFS="|"}{gsub("/", "_", $1); print}' |
sort -t/ -k1 -k2 -n -k4 -k5 -k6 -k7 -k8 |
sed	'
	s/[^|]*|//
	s/[^|]*|//
	s/|/\n\n/
	s/$/\n\n/
	'

[nogle]

Originally Posted by davidfor

The only way to automatically get them out is via calibre. But, they are stored in an XML file that can easily be copied out and examined.

I knew about exporting to Calibre, but didn;t know where/how they were stored.

There have been a few times that I would like to have the notes I have made available elsewhere. Where can I find the xml document, and is it easy to get my notes out and into something else (say a Word document)?

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by nogle

I knew about exporting to Calibre, but didn;t know where/how they were stored.

There have been a few times that I would like to have the notes I have made available elsewhere. Where can I find the xml document, and is it easy to get my notes out and into something else (say a Word document)?

The files are in the directory "Digital Editions\Annotations". Under that, there is a file for each epub you have opened in the same directory structure as where you epubs are stored. The annotations are in a file that is the same name as the epub with an extension of "annot". It is a text file with XML in it. You can open it in a text editor and read it without any problems.

[MissSmiths]

Hello!

I would like to know if the Kobo Glo has a text editor.
Not just for adding notes to ebooks, but also to create txt files like a Notepad.

Thank you!

[ottdmk]

There is no text editor except for annotations. You could conceivably write notes using the Sketchpad application, but any such notes would be saved as an image file, not a .txt. Sorry.

[MissSmiths]

Ok, thank you very much!

[Shardancalibre]

Hello everybody. This is my first post. I'm going to buy a Kobo glo. Since I'm used to a kindle device and I'm really fond of its way to handle notes and annotations (mainly highlighting parts of the texts to export them to other files later) I did a little research and discovered that with the kobo is not that simple. I ended up here and got to know that you can read your "highlightings" and export them through calibre. I'd like to know how to do that step by step. I hope somebody'll be able to help me.
Thanks in advance

Cheers

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Shardancalibre

Hello everybody. This is my first post. I'm going to buy a Kobo glo. Since I'm used to a kindle device and I'm really fond of its way to handle notes and annotations (mainly highlighting parts of the texts to export them to other files later) I did a little research and discovered that with the kobo is not that simple. I ended up here and got to know that you can read your "highlightings" and export them through calibre. I'd like to know how to do that step by step.

When the device is connected, on the menu for sending books to the device, there is an option, "Fetch annotations (experimental)". When that is used, all annotations for books in the library are retrieved and added to the end of the books comments.

The alternative is to get the files I mention in a post above.

[Shardancalibre]

Originally Posted by davidfor

The files are in the directory "Digital Editions\Annotations". Under that, there is a file for each epub you have opened in the same directory structure as where you epubs are stored. The annotations are in a file that is the same name as the epub with an extension of "annot". It is a text file with XML in it. You can open it in a text editor and read it without any problems.

The only problem being that the format must be epub (but with calibre it wouldn't be a problem) and the file where you find your annotations is a labyrinth of tags (at least that is what somebody showed me in this link

http://www.imagebam.com/image/35ad3b224949715

Is it what I will find, or is there an easy way I can find my annotations?

P.s. Thanks for your answer.

[Shardancalibre]

Originally Posted by davidfor

When the device is connected, on the menu for sending books to the device, there is an option, "Fetch annotations (experimental)". When that is used, all annotations for books in the library are retrieved and added to the end of the books comments.

The alternative is to get the files I mention in a post above.

I'll try this when I get the device. I'll probably ask for further explanations

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Shardancalibre

The only problem being that the format must be epub (but with calibre it wouldn't be a problem) and the file where you find your annotations is a labyrinth of tags (at least that is what somebody showed me in this link

http://www.imagebam.com/image/35ad3b224949715

Is it what I will find, or is there an easy way I can find my annotations?

That is correct. The problem is that Kobo have not supplied an easy way to export annotations. The file above is how ADE stores stores the annotations when you are reading. The Kobo devices also store them in a database. Neither method of retrieving the annotations is ideal. The calibre method puts them in the comment field, which I don't like. Using the file has the advantage that it is XML and someone would be able to transform it into a more user friendly format. Or, and I haven't tried this, the file could probably be copied to the equivalent place for a PC installation of ADE and viewed when reading the epub in ADE.

[peitsao]

You can copy and paste the notes in calibre's comment field to a document, and I noticed that Kobo's android app will let you send your highlights, etc. to other programs for saving.

[Lynx-lynx]

Originally Posted by davidfor

When the device is connected, on the menu for sending books to the device, there is an option, "Fetch annotations (experimental)". When that is used, all annotations for books in the library are retrieved and added to the end of the books comments.

The alternative is to get the files I mention in a post above.

Thank you for this information. I've saved some annotations on my Kobo version of the book and then used Fetch Annotations in Calibre.

But where do I find them in the Calibre version? (Yes, I've removed the device from the PC, lol)