Quote:
Originally Posted by Frogm4n
Be aware that My Clippings.txt is not official or a stable way to access highlights. It's just a scratchpad that the Kindle uses for input. You should be using the book sidecars.
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Thanks for the heads-up — that's a fair point and worth keeping in mind!
You're right that My Clippings.txt isn't an official API, and I'm aware of its limitations (duplicates, no guaranteed consistency, etc.). That said, KlipShare already handles most of those edge cases in the parser — including duplicate entries, BOM stripping, and some quirky title formats from sideloaded books.
The main reason I went with My Clippings.txt is pragmatic: it's plain text, readable with standard POSIX tools, and has been stable across Kindle firmware versions for well over a decade. Parsing .mbp sidecars in a busybox shell environment on the Kindle itself would be a significantly heavier lift, and the format isn't publicly documented.
That said, KlipShare does already read KOReader sidecar files (metadata.*.lua) as a second source for users who use that reader — so the sidecar idea isn't off the table.
If you know of a reliable way to parse the native .annot or .mbp files in a minimal shell/awk environment, I'd genuinely love to hear about it. Always open to making this more robust!