Quote:
Originally Posted by MrOneTwo
I currently read on a paperwhite 2, and I've got a lot of annotations in my ebooks. Now, if in the future I'm gonna change ereader and switch to, for example, a kobo, all my highlighting work is going to be lost.
I'm aware that I can export MyClippings, but it isn't enough for my reading style...
what I would really be able to do is to merge all my notes into the actual ebook file, or at least into a separate file that can be managed by any ereader: if I put my amazon-purchased ebook into a kobo I'd like to find all my annotations...
I'm afraid that this is not possible, but doesn't it bother you? I find that this is a really big problem related to e-reading, in 10 years from now I'll probably have lost a lot of the work I've done..
|
This is a sore spot for any reflowable digital documents. Since ~2009, there is a draft of the "Open Annotation" standard by the W3C:
https://www.w3.org/blog/2017/02/maki...ns-on-the-web/
To my knowledge, nothing really uses this (yet).
Side Note: As others have mentioned, each of Highlights/Notes implementations typically create their own little walled-gardens. Some of them can be read about
on the Wikipedia page about Web Annotation.
EPUB3 has a draft for Open Annotation:
http://www.idpf.org/epub/oa/
... but again, nothing really implements this stuff (just like a lot of the arcane/obscure portions of the EPUB standard... like Indexes).
The closest I could actually find as a cross-browser EPUB-reader that supported Annotations was Hypothes.is. I haven't done much more research into it, but I posted some info + a speech
in a Side Note in this post.
I know that Microsoft Edge in Windows 10 recently introduced an EPUB-reader with Highlight/Notes support... but in typical Microsoft fashion, that only works within Edge. And to the last of my knowledge, they also refuse to allow you to export your Highlights/Notes because of potential copyright reasons (absolutely absurd).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cinisajoy
If one is really worried about losing all their notes because of an electronic form, I have a very simple solution. Take notes the old school way with a paper notebook and an ink pen.
|
I agree with this.
Or you could always take your own notes in a good ol' TXT document. Those won't be going anywhere or becoming obsolete any time soon. :P
Quote:
Originally Posted by MrOneTwo
Not really. The PDF has the ability to keep annotations, but PDF on a kindle (and in general) has a lot of other disadvantages; if it doesn't, why do we use ebooks?
I know that probably there's no solution for my request, at least right now, but I still absolutely believe this is a missing feature of the epub/awz3 standard. And for a guy like my father, for example, that reads almost exclusively non-fiction books and works on them and with them, this is a deal-breaker in using an e-ink device.
|
While some companies have tackled sharing Notes/Highlights across your devices easily (within their walled garden of course... like Amazon), there are some other problems.
As HarryT and dwig mentioned, CURRENTLY the best bet is probably an Android device with PDF annotations. Embedding it in the PDF should allow your annotations to be portable across PC/Laptop/Tablet.
Side Note: But even with PDF, many times Adobe's products implement methods in an Adobe-specific way (which doesn't work well with non-Adobe-PDF Reader X, Y, or Z.) or vice versa.
PDF was made to sort of be "set in stone". So the look/source won't change very much at a future date....
Ebooks are a different beast though. Minor/Serious changes can occur under the hood all the time (for example, you may change HTML from <i>italic word</i> to <em>italic word</em>. Or tools/workflows may change [Calibre/KindleGen/WhateverTool might be updated, causing very minor output differences].).
One of the serious issues is that all the annotations go poof when the document itself gets updated/changed. A simple change such as a typo correction can shift or throw off all highlights (see Moon+ Reader), or all the Notes/Highlights are thrown away when you allow the book to update (Amazon/Kindles).
Then you have the whole set of devices that don't let you export Notes at all (Nook?) or as davidfor mentioned, ones that store them in their own proprietary little way that require serious reverse engineering (Kobo).
Overall, long story short, Notes/Highlights in ebooks suck. Use paper.
