Adventures in discovering the K4PC PID.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by stewball

I open the samples with UltraEdit, and the TPZ one's will say TPZ1 on the first line. As stated in an earlier post, the Mobi files will say BOOK MOBI in the first few lines also.

Stew


EDIT: And Ereader files are PDB.

Ultraedit rulze!

[Idoine]

Yeah ! Your are the bests !
I was able to open and read one of the free downloads from Kindle4PC to Mobipocket Reader and my Cybook !

[=X=]

Originally Posted by dwanthny

You and I both. Just when you think you have it down they go and twist things up again.

Apparently on the kindle itself the files are the way you described them azw or tpz. Since I don't own a Kindle I don't know. I do know how they appear in Kindle for PC and for some reason they chose .prc as the extension for both topaz and azw formats.

I have actually bought a normal encrypted book and had success with the script and I downloaded a sample of a book I knew to be tpz and sure enough the script told me that it was beyond it's ability because it was tpz.

Okay I'm about to confuse you even more. MOBI and eReader are both PDB file formats which is Palm Data Base file. However the ereader convention for it's extension is PDB, they chose not to change their extension from the palm default. Mobipocket uses two extensions MOBI and PRC.

PDB are container files used by the Palm OS so there is no convention on how data is stored in each PDB file, it is dependent on the software.

As to why Amazon chose to keep one extension is because extensions don't matter. Extensions are just a name/classifications. I can see them choosing one format to reduce customer getting confused about PRC, AMZ, TPZ, AMZ1 they chose to use one extension and let the reading software determine how to handle the different formats.

=X=

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by =X=

...
As to why Amazon chose to keep one extension is because extensions don't matter. Extensions are just a name/classifications. I can see them choosing one format to reduce customer getting confused about PRC, AMZ, TPZ, AMZ1 they chose to use one extension and let the reading software determine how to handle the different formats.

=X=

Not true. In Windows that doesn't make much sense because it's the extension that drives what application opens the file.

as long as it's unique that's fine, but if it's .epub there could be any number of apps that might handle it.

That is likely WHY amazon chose to make them unique.

[uncouth]

Tried this on my Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit laptop, and my Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit desktop - both work flawlessly giving me the ability to freely move books that I legally own across both of my e-readers. Thanks so much for your hard work, it is much appreciated!

[scottt]

I've gotten the python scripts to launch K4PC and I double click on a book & close it but I get an error message of "Failed To Determine Book Path"

mobidedrm.py and unswindle.pyw are in the ptyhon26 directory and c:\python26 is in the system path...

I think I'm real close !

What am I missing?

Novice at python

[Idoine]

Originally Posted by scottt

I've gotten the python scripts to launch K4PC and I double click on a book & close it but I get an error message of "Failed To Determine Book Path"

mobidedrm.py and unswindle.pyw are in the ptyhon26 directory and c:\python26 is in the system path...

I think I'm real close !

What am I missing?

Novice at python

Do you close K4PC when the book is open ?

[scottt]

I closed the application when the book was open.

Just tried again... the script launched K4PC I doubled clicked and opened the book, paged through a few pages clicked back to home and closed. Still get the Failed to Determine book path"

[Leep]

Have you looked in the directory my documents\my kindle content to see if it is creating new files. This is what happened to me. In each case there was a new ebook that started with B000 which was the new drm free ebook.

cheers

[ekaser]

Originally Posted by scottt

I closed the application when the book was open.

Just tried again... the script launched K4PC I doubled clicked and opened the book, paged through a few pages clicked back to home and closed. Still get the Failed to Determine book path"

The "clicked back to home" is what's getting you, most likely. When you click the HOME button in K4PC, you're CLOSING the current book and returning to the 'library'. Instead, do NOT click on 'Home' (and you don't have to click through any pages). While the book is open (a page of the book is being displayed) close the K4PC application (click on the X in the top-right corner or double-click the upper-left corner).

[i♥cabbages]

Originally Posted by scottt

I closed the application when the book was open.

Just tried again... the script launched K4PC I doubled clicked and opened the book, paged through a few pages clicked back to home and closed. Still get the Failed to Determine book path"

Which version of unswindle do you have?

When did you install Kindle for PC?

If you can find the actual Kindle for PC executable (.exe file), right click on it, select "Properties", then select the "Version" tab, what does it have in the "File Version" field?

A few days ago Amazon started providing a new version of Kindle For PC which (intentionally or not) broke unswindle versions 1-3. Version 4 detects the new version, but doesn't work with it. Version 5 (currently 5-rc1) should work with the new version.

[scottt]

Originally Posted by Leep

Have you looked in the directory my documents\my kindle content to see if it is creating new files. This is what happened to me. In each case there was a new ebook that started with B000 which was the new drm free ebook.

cheers

Thank you, thank you, thank you...

I just tried again and found the book in my kindle content just as you outlined!!!

The Save window opened, named the book and I got several script errors. However, I found the book renamed as B00... .prc in the MY Kindle Content dir.. I opened the B000..prc book and voila !! There it was..

Thank you again !!! Most Appreciated

Special Thank-you to all of the highly skilled python guru's that made this possible!

[i♥cabbages]

Originally Posted by Leep

Have you looked in the directory my documents\my kindle content to see if it is creating new files. This is what happened to me. In each case there was a new ebook that started with B000 which was the new drm free ebook.

Wait, what? That's where K4PC stores it's files, DRMed, Topaz, and free-and-clear all together. When unswindle works it will prompt you for a separate destination file. If you end up with DRM-free files in that directory then that's because the books you downloaded via K4PC were DRM-free in the first place.

[scottt]

Originally Posted by ekaser

The "clicked back to home" is what's getting you, most likely. When you click the HOME button in K4PC, you're CLOSING the current book and returning to the 'library'. Instead, do NOT click on 'Home' (and you don't have to click through any pages). While the book is open (a page of the book is being displayed) close the K4PC application (click on the X in the top-right corner or double-click the upper-left corner).

OK, I get to the Windows Save Option, I name the file xyz.mobi then the script issues this set of errors

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "c:\python26\unswindle.pyw", line 803, in gui_main
unswindler.decrypt_book(inpath, outpath, pid)
File "c:\python26\unswindle.pyw", line 769, in decrypt_book
universal_newlines=True)
File "c:\python26\lib\subprocess.py", line 614, in __init__
errread, errwrite) = self._get_handles(stdin, stdout, stderr)
File "c:\python26\lib\subprocess.py", line 722, in _get_handles
p2cread = self._make_inheritable(p2cread)
File "c:\python26\lib\subprocess.py", line 761, in _make_inheritable
DUPLICATE_SAME_ACCESS)
WindowsError: [Error 6] The handle is invalid

I'm launching all this from the command line, Is that correct?

[i♥cabbages]

Originally Posted by scottt

I'm launching all this from the command line, Is that correct?

When you launch it from the command-line, are you using python.exe or pythonw.exe? If the former, try the latter. And is there some reason you're using the command-line instead of just opening the script file in explorer?