nook 1.5 and shelves

[sdspieg]

I asked the same question on the nookdevs irc channel - and here is what JesusFreke answered. What I take from this is that a solution would certainly not be trivial, but also not impossible. Here's the transscript:

01[23:32] <sdspieg> can somebody here tell me whether there is any chance that we will ever be able to 'see' the shelves on the Nook (and thus also use Calibre to manage them)? is somebody still working on this?
[23:33] <Mytos> were all still working on rooting
01[23:34] <sdspieg> is that different from 'softrooting'? (I apologize, but I am not well versed in these things)
[23:35] <GabrialDestruir> Visual shelves on the nook?
[23:35] <GabrialDestruir> probably not
[23:35] <GabrialDestruir> visual shelves on the NC? maybe
01[23:36] <sdspieg> i'm referring to the new 1.5 version, that allows us to make 'shelves' (folders). Kovid, the author of Calibre, says that these shelves are not 'visible' over usb.
01[23:36] <sdspieg> (and yes, i'm talking about the nook, NOT the nook color)
[23:37] <@JesusFreke> they're likely stored in a sqlite3 database somewhere in /data/data
[23:37] <GabrialDestruir> Thats what I was thinking, JesusFreke
01[23:37] <sdspieg> and do you guys 'see' that folder?
01[23:38] <sdspieg> and could you help Kovid to make 'Calibre' see it too?
[23:38] <@JesusFreke> it's available via adb - but not via the mass storage device
[23:38] <@JesusFreke> and it would only be available for rooted nooks
01[23:40] <sdspieg> thanks jesusfreke (also for the work you've done on this - i do recognize your name ). But so I have softrooted my Nook - does that then mean that I would be able to see them (and manipulate them) too? with adb via usb?
[23:41] <@JesusFreke> you probably couldn't safely modify them. the application that owns that database won't be expecting it to change underneath it
01[23:44] <sdspieg> and we can't 'manipulate' that application? so that it DOES accept changes?
[23:45] <@JesusFreke> not easily
[23:45] <@JesusFreke> since we don't have the source
01[23:45] <sdspieg> i have a very large collection of ebooks - and we now finally have 'shelves', but books have to be added 'one by one'
[23:45] <@JesusFreke> well
[23:45] <@JesusFreke> you can probably do it manually
[23:46] <@JesusFreke> i.e. pull the database, write a script to add the stuff like you want
[23:46] <@JesusFreke> and then push and reboot
[23:46] <@JesusFreke> but it's not something that could be cleanly/safely done automatically via calibre
01[23:46] <sdspieg> do you have any contact with Kovid about these things?
[23:46] <@JesusFreke> nope, never spoken to him
01[23:47] <sdspieg> woudl you mind me passing this conversation onto him?
[23:47] <@JesusFreke> no problem here
01[23:47] <sdspieg> ok - thanks. will do (on the mobileread forum)

[thrawn_aj]

Originally Posted by sdspieg

Is this really the end of this story? Isn't the really any way to make these shelves visible in such a way that they can be used in Calibre (which I DO think is absolutely brilliant)? Because for those of us with large ebook collections, doing this manually really isn't an option. I don't know much about these things, but can somebody explain to me why it isn't possible to 'reverse engineer' things - if we know what things look like before we add shelves; and we know what they look like after we add them, can't the difference be exploited to find out how the firmware deals with this? Thanks,

-Stephan

I went through this when I was thinking about getting access to annotations/highlights. Turns out that there's a hidden partition on the nook that contains all the secured data (concerning DRM, wifi, etc.). This is where all the volatile data about annotations for each book (and now shelves) resides. A couple of helpful MR members with rooted nooks (mine's still unrooted) checked this out by mounting the hidden partition over ADB and they actually found the files that contain the annots, etc.

(We found this out by trying exactly what you just suggested - checking for differences before and after a change. Didn't work for the reasons mentioned above).

However, as Kovid said, the partition (being hidden) is inaccessible on unrooted nooks and therefore cannot be written to or even read from . Perhaps some enterprising user has already written a plugin or something specifically for rooted nooks?

Edit: sdspieg just posted a much more detailed and informed analysis of what I was saying (Thanks!). Unfortunately, if I understand it correctly, messing with the shelf database seems dicey even for rooted nooks (doing it safely that is). I never thought about the owning applications and all the permissions stuff .

[kovidgoyal]

@sdpieg: If you've already rooted your nook you have far better organizational tools at your disposal than B&N's shelves. See for example, Xenophon's post above.

[JSWolf]

Can you add books to shelves once the books are on the nook?

[sarahsbloke]

Everything you want to do is much easier on a rooted Nook using
Calibre, Trook and Calibre2opds
Calibre creates your library database, tags, thumbs
Calibre2opds creates your Nook accessible database and transfers the library to the Nook
Trook reads the database and loads your choice of book for reading.

Calibre2opds + Dropbox can make your library accessible to anyone in the world with an Internet connection


This is a Nook running Trook to use the database, titles scroll left/right, information on each title scrolls up/down.


Or if you prefer to access your library online, this is a dropbox cloud created with calibre2opds.