Quote:
Originally Posted by adrianf
Probably it should be clarified, that what we ideally want is, to be be able to highlight any piece of text inside a Calibre book, and link precisely that text snippet to other whole documents or document parts, in various formats, dealt with in other applications. I do not hold my breath that our requirement will be met with less arrogance and more understanding. Still most people who read books are not necesarily PC aficionados, so there is some reasonable argument for Calibre insiders to consider more seriously our wishes. Also medical doctors do not treat as patients only other medical doctors.
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You might want to take a look at the structure of an ebook. For example, the epub container is a renamed .zip file -- locating a specific piece of text in it is going to require unpacking the container and rendering the contained text files as text. One of the reasons that most ereaders copy the text out of the ebook into an annotations file/database entry/whatever instead of trying to link directly to the text in the ebook is that it is simply easier.
It's not a matter of arrogance but rather the realization that what you want would involve having to be able to open every ebook format handled by calibre (which calibre itself does not do -- the ebook viewer does an on the fly conversion and displays the converted file), adding the ability to create a link to a file within the container and to a specific location/length of the compressed text within that file. This would also require the application (Hook) to be able to open that compressed file and use the link to locate and extract the text.
The task is probably doable. Now you need to find someone who is interested in doing the required programming, be willing to pay enough to make it worthwhile to spend time on the task (even programmers have to eat, pay rent, etc.).
TANSTAAFL.