05-28-2012, 05:07 PM | #1 |
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xournal annotation success story
This post is just intended not to let this part of the forum die off completely. Here it goes.
I have to confess, I have been unfaithful. I have recently gotten hold of another e-reader and devoted a lot of attention to it. If it can be of any consolation, it also comes from a company that no longer exists, somehow I seem to be attracted by them ... the device has all the gimmicks I miss on the DR1000, all android stuff with market, wireless, gmail and so on, in another words lots of possibilities to fool around with. And then I had some real work to do for a change ... read and annotate a 275 pages long pdf and then send the corrections out. The only efficient way I found to do this in the end was to use the DR1000, annotate in the system pdf viewer (while in parallel having the same document open in pdfviewer so that I could easily see the references), so I have been reading in the garden, the bath tub, the sofa, the bed ....then using import annotations only in xournal, converting them to pdf, ejecting periodically the sdcard (while keeping the device turned on), putting it in the slot of the laptop, send out the corrections to the collaborator ... really most efficient! I have found no way to do this on my other more sophisticated device, so thanks again to Mackx for this possibility, it really turns the DR1000 into a serious workhorse that is still more than competitive [what a shame that a company that can produce a device of such quality with so much potential has not been able to make it, imagine where we could be by now ...] |
06-02-2012, 10:06 AM | #2 |
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Good to hear that the xournal port is still useful for you.
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06-03-2012, 10:18 AM | #3 |
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Another succes story... optimized workflow?!
I confirm this. I feel like writing a bit for a change so I'll tell you my story as well : )
I already have more books than I can possibly read in my life, so my deepest interest in ebooks is getting *good* digital copies of *the good books* I've read, while I turn to the unread piles once in while if I still want something 'new'. Most ebook versions I have found of my books are so horribly bad that I've seriously considered slowly converting them all myself (and I'll have to do that with many, unavailable otherwise). With so many books, making any workflow as efficient as possible is a must: Obviously the first rational step is to read the digital versions and keep a hard copy handy to read form them and make corrections (or scan missing pages!) every now and then. This alone is considerably faster than wholesale from-scratch conversion. Now, my format of choice for digital books is properly marked up HTML (and some sort of TeX embedding when I get started with formulas I guess) because it's easiest to convert to anything else that's needed, is pretty compact, future-proof, etc. But I'll digress about that some other day. The thing is I figured it would be best to merge the reading and proof-reading processes with some kind of browser-based editor, so I programmed exactly that. This was working good for me so when I get time I want to port it to the DR1000. The thing is, meanwhile I have started doing more and more reading+proofreading on the DR1000 and while I still plan to port my HTML viewer+editor, I realized that any such dual-mode approach is just too slow in the not-unusual-at-all case where I spot 3 typos or errors (incorrect paragraph splitting or merging, etc) or more... per page! OTOH I can't think of a full fledged HTML editor that can be run efficiently on the DRs AND looks close enough to a simple reader (i.e. looks GOOD). So far the fastest method for reading + correcting I've worked out for my eBooks involves printing my HTML eBooks out to DR-optimized PDFs, and loading them there. Then I spend many hours filling up global.db files with little BLOBs, er... I mean drawing tiny circles around typos and such, while I read and once I'm done or tired, I fire up Xournal, and I do "import annotations only + export to PDF'. Then I can spend up to one whole evening more (yes, things can get pretty bad) correcting the text faster in an editor on a computer while reading the 'annotated pages only' PDF version on the iRex. I hope it makes for a good success story or how-to even if there are no more improvement suggestions. (Really, suggestions, anyone?!) Needless to say, but I'll say it too: thank you for this great port! |
07-01-2012, 01:57 PM | #4 |
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I have been experimenting with python and the sqlite3, ctypes, struct, pyPdf and reportlab packages to create a PC based tool to merge annotations with pdfs. I now have an experimental version that I tried with a few files and it seems to work. Still a lot of work is needed to get it 'user-friendly'.
For those that have some python experience I attached the code. At the top you find a directory variable it should contain the (relative-)path to a directory with books and a metadata.db file (copied from your DR). Please let me know if it works (or what goes wrong). I am using python2.7, the extra packages that you need can easily be found with google. |
07-01-2012, 06:03 PM | #5 |
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@Mackx: Thanks, will try (if I am able to )
@MrWarper: Since a lot of the stuff that I work with is pdf produced from a TeX source and I am more and more using e-readers, I have been hunting for a TeX to epub/mobi solution (in fact via html), so far without any real success. Indeed, even though pdf is useable on the DR1000 or equivalent, especially with the way annotations can be handled, when I compare to epub/mobi, it seems not really optimal. Are you saying a tex to html with a good html reader for the e-reader would be an option? Even for complex formulas ? In case it is and you can port such an html reader I, for one, would be most interested. |
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07-02-2012, 12:09 PM | #6 |
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@fekhner: This version has a simple UI (it requires wxPython as extra package). Since it generates two extra files (one with annotations only, one merged) it is better to copy the directory you want to process to your PC before selecting it with the tool.
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07-04-2012, 01:51 PM | #7 |
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@Mackx: I have not succeed to make it work (under python 2.8), but I am not very familiar with python scripts. Could you tell us the command line syntax you use?. And, what is the output of this script?
Last edited by godel10; 07-04-2012 at 02:25 PM. |
07-06-2012, 08:51 AM | #8 | |
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I haven't got to writing formulae yet ; ) Anyway... apparently everyone still writes their formulas in TeX (so I'll take the guess MathML still sucks), and converts them. What could we work with? I don't know, but I'd go for whatever wikipedia uses. They're obviously using TeX as formulae input and getting browser-ready output, and I know (just checked in fact) there are several output options. Can "it" be run on e-readers? Even with a computer-in-the-middle approach (I assume this will be a necessary evil for quite a while), can the output be tweaked to be displayed on readers? That should be easier to test. |
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07-07-2012, 04:41 AM | #9 |
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07-07-2012, 06:21 PM | #10 |
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Sorry, you are right. I tried with pyhon 2.7.3. I suppose I was confused with tha package "python-wxgtk2.8" fot the interface.
Could you tell about the command line syntax you use?. And, what is the output of this script? |
07-08-2012, 04:14 AM | #11 | |
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Are you on windows? You need to install different packages: - python 2.7.x: http://python.org/download/ select 32 or 64 bits python package - wxpython: http://www.wxpython.org/download.php again, select 32 or 64 bits package depending on your operating system and be sure to download one of the "py27" files - ReportLab: http://www.reportlab.com/ftp/reportl...in32-py2.7.exe or http://www.reportlab.com/ftp/reportl...md64-py2.7.exe Again, 32 or 64 bits packages - pypdf: http://pybrary.net/pyPdf/pyPdf-1.13.win32.exe Once you have installed these 4 packages, open a command line window (cmd.exe), go to the directory where you have the needed pdf and annotations file, and printPdfwX.py script and run: $ python printPdfwx.py I don't use windows, so I'm not completely sure all the above is correct. By the way, once packages are installed, if you rename "printPdfwx.py" to "printPdfwx.pyw" (note the 'w' at the end of extension) you should run the script just by double-clicking on it from windows explorer. Iņigo Last edited by Iņigo; 07-08-2012 at 05:00 AM. |
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07-08-2012, 04:52 AM | #12 |
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Thanks Íņigo (Gracias Íņigo) , but I am in linux.
But, does anybody know what the script does? In other words, what is the input and what is the output? |
07-08-2012, 05:45 AM | #13 | |
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Install the requirements and run the script from the command line, as: $ python script.py Regarding the purpose of the script: IREX devices store annotations in a special file (in fact the metadata sqlite3 database). This script merges these annotations "drawing" them in the pdf file. I.e., the resulting pdf file has the original pdf document contents plus the annotations drawings. Iņigo |
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07-08-2012, 06:47 AM | #14 | ||
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Quote:
One more question, I guess this script is only working with the current sqlite format, and not with the old system before the epub update of the DR100S software. Is this the case? |
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07-08-2012, 07:31 AM | #15 | |
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"""For those that have some python experience I attached the code. At the top you find a directory variable it should contain the (relative-)path to a directory with books and a metadata.db file (copied from your DR).""" |
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