Useful way to search in comments

[nssl]

Hello, everyone. I've been on MobileRead for months now but this is my first post here. I looked everywhere but couldn't find an answer to my question, so I decided to ask myself.

This is my problem: I use the Annotations plugin with my Kobo Touch and it works perfectly, they go right in the comments section. But there is no way to search for them later. I can put comments:"keyword" in the search bar, but it only displays the list of books that contain that comment, not the actual comment. Am I making sense? What I'm trying to say is this: if the annotation I'm looking for is "the sky was blue" and I search 'comment:"the sky was blue"', I want to see the actual comment somewhere (maybe highlighted), not just the list of books.

Is there a way to do this?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by nssl

Hello, everyone. I've been on MobileRead for months now but this is my first post here. I looked everywhere but couldn't find an answer to my question, so I decided to ask myself.

This is my problem: I use the Annotations plugin with my Kobo Touch and it works perfectly, they go right in the comments section. But there is no way to search for them later. I can put comments:"keyword" in the search bar, but it only displays the list of books that contain that comment, not the actual comment. Am I making sense? What I'm trying to say is this: if the annotation I'm looking for is "the sky was blue" and I search 'comment:"the sky was blue"', I want to see the actual comment somewhere (maybe highlighted), not just the list of books.

Is there a way to do this?

Not with the normal Calibre (metadata)tools.

[kovidgoyal]

Comments are displayed in the book details panel. It's true that the matched text is not highlighted there, but other than that, it does what you are asking for, so I dont see the problem.

[nssl]

Originally Posted by theducks

Not with the normal Calibre (metadata)tools.

Do you have any suggestions?

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Comments are displayed in the book details panel. It's true that the matched text is not highlighted there, but other than that, it does what you are asking for, so I dont see the problem.

It's a problem when I have more than a hundred annotations/highlights on the same book. I have to read every single one of them or search for that specific sentence on the ebook viewer. Not very convenient.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by nssl

It's a problem when I have more than a hundred annotations/highlights on the same book. I have to read every single one of them or search for that specific sentence on the ebook viewer. Not very convenient.

It won't get you were you want, but the Annotations plugin can store the annotations in their own column. That will at least mean they aren't mixed in with the comments. It also has its own search that can search either the marked text or the note. But, it doesn't highlight the matched text.

[eschwartz]

Nowhere in calibre is there functionality to highlight the part of a metadata field that matches.
And the spreadsheet cells are nowhere near big enough to display a decently-sized comment in its entirety (so you can see multiple matches in a scrolling view of some sort).

Perhaps you could write a plugin to do what you want.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by nssl

Do you have any suggestions?

Nope

Calibre manages Books (and their Metadata). The search found books with your string. Even hen, you can't set focus (highlight) on data in more than one place (different book) at a time

It is not a data retrieval service.

Kovid
Is it possible to add a 'Find' tool in the Comments section of the MDE?

[LadyScott]

Originally Posted by davidfor

It won't get you were you want, but the Annotations plugin can store the annotations in their own column. That will at least mean they aren't mixed in with the comments. It also has its own search that can search either the marked text or the note. But, it doesn't highlight the matched text.

I tried that, but I didn't like the end result. Maybe I did something wrong. Besides, I like the ability to embed the comments on the epub and I don't know if I can do that with a custom column. I also tried the search option of the plugin but it's kind of like the normal search. It tells me which book contains the highlight but doesn't show me the actual highlight.

[kovidgoyal]

I think this calls for a dedicated interface, not trying to shoehorn it into calibre -- that means a plugin. The plugin could present a customized view of the comments from all the results -- with matches highlighted , etc.

[LadyScott]

It's still me, something weird happened with this account and I had to create the first one.

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Nowhere in calibre is there functionality to highlight the part of a metadata field that matches.
And the spreadsheet cells are nowhere near big enough to display a decently-sized comment in its entirety (so you can see multiple matches in a scrolling view of some sort).

Perhaps you could write a plugin to do what you want.

Yes, the cells are exactly why I use the comments section for annotations. I wish I could write a plugin, but I've never done anything like that.

Is it possible to add a 'Find' tool in the Comments section of the MDE?

That would solve my problem completely.

[BetterRed]

Assuming the annotations are in their own column, then a PI could wrangle them into separate 'sidecar' files, e.g. into TheBook - TheAuthor.annot files, and add/replace the .annot files to the calibre library as an extra 'format file' (so that they don't get stranded).

Maybe even, the sidecar create/replace could be provided as an option in the Annotations plugin - I don't use the plugin so I can't guess as to the feasibility of doing that.

Once the sidecar files are available they could be searched externally by a search tool that shows previews of the matching file contents with the search terms highlighted (Windows Search and X1 spring to mind). And, if required, the file list from the search could be could be dropped into the Drop Search Results plugiin, which will Mark the books - from which you could create/update a Reading List.

The advantage of using an external search tool, is that you could simultaneously search in annotations, and the book itself, and in email content, and in media metadata, and in web pages... The corollary is, if annotations are only available from the calibre database then from a practical perspective they only available via software which is aware of the structure of the calibre database, and they cannot be viewed alongside data that's not in the the calibre database.

At a pinch just maybe you could search the metadata OPF's with an external tool, likely to be ugly though.

BR

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by LadyScott

I tried that, but I didn't like the end result. Maybe I did something wrong. Besides, I like the ability to embed the comments on the epub and I don't know if I can do that with a custom column.

Well, have I got a deal for you... As you have a Kobo Touch, the latest version of my Kobo Utilities plugin can do this, though I recommend the beta. It doesn't update the metadata in the book, but updates the metadata in the database on the device once the book is on it. This is done using a template, just like a metadata plugboard, and the comments can be modified to whatever you want. There are a few different template the thread you can try.

[LadyScott]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Well, have I got a deal for you... As you have a Kobo Touch, the latest version of my Kobo Utilities plugin can do this, though I recommend the beta. It doesn't update the metadata in the book, but updates the metadata in the database on the device once the book is on it. This is done using a template, just like a metadata plugboard, and the comments can be modified to whatever you want. There are a few different template the thread you can try.

I use Kobo Utilities (and KoboTouchExtended) but I dont remember seeing that option. I will take a better look at it tomorrow. Thank you

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by LadyScott

I use Kobo Utilities (and KoboTouchExtended) but I dont remember seeing that option. I will take a better look at it tomorrow. Thank you

It is on the "Update metadata" dialog.

[LadyScott]

Originally Posted by davidfor

It is on the "Update metadata" dialog.

Thank you for this. I used this template:

{#pages:|<div>Pages count: |} \ {#words:|Word count: |</div>}<hr/>{comments}

I think I will use it along with "insert metadata as a page".