well, not quite... but pretty close
I really like the X-Ray feature on the new Kindle Touch, but it's only limited to Amazon purchased books, and not all the books have it on Amazon(publisher permission required). Last night I decided to look into how X-Ray works and see what I could do to bring similar features to any book.
So after working on it for few hours, I wrote a script to automatically grab the book info from Shelfari, parse it, then write to the X-RAY format. I then just drop it into the Kindle via USB and
Bam there is X-RAY like feature for every book I own! Basically it shows:
1) Characters, Settings & Locations, Glossary, Themes & Symbolism sections from Shelfari.com;
2) Optionally shows the introduction paragraph from Wikipedia page and a direct link to the book's Wikipedia page.
The info it gathers is little different from X-Ray in that it grabs all the terms(except the optional Wikipedia intro/link) from Shelfari as opposed to the real X-Ray which queries mostly from Wikipedia. For some books I actually find the results to be more relevant to the real thing!
The only limitation is that it does not display the location of the words/terms. As you can see in the image bellow, the graphic bar is spoofed, not really functioning...
Granted it doesn't really show the "bone" of the book, but all the handy references are there and easily accesible, which is what I mainly use X-Ray for anyway. Overall I'm pretty happy with the result!
::TO SUMMARIZE::
Link to the X-Ray generator -> http://www.xunwang.me/xray/
Features:
- Get Character Info, Seting & Locations, Organization, Glossary, Themes & Symbolism from shelfari.com
- Every character/term gathered above provides a direct wikipedia page link if it's a full match by clicking on "Full Wikipedia Article", otherwise you can browse the relevant wikipedia entries.
- Optionally display the intro for the book's wikipedia page(if it's available), and provide a direct link to its wikipedia entry.
- Works for both Personal Documents & USB side loaded ebooks(MOBI & AZW format).
Limitation:
- it does not provide the book's location info for the characters/terms
===========UPDATE 11/20/11 ==================
I've tested several books without issues, but I can't guarantee it's bug free.
I wrote it in PHP because this way I can access & use it from anywhere with just a browser. I also added a brief instruction on the page but if there're any questions, feel free to ask. You'll most likely need mobi2mobi or
Java Mobi Metadata Editor to get the ASIN, GUID & DB name, especially for the GUID.
I've also attached the script, feel free to modify it anyway you want because I'm sure it's kinda sloppy, it was a quick & dirty effort. Just please upload the revision in case anyone feels like making any improvement. Happy reading!
===========UPDATE 11/21/11 v0.2================
- added wikipedia character/term link
- added terms from Organization section from shefari book page
- updated instruction
===========UPDATE 11/22/11 v0.22================
- fixed bug for Calibre generated ASIN
- updated Features
- updated instruction
===========UPDATE 11/26/11 v0.23================
- added built-in decimal to hex converter for the GUID so there is no need to use an external converter. It takes both dec & hex values
- updated REFERENCE to reflect the change