New Personal Document Archiving

[Daveoc64]

Originally Posted by gweminence

Hmm, I don't see any way to 'download and transfer via usb', like you can with books purchased from amazon.

My guess is that they don't want people to use the 5GB of storage for anything other than their Kindle Documents.

The other possibility is that they don't want people with older Kindle devices to enjoy this feature (seems more like something Apple would do!).

It's a feature I'd really like to see though.

Originally Posted by jswinden

I don't think you can load PDs via USB. And the only way to get them to Amazon's server (that I've found anyway) is to email them to your Kindle account.

Originally Posted by Blossom

You use to be able to. They would send you a email with a download link. I haven't gotten an email since I've upgraded to 3.3.

I'm still getting the emails with the links, but I'm in the UK, so that might explain that.

The personal document files that Amazon sends you don't have any DRM on them, so it's entirely possible to have a personal document delivered to your Kindle and to then transfer it to a computer by USB.

Not a great process, but if there's something in the Personal Document archive that you really need to access on your computer then you can.

[johnnyb]

Originally Posted by tomsem

What I found was that documents I'd sent prior to the 3.3 update (and perhaps prior to some changes on the servers) did not show up in Archived Items and had 'delete' rather than 'remove from device'. Everything I've sent since then has 'remove from device' and will show up in Archived Items after removal.

I sent a document to my K2 and it did sync reading position. Haven't checked highlights backup yet, but I believe that's working also. Kindle.amazon.com didn't seem to be hooked up completely last time I checked: PD highlights showed in 'Recent Activity' but there were no entries for Personal Documents in My Highlights.

I just checked all documents I've sent to my Kindle after updating to 3.3 and some, for no apparent reason, show "delete" instead of "remove". Wonder what makes them different, they show up in the archive and all (although they do not disappear after having been downloaded to the Kindle). I'll try a couple of things and then report back ;-)

UPDATE: It seems, some files were simply not working, had to convert them to epub and reconvert to mobi, don't know if a simple reconversion would have done the trick but I don't like the calibre mobi conversion... maybe someone can comment on that...

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by johnnyb

I just checked all documents I've sent to my Kindle after updating to 3.3 and some, for no apparent reason, show "delete" instead of "remove". Wonder what makes them different, they show up in the archive and all (although they do not disappear after having been downloaded to the Kindle). I'll try a couple of things and then report back ;-)

UPDATE: It seems, some files were simply not working, had to convert them to epub and reconvert to mobi, don't know if a simple reconversion would have done the trick but I don't like the calibre mobi conversion... maybe someone can comment on that...

I still need to do some more tests, but it seems to be the case that if you send a .mobi file, Amazon will convert it to .azw, and they don't just change the file extension. I sent one that was 16.6MB and the .azw is only 5.9MB. But it is all there. The .mobi in this case was from my O'Reilly library. I think O'Reilly is using kindlegen, which includes a .zip with the original source files in the resulting file (the epub version is 9.6MB). Amazon strips the source files out when converting to .azw, hence the smaller size. They may also be putting some metadata in there with some UID (unique identifier) to facilitate the syncing etc.

I assume they do the same with .prc or .azw files. So the file that gets put into the PD library is not the same as what you sent.

So what about the ones that show 'delete'? anything special about them?

Calibre adds (or at least used to) a random 'ASIN' to the mobi files it creates as a hack to coerce synching. There's an option to turn this off (in MOBI output preferences). I'm not sure what 'output' applies to altogether (if I import, then Send, does it do anything other than change file name?), but at least I will be turning the 'Enable sharing' option on so it doesn't do this any more (and maybe this default will/has changed in future calibre release, I'm still on 0.8.19). Anyway, might be something to keep an eye on.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by johnnyb

UPDATE: It seems, some files were simply not working, had to convert them to epub and reconvert to mobi, don't know if a simple reconversion would have done the trick but I don't like the calibre mobi conversion... maybe someone can comment on that...

What don't you like about Calibre's Mobi conversation? I use it on all my books. I rarely have trouble and have to use Mobipocket creator on stubborn books.

[booklover6]

Originally Posted by johnnyb

UPDATE: It seems, some files were simply not working, had to convert them to epub and reconvert to mobi, don't know if a simple reconversion would have done the trick but I don't like the calibre mobi conversion... maybe someone can comment on that...

I don't think its anything Calibre is doing, its something in the document itself. When there is a formatting issue in a mobi, what usually works for me is to convert mobi to txt, then txt to mobi. I don't know why, but that usually cleans the formatting up nicely.

[johnnyb]

@tomsem: yep, in fact every file type other than PDF (if not converted) is converted into AZW.. nevertheless, some mobi's (not all of them) were not registered as "in the cloud" properly (and haven't after deleting and resending). They were downloadable but not removed from the "Archived Items" for reasons unknown to me.

@Blossom: What I do not like about the Calibre conversion is that it is so far from the standard (admitted my kovid and staff, there are threads about it) that indexing does not function properly or the indexes are somehow messed up on the Kindle so that with many dictionaries on the Kindle (I have a big selection of Oxford mobi dicts that a bought prior to Kindle, nice reference material) which themselves are indexed somehow, dictionary lookups with Calibre mobis are considerably slower for me (sometimes up to five seconds) than with mobs created with Kindle Previewer (albeit the latter being much bigger in file size) or books purchased from Amazon.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by johnnyb

@tomsem:
@Blossom: What I do not like about the Calibre conversion is that it is so far from the standard (admitted my kovid and staff, there are threads about it) that indexing does not function properly or the indexes are somehow messed up on the Kindle so that with many dictionaries on the Kindle (I have a big selection of Oxford mobi dicts that a bought prior to Kindle, nice reference material) which themselves are indexed somehow, dictionary lookups with Calibre mobis are considerably slower for me (sometimes up to five seconds) than with mobs created with Kindle Previewer (albeit the latter being much bigger in file size) or books purchased from Amazon.

I've never had that issue with any book I've converted with Calibre. The dictionary is fast for me and works like it does on any book on the K4. Maybe it's been fixed. Kovid is always fixing things. I use Calibre to edit my files more to my liking. Each paragraph has to have a space between it and an indent of 1em. I also make sure it has a working TOC and navigation to jump through chapters.

[luqmaninbmore]

FYI, I've been able to push a document from my cloud archive to my Gen 1 Kindle via MYK. It downloaded just fine over 3G and I don't seem to have been charged.

As far as converting with any program goes, that old saying holds true: garbage in equals garbage out. A lot of eBooks are not properly formatted in the first place because it seems that many publishers/authors/creators simply lack the skills and knowledge to do so. If the eBook is really badly formatted then converting it will probably compound any issues.

As far as PDFs go, they are like cat pooh. Dig a hole and bury them as deep as possible.

As far as calibre conversion goes, it does cause bloat. It reminds me a bit of the way MS Word converts a DOC file into HTML. MS Word creates a huge file with style (CSS) wrappings for nearly every word in the document. While calibre does a much more efficient job than a program like MS Word, it still creates a hellish CSS file that is in most cases unnecessary and very difficult to read.

Here is a tiny portion of a calibre CSS file:

.calibre1 {
    display: block;
    margin-top: 0
    }
.calibre10 {
    font-style: italic
    }
.calibre11 {
    display: block;
    margin-bottom: 0;
    margin-left: 0;
    margin-right: 0;
    margin-top: 0;
    text-align: justify;
    text-indent: 0
    }
.calibre12 {
    display: block
    }
.calibre13 {
    display: block;
    margin-top: 1em;
    text-align: center
    }
.calibre14 {
    display: block;
    text-align: center
    }
.calibre15 {
    font-size: 1.125em;
    line-height: 1
    }

As you can see, not the easiest thing to use. Most of us would give meaningful names to our classes. But at any rate, calibre does an overall good job of converting and the eBooks are usually very readable. It just doesn't do a good job of creating a file that is easy to modify after conversion.

[DiapDealer]

While calibre does a much more efficient job than a program like MS Word, it still creates a hellish CSS file that is in most cases unnecessary and very difficult to read.

None of which is included in the mobi-file that calibre creates.

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

None of which is included in the mobi-file that calibre creates.

True, but if you want to modify a mobi you need to convert it to a format like ePub, make the modifications, then convert it back to mobi. Like I stated above, if you just want to read the converted book then calibre is a good conversion program and you probably won't notice any issues.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by jswinden

As far as converting with any program goes, that old saying holds true: garbage in equals garbage out. A lot of eBooks are not properly formatted in the first place because it seems that many publishers/authors/creators simply lack the skills and knowledge to do so. If the eBook is really badly formatted then converting it will probably compound any issues.

As far as PDFs go, they are like cat pooh. Dig a hole and bury them as deep as possible.

As far as calibre conversion goes, it does cause bloat. It reminds me a bit of the way MS Word converts a DOC file into HTML. MS Word creates a huge file with style (CSS) wrappings for nearly every word in the document. While calibre does a much more efficient job than a program like MS Word, it still creates a hellish CSS file that is in most cases unnecessary and very difficult to read.

I don't have any problem with Calibre style sheets. You can always view the source code of the book to figure out what each style is. I do that by going to Search & Replace in Calibre and clicking on the wizard button. It will show the source code of the entire book.

If a book contains font size tags Calibre will remove them and then convert it to a style instead which is much easier to edit then going through and manually removing every single tag from the source code. I find this a must have when working with most ebooks.
Calibre cleans up the html tags in the ebook more then I think most people realize.

I Prefer to use Word to html when editing an ebook. I remove the font definitions manually but other then that Calibre cleans it all nicely up. I can use word to fix broken sentences, Change Headers and basically just make it prettier with just using search and replace. It only take a couple of minutes.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by jswinden

True, but if you want to modify a mobi you need to convert it to a format like ePub, make the modifications, then convert it back to mobi. Like I stated above, if you just want to read the converted book then calibre is a good conversion program and you probably won't notice any issues.

If I get a mobi book that needs editing I can just use the debug option and edit the html directly or I can convert it to htmlz and edit that way in a html editor or Word.

There's no need to convert to epub to edit it.

My preference is to convert to ePub and use Sigil.

[neonbible]

Does anyone know when Amazon will support personal documents for iPhone and Desktop versions of Kindle?