Touch Viewing summaries for sideloaded books?

[ATimson]

Originally Posted by Mellobob

Do I need to copy the metadata file and cover.jpg which appears in the directory as well?

No, you don't. You need to edit the .OPF file inside the ePub so that in the <meta name="cover" content="blah"> (blah will vary), that the "name=" comes before "content=". If content is first, the Nook won't read the cover. (It also won't read it if that tag is missing entirely.)

I think that a recent Calibre revision made it so that it always saves the .OPF in the format the Nook needs, so you may want to update and reconvert or convert ePub to ePub to fix the covers. (I also have a tool which goes through and updates all the ePubs under a directory for me... I should prettify that and release it, I think.)

[ATimson]

Originally Posted by thrawn_aj

It's both, since even metadata you save in Calibre doesn't show up on the nook. It simply doesn't read any of the fields.

Yes, but it's not ignoring the fields because it's not a book downloaded from B&N, it's ignoring the fields because that's not where it gets the data from.

The former would be malicious, as you're accusing them of - they'd be doing more work so less books work. The latter is just being lazy and not adding a feature (which every developer is guilty of to some extent or another.)

Originally Posted by thrawn_aj

B&N must be downloading the summaries separately to the hidden system partition instead of (as any sane person would do) including them in the file's metadata fields.

Depends - which would you rather they do, edit every publisher's ebooks to include the metadata, or just handle it all on their own without mucking with the publisher's file?

I know which one I'd prefer, and it doesn't involve the store thinking they know better than the publisher. (That way lies Wal-Mart's music CDs...)

[thrawn_aj]

Originally Posted by ATimson

The former would be malicious, as you're accusing them of - they'd be doing more work so less books work. The latter is just being lazy and not adding a feature (which every developer is guilty of to some extent or another.)

Precisely what I'm doing. The epub spec exists for a reason. It would be like me writing an application that, instead of using the file attributes that are always saved to any file header by the OS, completely ignored them and instead used the same data but only if it was saved in a proprietary format in some hidden location. Either they're stupid or they're malicious.

Depends - which would you rather they do, edit every publisher's ebooks to include the metadata, or just handle it all on their own without mucking with the publisher's file?

I know which one I'd prefer, and it doesn't involve the store thinking they know better than the publisher. (That way lies Wal-Mart's music CDs...)

The publisher has enough brains to print the summary on the back of a hardcover book. Regardless, they already edit the publisher's metadata for the title, author, publisher, etc. fields. We know this because these fields are already recognized and read for sideloaded books.

So, here are some simple facts without any speculation - several metadata fields are read from the epub file. Only the summary is not read from the epub file. Yet, it is read (from a hidden location - this has been verified from rooted nooks for the nook 1 by the way) for ONLY the books purchased ota from the B&N store. This is the worst possible I can think of to implement something. Again - ignorant or malicious. Ignorance has not been an excuse since the 1st release of the nook1 - people have been crying about this since then. I rest my case.

Of course, it makes perfect sense from a business standpoint (which is why I'm even more convinced of the marketing boffins' hand in this). B&N's target audience is not a tech-savvy one. Most people will gladly (and I would agree with them) just do the convenient thing and buy directly from B&N. The large space reservation for B&N content in the main memory is yet another piece of the puzzle.

*shrug* These are merely statements of fact. If I or someone else has such a problem with this, that's what rooting is for. As yet, the lack of summary is not a big deal since there are ways around it. I like keeping my library organized in Calibre so I abhor OTA buying (I sideload all my B&N purchases).

[Mellobob]

Okay, my earlier post was wrong. The cover art does display when in <books>. This includes books loaded on the sd card.

The problem is that I've given up using the <books> view since the shelf option is so horribly broken. I copy books into author directories (well, Calibre does that for me ... just make sure all the books for the same author has the exact same author name!) and then view <My Files>.

This has the advantage viewing-by-author. Alas, it has the disadvantage of no pictures.

Now, what's this about showing summaries? I have some B&N books ... but no idea how to view the summary info.

[afv011]

Originally Posted by Mellobob

Now, what's this about showing summaries? I have some B&N books ... but no idea how to view the summary info.

You can double-tap on a book, in the library, and it will show some info for that book. Unfortunately any data saved from Calibre does not show here, it works best for B&N books.

[ATimson]

Originally Posted by thrawn_aj

Precisely what I'm doing. The epub spec exists for a reason. It would be like me writing an application that, instead of using the file attributes that are always saved to any file header by the OS, completely ignored them and instead used the same data but only if it was saved in a proprietary format in some hidden location. Either they're stupid or they're malicious.

As a programmer, if a spec says "this optional field might appear on the file", but it never actually appears on any of the sample files to work from, I'm not going to add support unless specifically told to; it's not something that appears to be useful, and more importantly, it's not something that I can test.

Originally Posted by thrawn_aj

Regardless, they already edit the publisher's metadata for the title, author, publisher, etc. fields. We know this because these fields are already recognized and read for sideloaded books.

Those fields are read in sideloaded books, yes, and those fields are present in the ePubs that B&N sells. I don't see how you leap from "they're in the ePubs" to "B&N added them not the publisher".

Originally Posted by thrawn_aj

So, here are some simple facts without any speculation - several metadata fields are read from the epub file. Only the summary is not read from the epub file.

No, the other metadata for purchased books aren't read from the ePub file - I have at least one purchased book where the OPF title and the metadata title don't match, so it must be using the internal metadata for the title too.

Originally Posted by thrawn_aj

This is the worst possible I can think of to implement something.

You say it's the worst possible way to supplement the publisher's supplied metadata, I say it's the best. Obviously we're never going to agree on this.

[Jim Lester]

ATimson called this correctly.

Summaries for B&N purchased books are not read from the ePub, because publishers do not put summaries in the ePub (I have yet to see a book from a major publisher that includes this information). Instead the summaries are downloaded from our servers where we get the summaries separately from the publishers in a catalog feed.

[ryanpl]

Originally Posted by thrawn_aj

You're quite welcome . Glad you got it to work for you.


Interesting! Is the softroot pretty bug-free at this point? Or is it still just for experts? Guess I'm trying to figure out my potential risk here

If you have the Nook Simply Touch aka Nook Touch aka The New Nook aka Nook.... soft rooting is THAT easy. There are several methods out there but the easiest is Touchnooter. Basically all you do is load the program on a SD card and make it an image here is the link to the method I used: http://forum.xda-developers.com/show...t=1132693After testing most of the free and trial e-reader programs out there I finally went and bought Mantano Reader. It allows me to have all my books, well I'm going to slowly work on moving my B&N DRM books over but all my side loaded books are there, in a book case with various sized thumb nails and I'm able to view ALL metadata for my side loaded books.

[thrawn_aj]

Originally Posted by ryanpl

If you have the Nook Simply Touch aka Nook Touch aka The New Nook aka Nook.... soft rooting is THAT easy. There are several methods out there but the easiest is Touchnooter. Basically all you do is load the program on a SD card and make it an image here is the link to the method I used: http://forum.xda-developers.com/show...t=1132693After testing most of the free and trial e-reader programs out there I finally went and bought Mantano Reader. It allows me to have all my books, well I'm going to slowly work on moving my B&N DRM books over but all my side loaded books are there, in a book case with various sized thumb nails and I'm able to view ALL metadata for my side loaded books.

Thank you! Just what I was looking for