Calibre and Evernote

[BetterRed]

From time to time a request or comment is posted that asks if Evernote (EN) can be accessed from calibre, such as this post from cybmole and this post from Mixx

I've discovered that you can link calibre Authors and Books to an EN note either on the web, or to the note in the local instance of the EN Notebook. A link to the web instance of an EN Note is not very useful, the note will appear in your browser in isolation of the notebook, and there's no editing allowed (even with the new EN for Web interface). But a link to the local instance of an EN note takes you the note in the EN desktop program within the context of the notebook, where you have all the features of EN for editing.

To set calibre up to receive EN note links for Books create a custom long text column, I call it notes/Notes, position it above Comments on Book Details, and because long text columns don't display well in the Book List, cloak it with an icon.





To get a local link to a note in EN, right click the note entry in the Notebook index, then ctrl/click Copy Note Link (if you click on it you'll get a web link), 'twould be nice if they had a flyout submenu with the two options.



To put something into the Notes for a book, press F2 in the Notes cell for the book, this will pop the Comments editor



I have an entry in my snippets gadget that contains "nbsp, newline, Book Notes, newline", so I paste that first, and then I paste the link I just got from EN. Calibre automagically generates the required HTML to display the link in an "<a href...> tag with the Note Title, and it colours it Green, thus:

<div style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><br></div><div>
<b style="color: rgb(105, 170, 53);"><a href="evernote:///view/12032092/s105/5564ec35-ae6f-4a98-9598-c524669aa4dc/5564ec35-ae6f-4a98-9598-c524669aa4dc/" style="color:#69aa35">Bleak House</a></b></div></div></div>

I don't know where the fairy dust comes from, must be calibre or Qt. Maybe one of the techo's can enlighten us.

Now the Book Notes appear in the Book Details panel, and the EN note link is coloured green, when you click on it, EN is invoked with the relevant note as the current note



To link an Author to an EN note paste the "evernote:blah-blah" link into the Author Link fields in the manage Authors list. Then when you click on the Author Name in Book Details you'll be at the Authors EN note.

IMO that's pretty cool. I want to acknowledge and thank Tanjamuse for her input on this, without her persistence I may never have 'discovered' it.

I'll be progressively replacing the file: links (to folders) I currently use for Book and Author Notes with evernote: links

Along the way, I also discovered a gadget called JRT Studio's Cheetah Folder Sync. Its a syncing program/app pair for Windows/OSX and Android that uses the local network - ie it's cloud-less. Because I read the doco literally I had a couple of problems, however the email support from JRT Studios was excellent.

Added : And of course the EN notes can viewed and edited on Android and IOS devices. I don't know if the "evernote:blah-blah" links could be accessed from within any of the Android/IOS calibre gadgets (Cloud, Companion, Leger, Library...).

BR

[BetterRed]

I had 1,800+ AuthorInfo folders (my terminology) each of which contained url, text , image, audio, video etc files. Each AuthorInfo folder had its link pasted into the Author Link field in Manage Authors. So when I clicked on an author name in Book Details a File Explorer window would open.

Now I have 1,800+ notes in an EN Authors Notebook. I used a layout template to create an Author note, then I drag-'n'-dropped the URL's, text, and pictures into the relevant positions EN Author Note. As a result the number of AuthorInfo folders has been reduced to ~140 (mainly audio and video interview clips), and I add link to those folders into the EN Author Note.

So the 1,800 Author Link fields in Manage Authors that had file:///blah blah links, now have evernote:///drivel drivel links. So when I click on an author name in the Book Details panel it starts Evernote (if its not already running) and goes to the Author Note. From usability perspective, an EN note is vast improvement on a File Explorer window; eg under a web link, I can paste a quote from the page.

Now I need to figure how to initiate a calibre author search from within Evernote. Any ideas would be appreciated.

BR

[chaley]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Added : And of course the EN notes can viewed and edited on Android and IOS devices. I don't know if the "evernote:blah-blah" links could be accessed from within any of the Android/IOS calibre gadgets (Cloud, Companion, Leger, Library...).

After a query from Tanjamuse I tried it with CC, and "evernote" links in a calibre comment work fine. Tapping the link on the Android device opens the Android evernote app and shows the contents of the link. Edits are synced back to the desktop (and everywhere else).

CC does not today support the authors link, so to use evernote with CC the custom comments column approach is best. You can put multiple links into the comments field. Yes, this means that the author links are duplicated into every book, but they shouldn't change frequently. If there is demand I can look at changing CC to support both the current internal link and an external link if it exists.

[BetterRed]

for the input chaley

Curious - will it work with links in a custom comments column, I prefer to use custom comments because a) metadata download can clobber the built-in comments column; b) I can get at custom comments from the book list.

I only keep a few reference and recent texts on my tablet and I'm happy using reader apps directly, so I don't use CC. But if I did then I'd probably be looking for the author links more often than book links - all of my 'major' authors have an EN Note, whilst only 10% of books (at most) have one.

Update - I now run calibre server against my major libraries

I can access the libraries (locally) from my Evernote Authors Notebook. I do this by a) creating a a shortcut file (eg Charles Dickens.lnk) which has the chrome browser as the target viz:

...\chrome.exe http://<ip address>:<port>/browse/ma...s/<authors.id>

I insert the .lnk files into the Author Note. That means I can see a list of what books I have in a library for a given author (and read them if I want). If the same author has 'books' in multiple libraries (typically my Main and Journals libraries) there will only be one EN Note for that Author, and it will have two embedded .lnk files.

Added: I'm using ENs audio recording feature on Android rather than on screen typing or finger/stylus scribbling (I find both nigh on impossible), the next step is speech to text transcription (Windows). Suggestions are welcome

BR

[chaley]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Curious - will it work with links in a custom comments column, I prefer to use custom comments because a) metadata download can clobber the built-in comments column; b) I can get at custom comments from the book list.

Sure. I tested it using a custom note column.

Added: I'm using ENs audio recording feature on Android rather than on screen typing or finger/stylus scribbling (I find both nigh on impossible), the next step is speech to text transcription (Windows). Suggestions are welcome

BR

I just created a text note on my Android device using Google's speech recognition. It worked fine. To do it, I created a text note, tapped in the note to open a virtual keyboard, tapped the microphone to open speech to text, then talked away. The transcription was remarkably accurate. It works on my Android 4.3 Galaxy Nexus and my Android 5.1 Nexus 5.

[BetterRed]

Thanks chaley : the google voice to text runs like a dog on my tablet - before too long it wedges and I have to do a cold start. I tried a couple of others - same story. My tablet is a very el-cheapo, made in back of a Guangzhou shop model, and I am not prepared to invest in anything better.

Hence my preference for Windows transcription. I have something half working with an ancient version of Dragon but I've not been able to 'integrate' it with EN as smoothly as I'd like - too much cut and paste. But its low priority, most of my audio notes are not much more than reminders to do X - I usually delete them when I've done X

BR

[chaley]

Originally Posted by chaley

After a query from Tanjamuse I tried it with CC, and "evernote" links in a calibre comment work fine. Tapping the link on the Android device opens the Android evernote app and shows the contents of the link. Edits are synced back to the desktop (and everywhere else).

CC does not today support the authors link, so to use evernote with CC the custom comments column approach is best. You can put multiple links into the comments field. Yes, this means that the author links are duplicated into every book, but they shouldn't change frequently. If there is demand I can look at changing CC to support both the current internal link and an external link if it exists.

I have added an option to CC (V3.6.7) to show calibre's author links in CC's book details. If these are Evernote links, tapping on one opens Evernote and takes you to the author's info.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by chaley

I have added an option to CC (V3.6.7) to show calibre's author links in CC's book details. If these are Evernote links, tapping on one opens Evernote and takes you to the author's info.

@chaley - I only just noticed this - been asleep at the wheel

So we now have full end to end integration .

BR