Exporting annotations -could we hire a programmer?

[Mono]

Nice app. It only seeems not to meet the requirement of this thread. Work with notes in more advanced way than just writing it to pdf. At least I haven't found any info about it...

It would be worth trying to contact them, anyway to find out how many purchses they need to be interested in. I guess it might be at least 200-300.

[Dulin's Books]

or enough people willing to buy it anyway once ported.

they were interested in the idea and obviously have already ported their stuff to various platforms. this would be new and they'd have to know there were people willing to purchase it after the work is done.

[PF4Mobile]

Not sure what to believe about this...the thread has been read 600 times to read 17 messages. That comes to 35 users reading the thread. 9 out of 35 voted. 20% of the readers were in favour of such a solution to our problem. At this level of interest I do not think that we can hire a programmer.
I wish I had more time. Python has been on my "to do list" for years now :-)

[Beryll Snyder]

Originally Posted by Dulin's Books

or enough people willing to buy it anyway once ported.

they were interested in the idea and obviously have already ported their stuff to various platforms.

The saddle is on the wrong horse.
Better to port the OS - this would solve the majority of "problems" ...

[PF4Mobile]

Originally Posted by Beryll Snyder

The saddle is on the wrong horse.
Better to port the OS - this would solve the majority of "problems" ...

Fell free to open a poll on sponsoring that :-)
You have my vote although I believe the target is too far

[kamizase]

Originally Posted by Beryll Snyder

The saddle is on the wrong horse.
Better to port the OS - this would solve the majority of "problems" ...

Or open a whole can of worms altogether.

[peterx]

I have not really followed the discussion about exporting annotations, but I think that it should not be complicated to access the annotations. The format of the scribbles is completely visible in the SDK and the format of text annotations should also be readable as they are built upon QVariant, a generic Qt container that stores its type.

What is more complicated is how to store the extracted annotations so they are usable by desktop applications.

If you want to see any progress in this thread, please make some suggestions ;-)

[PF4Mobile]

Originally Posted by peterx

I have not really followed the discussion about exporting annotations, but I think that it should not be complicated to access the annotations. The format of the scribbles is completely visible in the SDK and the format of text annotations should also be readable as they are built upon QVariant, a generic Qt container that stores its type.

What is more complicated is how to store the extracted annotations so they are usable by desktop applications.

If you want to see any progress in this thread, please make some suggestions ;-)

That was my assumption that the format should be available there in the SDK
Suggestions? The thread itself is a suggestion...what else? We need to pay a programmer that has the time and the skills to do the job (read the SDK docs and write the code)
The obstacle that we are facing is the lack of interest and the scepticism

[Mono]

Originally Posted by PF4Mobile

Suggestions? The thread itself is a suggestion...what else?

I think, PeterX meant, that he might look at the problem (maybe do the programming). He (or any) programmer needs the definition of the task.

One probably can read annotations and text scribles, but we (users) have to say, what should be the output.

For example:
For text annotations:
- export it to txt (or better to rtf) file, automatic file name is the name of source file
- put there name of annotation, page and annotation itself (the text)
- preserve the formating (typeface, bold, underline, ...), if possible
- ...

[PF4Mobile]

Originally Posted by Mono

I think, PeterX meant, that he might look at the problem (maybe do the programming). He (or any) programmer needs the definition of the task.

One probably can read annotations and text scribles, but we (users) have to say, what should be the output.

I don't think so. Anyway...

Highlighting text and having the highlighted text added as a note to the PDF file is all we need. This is a standard functionality for many PDFs programs. Exporting the comments can be handled separately on the desktop side.

[Mono]

Originally Posted by PF4Mobile

Highlighting text and having the highlighted text added as a note to the PDF file is all we need.

OK. Now, finaly, I understand, what functionality you want. It shouldn't be too difficult to implement it for Onyx. It is by far much easier than export pdf with freehand scatches. Shouldn't be more than few hours of work for them. I guess.

Maybe Booxtor might ask them to implement it. It would increase the sell potential among students, researchers, lawyers, ...

Output would be the same as I described in previous post, but to pdf, not .txt or .rtf.

[PF4Mobile]

Originally Posted by Mono

OK. Now, finaly, I understand, what functionality you want. It shouldn't be too difficult to implement it for Onyx. It is by far much easier than export pdf with freehand scatches. Shouldn't be more than few hours of work for them. I guess.

Maybe Booxtor might ask them to implement it. It would increase the sell potential among students, researchers, lawyers, ...

Output would be the same as I described in previous post, but to pdf, not .txt or .rtf.

Merging the scribbles with the original PDF file is already possible. I do know what else you thought was missing other than exporting the highlighted text.
However I wouldn't take that easy because it might not be that easy. Let's not forget that what is easy to say might be more difficult to program

[Mono]

I know that scribbles with original pdf is already possible. It is harder task than just 'export' the notes to pdf.

I am a programmer and my guess is that (under the condition that pdf library they use allows a creation of simple formated text in pdf, which is highly probable) exporting anotations whose creation is already implemented takes no more than one day of work (for person who knows the library and the structure of anotations in database).

It is generaly quite an easy task if you have tools and data structure information needed. Onyx should have it both.

So, let's hope that if we help them localize their software to different languages, they in return make some effort to implement this simple and needed feature.

[peterx]

I wrote a small python script that can convert the sqlite databases obtained by the export functionality to SVG graphics, and it should create one file for each page. Please also see the post in the other thread.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...5&postcount=14


https://github.com/peter-x/boox-annotation-export

[PF4Mobile]

What is the difference between this and the exporting done by the native M92 method.
Are you exporting scribble or highlights? Excuse the dumb question if it is so, I do not have an M92 yet .

How long did it take you to write this?