Kindle Scribe

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by Hrod

I took the plunge and bought a Kindle Scribe as it was on sale. It's my first Kindle though I used the Kindle app on my Boox Nova Pro. I chose the Scribe because of the price and hardware and I did not want the camera on the Boox Tab Ultra (the contender).

Hardware wise, it's really great. Software wise, it's half baked but no surprise as I had read the reviews.

What surprises me the most is the absence of some kind of file explorer. I use Collections to group books and documents but it's not perfect.

I use Calibre to export books on the Scribe. The covers appear on Calibre but only for epub on Kindle. I have a generic cover for pdf books and articles. Very strange as the covers are fine on Calibre. If I could display the covers and have subcollections, it would be great.

Is there a way to switch easily between a book and a notebook? Boox has the nav ball but on the Scribe I have to close the book and go to notes to open the notebook. A back button would have been handy.

The good surprise is that an Italian dictionary is present for Italian books. It's not on the general settings where I could select only 2 dictionaries. Very useful as I had to switch to an Italian dictionary app on my Nova Pro.

Side-loaded PDFs will not have covers. They have not updated the 'legacy' PDF support for years.

It remains to be seen whether Print Replica (converted from PDF via Send to Kindle service) will have covers as they improve support for Scribe. And they should stop displaying PDF logo for these things, it is misleading.

There's no way to switch tasks easily. They removed Back quite awhile ago, but some Recent list would be nice to switch contexts explicitly: maybe you tap and hold in some corner and it would display a list of recent books & notebooks you could then choose from.

But first things first.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by tomsem

There's no way to switch tasks easily. They removed Back quite awhile ago, but some Recent list would be nice to switch contexts explicitly: maybe you tap and hold in some corner and it would display a list of recent books & notebooks you could then choose from.

But first things first.

Instead of the recent list idea, they could add an option to show notepads and library together. Like listing of audiobooks can be disabled in regular livrary view. Having them all mixed as default may be confusing.

ETA: That recent list is already implemented, but unfortunately only in home view. Notepads and library items are mixed together. You still have to go home, then cswitch to second last item used (e.g. from notebook to book).

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Instead of the recent list idea, they could add an option to show notepads and library together. Like listing of audiobooks can be disabled in regular livrary view. Having them all mixed as default may be confusing.

ETA: That recent list is already implemented, but unfortunately only in home view. Notepads and library items are mixed together. You still have to go home, then cswitch to second last item used (e.g. from notebook to book).

Interesting. I pretty much avoid Home but good to know that is there.

[HLS]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Instead of the recent list idea, they could add an option to show notepads and library together. Like listing of audiobooks can be disabled in regular livrary view. Having them all mixed as default may be confusing.

ETA: That recent list is already implemented, but unfortunately only in home view. Notepads and library items are mixed together. You still have to go home, then cswitch to second last item used (e.g. from notebook to book).

You can. it shows up together as you use them they show up on home screen with your books

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by HLS

You can. it shows up together as you use them they show up on home screen with your books

Aye, I found it. Like others I very much dislike the cluttered home screen. You quoted my edit, so you maybe missed the second paragraph.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by tomsem

It remains to be seen whether Print Replica (converted from PDF via Send to Kindle service) will have covers as they improve support for Scribe. And they should stop displaying PDF logo for these things, it is misleading.

I just discovered that the Kindle app for iOS does show a cover for PDFs sent via Send to Kindle. And it syncs position with Scribe (reading position anyway)! (not seeing this on Kindle for Android/FireOS). Not sure when this showed up.

Moreover, this particular document has some display issues on Scribe (portion of page does not display on a small percentage of pages, some photos don't display, and one page was even upside down!).

On my iPad, it has none of these rendering issues. It also has 9-page thumbnail view (scribe just has single page preview) and landscape support (fit to width). As with Scribe, one cannot select text. However, there is no TOC navigation and page links do not work (Scribe supports these).

Anyway, they are working on something.

I cannot remember what happens when I take one of these off of Scribe and side load to the Kindle app. I think it functions like a regular Print Replica? But need to check again.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by tomsem

I just discovered that the Kindle app for iOS does show a cover for PDFs sent via Send to Kindle. And it syncs position with Scribe (reading position anyway)! (not seeing this on Kindle for Android/FireOS). Not sure when this showed up.

Moreover, this particular document has some display issues on Scribe (portion of page does not display on a small percentage of pages, some photos don't display, and one page was even upside down!).

On my iPad, it has none of these rendering issues. It also has 9-page thumbnail view (scribe just has single page preview) and landscape support (fit to width). As with Scribe, one cannot select text. However, there is no TOC navigation and page links do not work (Scribe supports these).

Anyway, they are working on something.

I cannot remember what happens when I take one of these off of Scribe and side load to the Kindle app. I think it functions like a regular Print Replica? But need to check again.

Are scribbled notes visible on ios?

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Are scribbled notes visible on ios?

It appears not.

As I thought, side-loaded KFX copied from Scribe are (almost) fully functional Print Replica (page links work, you can select text etc). They include cover image (thumbnail of first page). There are no rendering errors, but the upside down page is there (it isn't upside down in the source file). There's no page flip, however.

I am going to re-send this document and see if it 'improves' on Scribe - I think I sent it back in January when I first got it. And I since have updated it to add more PDF bookmarks.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by tomsem

I am going to re-send this document and see if it 'improves' on Scribe - I think I sent it back in January when I first got it. And I since have updated it to add more PDF bookmarks.

Well, this is weird: the new document doesn't show Drawing toolbar, and no menu option shows for it. Other PDF's I sent yesterday do have toolbar.

The Send to Kindle web page didn't let me send ('not available, try later') so I used the macOS Send to Kindle app. Perhaps there was a disturbance in the force.

But hmm: I re-sent, and same issue: still no toolbar. And yet: sent a different PDF, and it has toolbar.

[rem736]

Originally Posted by tomsem

But hmm: I re-sent, and same issue: still no toolbar. And yet: sent a different PDF, and it has toolbar.

could it be a password protected pdf? i haven't tried to upload one that is password protected to see what happens.

another experiment would be to upload a pdf with fillable fields (to see if i i can type into those fields).

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by rem736

could it be a password protected pdf? i haven't tried to upload one that is password protected to see what happens.

another experiment would be to upload a pdf with fillable fields (to see if i i can type into those fields).

Nope. This is 100% home grown (mostly using Acrobat).

Difference from first version is this has some page links (which work) and also several dozen PDF bookmarks (which also work). Also changed the document title for Send to Kindle.

[HLS]

I M loving my scribe. Can't put it down

[tomsem]

Got this email from Amazon Kindle Support:

Dear Kindle Customer,

Thank you for using the Send to Kindle service. We are reaching out to let you know that the following document(s), sent to your Kindle at 10:11 PM on Mon, Apr 10, 2023 GMT, contains incompatible elements for Kindle format conversion. We’ve still delivered the document so that you can read it with Kindle, but in its current format it won’t support Kindle Scribe writing features (e.g., sticky notes or on-page writing).
* Prokofiev by Prokofiev (enhanced).pdf

Here are some helpful tips on how to make document(s) compatible with Send to Kindle’s Kindle format conversion:
Split large tables into several smaller tables, align the direction of text in the tables, and remove drop-caps in the tables.
Remove multi-media content such as audio, video, and SVG images.
Remove mathematical equations.
Remove images that contain linear gradients.
Remove password protection or any other security settings.
Remove any footnotes inside footnotes.
Check the document can be opened on a computer.
Make sure the document doesn’t have more than 8,000 pages.
Try sending the document again via drag and drop at www.amazon.com/sendtokindle.
To learn more about converting documents to a Kindle format, please visit our help page. By downloading or using Send to Kindle, you agree to the terms here.

Regards,
Amazon Kindle Support

This appears to be for the most recent Send To Kindle I did with this, using the browser interface.

The missing features are the Writing toolbar, and it no longer will display progress and preview page with swipe up from bottom.

It might be the large TOC (number of PDF bookmarks) in this case; they're also hierarchical. I'll be trying some other things.

[rem736]

i used the send to kindle site to upload 2 simple docs, one with fillable fields and one that is just a single sentence of text but protected with a password.

1. the fillable fields appears to have been stripped as the version on the kindle scribe completely ignores it.
2. even though the email states to remove any password protection, the uploaded file does obey this. i had to enter the password to open up the file.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by tomsem

Got this email from Amazon Kindle Support:

This appears to be for the most recent Send To Kindle I did with this, using the browser interface.

The missing features are the Writing toolbar, and it no longer will display progress and preview page with swipe up from bottom.

It might be the large TOC (number of PDF bookmarks) in this case; they're also hierarchical. I'll be trying some other things.

I finally realized what's going on: when the Send to Kindle conversion to Print Replica failed, it sent the PDF instead. So that's why there is no Drawing toolbar and navigation with page preview. So it has all of the expected PDF features (just as it would if side loaded), but does not sync.

I want to try some modifications to see what it is really complaining about when I get a chance. And I think I can create Print Replica locally (using Kindle Create and KFX import plugin) and side-load to see what happens.

Obviously the onus is on Amazon to make the conversion more robust, rather than suggesting all of these 'workarounds' (most of which don't apply to PDF in the first place).

But I have to say, the PDF reading experience is a lot better right now than Print Replica.