PRS-600 prs-600 notes to printing

[dogsballs]

just wondering from someone who has a prs-600 when you highlight a note for transfer to pc for printing how large can the note be (multiple pages, a whole chapter, a whole book?) and what is the format used for transfering im wondering if the unit somehow reformats the note into something the pc will recognise and takes out any embedded protection.

[leafy]

I bought an e-book reader (PRS-600) thinking that I could highlight text sections, and export them (along with the page numbers) to facilitate research. You cant export anything, nor print anything. I assume that the development focus has been on uber copyright protection with an assumption that buyers will all be reading books they have to pay for. This is a serious drawback for students and researchers. In my case I have no paid content or copy protected content at all, but the limitations of the software still destroy this important functionality of the reader. I hope that someone may write some alternative software to make the device useful for more than reading pulp fiction.

[cedricp]

Hello,

Jarnal is a java note taking application (http://www.dklevine.com/general/soft...000/jarnal.htm). It saves its notes in .jaj file which is nothing more than a zip file of a config file and one .svg file per page. Hand-writing are represented as <path d="Mx y Lx y Lx y ..." .../> in this svg.

On the PRS-600, there is one xml file which list all the annotation in the reader's memory Digital Editions/Annotations/database/media/books, with one .annot file per annotated document. This document refers to .svg files a directory in database/markup/database/media/books. In these .svg, the hand writing is represented with polylines <polyline path="x,y x,y x,y..." .../>

I've just tried to create a .jaj file, unzip it, and put the data of one of my reader's svg in the jarnal svg, converting the polyline in path tag (with a vim macro).
Then rezipped the files in new .jaj, and reopen it. The marking seems to be at the right place.

The nice thing is that jarnal can then generate a new pdf, with the drawing integrated. This can then be reprinted...

I will not be able to develop the script to automate all this before 2-3 weeks, so I post it here in case someone has the skills and the time. Otherwise I'll post a note when/if I can implement it in november.

Good reading.

[jans]

I have with success made notes - through highlighting, and exported it to a word document.
It brings all the information you need to use for research - which I want to use my reader for - BUT the note - no matter how big you made it on the reader, when exported it only allows 100 charachters. If you write notes I understand they can be made longer apparently 300 charachters.

what we need is - longer notes, more charachters - or continous notes - kind of like text messages.

I am no software wizz -so I am not sure if this is what you propose - but for research this would make it a lot better.

[jans]

I have exported notes - but they are too short - as I say below
jan

[cedricp]

Hello Jan,

I'm actually also using the PRS600 for research review, but I never use the typed notes. I find the interface much too slow. I always use only free-hand annotation. This means I use it mostly for spelling mistake and my own little drawing to say if its a mistake, badly said, ...

Jarnal also proposes a way to add text annotation. I guess all the information is available in the PRS database, so it should be possible to retrieve it.

Best

[jans]

Hello Cedric
I can through my university download lots of articles - pdf etc. and I want not only to read but to take out quotes I need for further purposes -and it gives all the information you need including page references - but only 100 character - and that is a real problem.
Basicly we need the limitation to say eg 999 charachters instead of 100 - somewhere in the software their must be a way to increase the lenght of notes. I even wrote sony about it. This type tool will change the way we work with research, science and teaching in an unimaginable way. cant wait to see if someone can make my wish for longer notes come through.
jan

[lev]

Originally Posted by jans

Hello Cedric
I can through my university download lots of articles - pdf etc. and I want not only to read but to take out quotes I need for further purposes -and it gives all the information you need including page references - but only 100 character - and that is a real problem.
Basicly we need the limitation to say eg 999 charachters instead of 100 - somewhere in the software their must be a way to increase the lenght of notes. I even wrote sony about it. This type tool will change the way we work with research, science and teaching in an unimaginable way. cant wait to see if someone can make my wish for longer notes come through.
jan

X2
I am also hoping something can be done about exporting highlights and annotations. at current situation, the reader is almost useless for research.
One reason for me to get the reader was so I can save money on ink and paper....
after a few days of use, I am back to printing again..

[llreader]

Oh, this is disappointing. I plan to use mine for research as well. I wasn't counting on the note taking function, or the text clipping function, but now that I think of it, it certainly would be very handy. Oh well.

[NightWhistler]

I've done a quick check of how annotations (the text-based kind) are stored, and it seems it's just plain XML with start/end markers, plus any text you added... the biggest trick is probably to use those markers to extract the actual text from the document.

Disclaimer: it's early here, so maybe I'm completely missing the point

Edit: maybe I should add that I'm on Ubuntu, so I don't use the Sony software at all... I've recently been using my PRS600 for research too, and highlighted a lot of stuff I want to quote... I'll see if I can't hack together something that can read the XML and export a text-file or something.

This would actually be perfect to build as some kind of Calibre-plugin... but I'd need to give myself a crash course in Python for that first, and time hasn't been all that abundant lately.

[cedricp]

Hi all,

I've just made a small python program that let you browse the files stored on your PRS600, list the files for which freehand notes are available, and export them to a jarnal package. From jarnal, the notes can then be exported to pdf, edited, etc... See jarnal doc for details:
http://www.dklevine.com/general/soft...000/jarnal.htm

I'm on ubuntu, and I have little time, so this is command line only. It should be pretty easy to pass it to a wxpython app if required, but don't count on me for that. I think the app should work on OSX and Win, but I have not tested (and don't plan to).

Usage: annot.py /media/READER
or the directory where your reader database appears.

Note: you need to uncompress the .py file before using it, and make it executable.

Disclaimer: this should work pretty well for A4/letter paper. For other size you may experience shifts because I could not figure out the conversion matrix of the prs600.

Now regarding, text annotation: This is a bit harder to solve because the overlined text is referred to by a #pdfloc tag (encoded in base64) which is a non-documented feature of adobe pdf. If someone has info about it, it should be no problem to add the overlining to the jarnal file. I have not been able to find anything usable.

Please let me know if this is useful.

Best regards

[cedricp]

Another detail: this works on non-zoomed PDF. I have not tried yet to handle PDFs which have been re-laid-out. This is not critical for me because the re-layout never really works on the technical articles I'm reading.

[leafy]

I rang sony UK about the 100 character limit on highlight exporting thinking there was a defect in my machine or software. They assured me there was no limit, and that the problem was that I wasn't using the Adobe software as a staging ground before putting the files into the Sony software. Seems sony is in denial about there even being a problem.

Also, the sony software doesn't allow export on files it flags as copyrighted - bizare as notes of 100 characters or less wouldn't seem to breach Copyright anyway. More importantly, on some downloads from project gutenberg the reader allows exports and on others it doesn't. I can only assume that reader has a defective test routine for determining copyright.

To make matters worse sony did admit to a bug that stops successful syncronisation on some systems (mine included) and say that at some time in the future (no estimates of course) there will be an upgraded release of the readre software.

A Calibre plugin for extractign highlights would be a great solution, exp if Calibre would also recognise the mem cards from a sony reader without having to plug in the reader.

Until the software can be fixed the reader is really not a very useful item if you want to do more than just read the latest novels.

Leafy

[cedricp]

I can confirm the 100 char limit on the xml file. At least that happens on mine.

However, the reader seems to have some information on the full annotation in the <start> and <end> tag. If you decode them (in http://www.opinionatedgeek.com/dotne...e/Default.aspx for instance) they look like:
#pdfloc(b835,3,1658,0,0,0,0,1)

I wonder if there is any tool that can make sense of that...

Best

[cedricp]

Hi,

Here is just a new version with a couple of bug corrected, in particular with directory name with spaces. I've also corrected the page ordering in the jarnal archive.

I put a few lines of code to extract the information about the "text annotation", even though I don't know what to do with it. The format seems to be something like:
#pdfloc(docid,page,y,x1,x2,0,col,1)
with:
y: the vertical position in (lines x 8 + 1) in the page, ignoring blank lines
x1 and x2: seems both related to the position in chars, or the displacement
col: could be related to the columns or just a flag indicating the meaning of x1 and x2.
0 and 1 are always there in my tests.

Best