Which eBook format for device independent sharing, including highlights and comments?

[Werkheimer]

Originally Posted by cedhax

I have a suggestion that I am personally practicing. And when I share my highlights and annotations, I can do it on a per-book basis. I can also see all annotations via a web browser too. The app's name is MapleRead. Too bad the app does not run on other platforms (yet?)

Thanks, that's interesting information.

OTOH, with MapleRead you also have to supply an additional file to the other person, which they have to import into their copy of MapleRead in order to see your highlights and comments. This is still relatively complicated, and at the same time limited to everyone using the same reader app (and platform).

I actually thought about using PDF for my purpose, all the more since I have seen that Moon+ reader has an amazing PDF reflow feature that seems to perfectly reflow PDF on all sorts of screen sizes, so that PDF actually becomes a very readable format also on tablets and smartphones.

It actually seems as if Moon+ reader can make annotations and highlights even in reflow mode, which no other PDF reader can do (apart from Repligo, which however is very bad at reflow).

However, every time I tried to add a highlight to a PDF in reflow mode in Moon+ reader, I got an error message saying that the highlight could not be created.

Does anyone know what could be the problem here?

[Werkheimer]

PS, just heard from the Moon+ reader developer that currently, commenting PDF in reflow mode is not supported, but planned for a future version.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by dwig

Quite true. All of the above discussion should be considered only for public domain books or books that you, the person doing the distribution, holds the copyright.

Most Creative Commons books, though free to redistribute in their original form, would likely be illegal to redistribute after altering them to add comments. Even if redistribution in an altered form was permissible under the particular CC license in use, that redistribution would most likely have to be totally free; no distribution charge, no advertisement, ... .

Even if the book is offered free at a site like Smashwords they do include a disclaimer asking for the reader to 'buy their own copy' of said book if they haven't already. And that is even more important if the book is just being offered for free for a limited time (such as during the summer/winter sale at Smashwords). So even if you get the book at 100% off the price you still don't have the right to pass it on to someone else. If the readers are all in one family (husband/wife/kids) then the sharing might be overlooked (I don't know for sure) but you can't just pass on a copy to someone else (a friend or co-worker say). That is why Amazon has the 'lend' feature for books that you buy from them I think. And I think you can only 'lend' each book once, to one person at most.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by dwig

It is a proprietary solution and doesn't have truly universal support.

For what you describe in your first post, the only current solution would be:

1. Convert the books to ePub
2. Read the ePub and make your comments
3. Manually edit the original ePub, or better yet a copy of it, and enter your comments as either in-line text or as end notes.
4. Convert the edited ePub to AZW and perhaps the older MOBI.

You now have distribution files. Kindles can't read ePub so you would need to have both ePub and AZW/Mobi available in order to have a truly universal "library".

I remember finding a copy of Pilgrim's Progress over at Feedbooks that another person had uploaded there. He had annotated his copy using an old dictionary so that modern readers could follow the story easier. Words that were in common use during Bunyan's lifetime have either fallen out of use or their meanings (and possibly spellings) have changed since then. But then again Pilgrim's Progress is several centuries old and long since out of copyright as others have said. You can't just annotate a book that comes out this year and pass it on. Perhaps you could take notes and then create a separate book file that contains the notes for a given book and pass that on to your friend. Certainly you couldn't pass on the book itself to him/her though. I did something very like that (taking notes) of some Udemy courses I've taken in the past. I went through the video files as they were presented and took notes which I then made into little ebook files for my own review.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by crich70

Even if the book is offered free at a site like Smashwords they do include a disclaimer asking for the reader to 'buy their own copy' of said book if they haven't already. And that is even more important if the book is just being offered for free for a limited time (such as during the summer/winter sale at Smashwords). So even if you get the book at 100% off the price you still don't have the right to pass it on to someone else. If the readers are all in one family (husband/wife/kids) then the sharing might be overlooked (I don't know for sure) but you can't just pass on a copy to someone else (a friend or co-worker say). That is why Amazon has the 'lend' feature for books that you buy from them I think. And I think you can only 'lend' each book once, to one person at most.

Yes, you are correct on Amazon lending.

[cedhax]

Originally Posted by Werkheimer

Thanks, that's interesting information.

OTOH, with MapleRead you also have to supply an additional file to the other person, which they have to import into their copy of MapleRead in order to see your highlights and comments. This is still relatively complicated, and at the same time limited to everyone using the same reader app (and platform).
...

That's just one of the options. If you don't mind sharing an account with somebody else (as implied from your earlier views about Google Play), then just give your Maplepop account (or one of your Maplepop accounts) to him/her/them for note sharing.

[cedhax]

Originally Posted by Werkheimer

...
I actually thought about using PDF for my purpose, all the more since I have seen that Moon+ reader has an amazing PDF reflow feature that seems to perfectly reflow PDF on all sorts of screen sizes, so that PDF actually becomes a very readable format also on tablets and smartphones.

It actually seems as if Moon+ reader can make annotations and highlights even in reflow mode, which no other PDF reader can do (apart from Repligo, which however is very bad at reflow).

However, every time I tried to add a highlight to a PDF in reflow mode in Moon+ reader, I got an error message saying that the highlight could not be created.

Does anyone know what could be the problem here?

The PDF format does allow the user to annotate, highlight, and add notes to already created PDF files (see Wikipedia). I've tried a few such kind of software. The annotation seems to be somewhat portable across apps. But I doubt it is 100% or close to 100% compatible in practice.

I haven't tried Moon+ reader recently. But I don't think PDF reflow is good enough currently, especially for technical papers/books with math symbols, graphs and illustrations. Whatever format is used to represent the result of a PDF reflow operation will put you back in a situation similar to that of EPUB format.

I think the problem of portable EPUB annotation is due to the lack of motivation of the industry.