[GUI Plugin] Annotations

[aik099]

Originally Posted by Amandaville

How do I completely remove the timestamp/header and export only the annotation text?

You can't prevent it from importing, however, via CSS you can hide these elements. Go to Calibre Preferences > Plugins > search for "Annotations" plugin > select it > press "Customize plugin" button > click on "Modify appearance..." button > play around with settings (likely adding "display: none;" to undesired elements will do what you need).

[Amandaville]

Originally Posted by aik099

You can't prevent it from importing, however, via CSS you can hide these elements. Go to Calibre Preferences > Plugins > search for "Annotations" plugin > select it > press "Customize plugin" button > click on "Modify appearance..." button > play around with settings (likely adding "display: none;" to undesired elements will do what you need).

I tried display: none; but all it did was remove the formatting. The chapter, date and time are still displayed.

[aik099]

Then I have no idea.

Depending on your goal and skills you can:

1. either change the plugin's Python code by adding a setting to perform what you need
2. or copy/paste exported content to the text editor and via some regular expression replacements remove unnecessary parts
.

[Amandaville]

Originally Posted by aik099

Then I have no idea.

Depending on your goal and skills you can:

1. either change the plugin's Python code by adding a setting to perform what you need
2. or copy/paste exported content to the text editor and via some regular expression replacements remove unnecessary parts
.

Yeah I was thinking a combination of grep, awk and sed but it would certainly be easier if the plugin allowed those changes.

[Wiggo]

Does anybody know what this means for importing GoodReader notes?

calibre, version 6.11.0
FEHLER: Unbehandelter Ausnahmefehler: <b>TypeError</b>:'&lt;' not supported between instances of 'float' and 'str'

calibre 6.11  embedded-python: True
Windows-10-10.0.19045-SP0 Windows ('64bit', 'WindowsPE')
('Windows', '10', '10.0.19045')
Python 3.10.1
Windows: ('10', '10.0.19045', 'SP0', 'Multiprocessor Free')
Interface language: de
Successfully initialized third party plugins: DeDRM (10, 0, 3) && Action Chains (1, 18, 3) && Annotations (1, 17, 13) && BOL_DE (0, 9, 2) && Count Pages (1, 12, 0) && DNB_DE (3, 2, 1) && EpubMerge (2, 15, 0) && Extract ISBN (1, 6, 0) && Fantastic Fiction (1, 6, 0) && Favourites Menu (1, 3, 0) && Find Duplicates (1, 10, 7) && Goodreads (1, 7, 2) && Goodreads Sync (1, 16, 2) && Import List (1, 9, 0) && KOReader Sync (0, 4, 1) && Kindle hi-res covers (0, 5, 0) && KindleUnpack - The Plugin (0, 83, 1) && Kobo Utilities (2, 16, 6) && KoboTouchExtended (3, 6, 3) && Last Modified (0, 8, 4) && LibraryThing Match (0, 2, 1) && Manage Series (1, 5, 0) && Modify ePub (1, 8, 1) && Quality Check (1, 13, 3) && Quick Preferences (1, 7, 0) && Reading List (1, 14, 0) && Search The Internet (1, 10, 0) && TextDiff (1, 1, 0) && View Manager (1, 10, 2) && Walk Search History (1, 5, 3)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "calibre_plugins.annotations.action", line 829, in import_annotations
  File "C:\Users\andre\AppData\Local\Temp\calibre_annotations_plugin\GoodReader.py", line 256, in parse_exported_highlights
TypeError: '<' not supported between instances of 'float' and 'str'

I have these 2 annotations

Spoiler:

File: Romische Antike - Ulrich Huttner.pdf

Annotation summary:

--- Page 39 ---

Highlight (yellow), 18. Aug 2022 at 22:50, Anderl :
3.2.1 Die Volksversammlungen


--- Page 282 ---

Highlight (yellow), 8. Jan 2023 at 14:21, Anderl :
Bei der Vergabe des römischen Bürgerrechts an Provinzbewohner verhielt sich Claudius großzügiger als seine Vorgänger. Immerhin soll er darauf geachtet haben, dass nur diejenigen in den Genuss des Bürgerrechts kämen, die auch die lateinische Sprache beherrschten (Cass. 60,17,4). Trotz dieser Hürde wurde der Vorwurf laut, der Kaiser verschleudere die Privilegien der römischen Bürgerschaft.


(report generated by GoodReader)

If I import one by one everything is fine

[sepsol]

Originally Posted by 132

Also, is it possible to display the annotions in the actual calibre viewer? Similar to notes and highlights on the Kindle and Preview.app (in os x).

Hi there, coming back to this question 9 years later, is there a way to view your kindle annotations (bookmarks, highlights, notes) in Calibre Viewer in 2023? If not, are there any plans to add such a feature at all?

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by sepsol

Hi there, coming back to this question 9 years later, is there a way to view your kindle annotations (bookmarks, highlights, notes) in Calibre Viewer in 2023? If not, are there any plans to add such a feature at all?

No and no.

[dunhill]

I submit a request to a programmer who wants to maintain and develop this legacy that Davidfor left us.

[acarter5]

It seems like there isn't a way to fetch annotations from the kindle app on iPad because IOS wont let calibre connect to the device. Are there any workarounds that anyone knows about? Like, could I sync annotations to the kindle app on my macbook and access the kindle db file from somewhere in my local filesystem?

[Gregg45]

Thanks for this awesome plug-in. When I import from kindle to PC in Win10, the annotations show in the preview pane wonderfully. However, whilst the 'Loc' is given in the metadata, I would prefer the page number to be shown (this would make it much better for me to use quotes in further writings later).

Can displaying the page number rather than the Loc be achieved somehow?

[tsundoku]

I just noticed that my Annotations Plug-In (v1.17.13) is not picking up any annotations from the Kindle books I've read in the past two years. I've verified that all the annotations are in My Clippings.txt - it's just not finding/extracting them for some reason. It *is* finding the ones older than 2 years ago. The newer ones do not have any apparent difference in terms of structure than the older ones. Any ideas for what might be going on here or how to fix it?

[aik099]

Originally Posted by tsundoku

I just noticed that my Annotations Plug-In (v1.17.13) is not picking up any annotations from the Kindle books I've read in the past two years. I've verified that all the annotations are in My Clippings.txt - it's just not finding/extracting them for some reason. It *is* finding the ones older than 2 years ago. The newer ones do not have any apparent difference in terms of structure than the older ones. Any ideas for what might be going on here or how to fix it?

The books must be present on the Kindle as well for their annotations to be recognized.

Haven't you deleted older books from the Kindle?

[tsundoku]

The books in question are all on my physical Kindle device. I can open them and view my annotations (highlights) on my Kindle without issue.

(Note: 'Fetch annotations from connected device' is the only option available in the plug-in for me. Not sure if this is relevant or not, but the documentation for the plug-in seems to indicate that there should be an 'Import Annotations From > Kindle' command available as well.)

I tried running Calibre and the plug-in in debug mode to see if I could figure out what is happening. Here's an excerpt from the output log file using the Atomic Habits book as an example:

Job: 0 Get device information started
DeviceJob: 0 Get device information done, calling callback
DeviceJob: 0 Get device information callback returned
Job: 1 Set library information started
DeviceJob: 1 Set library information done, calling callback
DeviceJob: 1 Set library information callback returned
Job: 2 Get list of books on device started
DEBUG: 6.2 USBMS: Fetching list of books from device. Device= KINDLE2 oncard= None
DEBUG: 6.2 USBMS: dirs are: H:\ documents
DEBUG: 6.2 USBMS: scan from root False H:\documents
DEBUG: 6.3 USBMS: count found in cache: 117, count of files in metadata: 117, need_sync: False
DEBUG: 6.3 USBMS: Finished fetching list of books from device. oncard= None
DEBUG: 6.3 USBMS: Fetching list of books from device. Device= KINDLE2 oncard= carda
DEBUG: 6.3 USBMS: Fetching list of books from device. Device= KINDLE2 oncard= cardb
DeviceJob: 2 Get list of books on device done, calling callback
DeviceJob: metadata_downloaded: Starting set_books_in_library
DeviceJob: set_books_in_library: books to process= 117
DeviceJob: set_books_in_library finished: time= 0.017537832260131836
DeviceJob: metadata_downloaded: updating views
DeviceJob: metadata_downloaded: syncing
DeviceJob: metadata_downloaded: refreshing ondevice
DeviceJob: metadata_downloaded: sending metadata_available signal
READING LIST: Metadata available: {'main': {'device_store_uuid': 'e5b78a44-d76d-43d6-8e9a-aa83b1ba5c25', 'device_name': 'Amazon Kindle', 'location_code': 'main', 'last_library_uuid': None, 'calibre_version': '6.17.0', 'date_last_connected': '2023-05-23T15:10:13.127583+00:00', 'prefix': 'H:/'}}
READING LIST: Sync Now - force_sync= False
DeviceJob: 2 Get list of books on device callback returned
Job: 0 Get device information finished
No details available.
Job: 2 Get list of books on device finished
No details available.
Job: 1 Set library information finished
...
DEBUG: 39.8 resolve_paths. id=201, path=C:\<storage>\Clear, James\Atomic Habits - James Clear.bookmark
DEBUG: 39.8 resolve_paths. fmt=azw3
DEBUG: 39.8 resolve_paths. fmt=epub
DEBUG: 39.8 resolve_paths. looking for book on device: book_path=H:\documents\Clear, James\Atomic Habits - James Clear.bookmark
DEBUG: 39.8 resolve_paths. looking for book on device: this_fmt=H:\documents\Clear, James\Atomic Habits - James Clear.azw3
...
DEBUG: 42.5 Annotation for Title=='Atomic Habits'
DEBUG: 42.5 Searching for Title=='Atomic Habits'
DEBUG: 42.5 Title not found in books on device

I don't fully understand the debug output, but it seems clear from the final few lines that it's simply not finding the book on the device. Also, there's a section in the debug output that appears to iterate through the titles on the device and retrieve the metadata for each one - but Atomic Habits is not included in this list.

FWIW, this book was purchased on Amazon.

[aik099]

If I'm not mistaken (not a Kindle user myself), then you can only import annotations from the books, that are uploaded to the e-reader (e.g. Kindle) using Calibre itself.

Therefore books purchased on the device itself aren't detected.

---

Kindle stores actual annotations for each book in single/several files in a binary format, which are located in the same folder as a book file. Usually, these binary files have the same basename as a book file, but different file extensions. What you see inside a "My Clippings.txt" file is just an extract from these binary files, that is parsed by the Calibre.

---

A theoretical way to solve the problem (needs to be repeated for every problematic book):

1. move (delete them from Kindle which also will auto-remove from any Kindle collection) every book with all connected binary files (see explanation above) from the Kindle to the Computer
2. import a book file into Calibre (DRM-protected books won't be imported; use Google to find out more about this topic)
3. send a book from Calibre to the Kindle
4. copy all book-connected binary files to the new book location folder on Kindle
5. rename copied book-connected binary files on Kindle to make their basename match with the new book basename on the Kindle

[tsundoku]

Thanks for trying to help me out. I started using Calibre in January 2023. At that time I successfully imported all my existing Kindle books (bought from Amazon) into Calibre without DRM. I later installed the Annotations plug-in, but found that it only imports annotations from the books I downloaded to my Kindle before March 2021. All the books (both before and after that date) are on my Kindle, and I can open them just fine and view the annotations on my Kindle. I also tried it on an older model Kindle (Keyboard) as well and got the same result. For some reason when the plug-in enumerates the books on my devices, it’s not seeing the ones downloaded from Amazon after ~March 2021. I’ve poked around in my device file system and cannot find any obvious difference between the books it does find and the ones it doesn’t. It may be an internal file format change.

I just tried installing a book onto my device directly from Calibre (per your recommendation), and the Annotations plug-in *does* in this case find the book and import the annotations correctly. So it appears to me that there is something about the way that Amazon saves books on the device that changed around March 2021 that breaks the way the plug-in enumerates books on the device. I did note that the directory structure that Calibre uses to save books on the Kindle is different than the way Amazon does.

As I read on multiple devices, I’d like to keep downloading books via Amazon (including side-loaded content) as it makes it easy for me to access the same content on all my devices, as well as track where I am in the book. I also just discovered that it’s pretty straightforward to access my Kindle annotations via https://read.amazon.com/notebook and select all/copy/paste them into my Annotation column in Calibre. So I’ll use this as my workaround going forwards.

Thanks again for the help!