Sony PRS-T1 in Calibre

[PaulPosition]

Weird..

Could we get text position declaration for another part of the excerpt.. Say, "LONDON, August, 1889" which is in another paragraph... ? Obviously it sets one point and an offset of #characters, but I really can't figure out how it navigates the dom tree.

[JSWolf]

The :101 is the number of characters in your highlight.

[snarkophilus]

Originally Posted by Yoths

Does anyone know how to decrypt the SONY's/ADE's text position declarations (e.g. point(/1/4/2/6/1/1:101))?

Theoretically, the numbers after slashes are "children in the DOM tree starting from the document node and counting both element and text nodes". But in practice they count in a very strange way... Or they use not the original document but the internal parsed tree...

I've been wondering about this myself as well, but more for how the "current_position" table works in the books.db. I assume you've seen this google code page? There's an interesting reference here that points out that whitespace between elements are also counted as separate nodes. That said, I've still be unable to correlate the element/node counts, so I think you're right in that it must be using some interal representation of the xml once it's loaded by the Sony reader software.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The :101 is the number of characters in your highlight.

I think it's a bit more subtle than that - I suspect the :101 means that the end of the highlight is 101 characters into the current text node. Here that example just happens to be the length of the highlight because the highlight starts at the start of the text node.

Cheers,
Simon.

[JSWolf]

As was said before, we need more samples of different sizes in the middle of the passage to be able to even begin to figure things out.

[Yoths]

Thanks for your responses!

Here is a set of some samples on different positions:

[at the beigin of the first line]
SELECTION: The chief beauty of this book lies not, so much in its literary style, or in the extent and usefulnes
POSITION: start="OEBPS/boat003_preface.xhtml#point(/1/4/2/6/1/1)" end="OEBPS/boat003_preface.xhtml#point(/1/4/2/6/1/1:101)"

[in the middle of the first line #1]
SELECTION: All that has been done is to colour them; and, for this, no extra charge has been made
POSITION: start="OEBPS/boat003_preface.xhtml#point(/1/4/2/6/1/1:223)" end="OEBPS/boat003_preface.xhtml#point(/1/4/2/6/1/1:309)"

[in the middle of the first line #2]
SELECTION: Other works may excel this in depth of thought and knowledge of human nature: other books may riv...
POSITION: start="OEBPS/boat003_preface.xhtml#point(/1/4/2/6/1/1:452)" end="OEBPS/boat003_preface.xhtml#point(/1/4/2/6/1/1:579)"

[at the end of the first line]
SELECTION: weight to the lesson that the story teaches.
POSITION: start="OEBPS/boat003_preface.xhtml#point(/1/4/2/6/1/1:801)" end="OEBPS/boat003_preface.xhtml#point(/1/4/2/6/1/1:845)"

[in the middle of the second line]
SELECTION: DON, August, 18
POSITION: start="OEBPS/boat003_preface.xhtml#point(/1/4/2/8/1:3)" end="OEBPS/boat003_preface.xhtml#point(/1/4/2/8/1:18)"

[over two lines]
SELECTION: the story teaches.
LONDON,
POSITION: start="OEBPS/boat003_preface.xhtml#point(/1/4/2/6/1/1:827)" end="OEBPS/boat003_preface.xhtml#point(/1/4/2/8/1:7)"

The number after colon seems to be the character offset, but even that is counted strange (cf. [in the middle of the first line #2] or [at the end of the first line] - this may be because of the — sign, but even after replacing them by a "-" the offsets don't match)

[snarkophilus]

Originally Posted by Yoths

The number after colon seems to be the character offset, but even that is counted strange (cf. [in the middle of the first line #2] or [at the end of the first line] - this may be because of the — sign, but even after replacing them by a "-" the offsets don't match)

From http://code.google.com/p/epub-revision/wiki/ImplementationProposalSimpleAnnotations it says:

N after semicolon (optional) is byte offset in utf8-encoded text node

I think if you count the mdash as two characters that works out?


I've also figured out that for my "current_position" table, the current location in the book is that of the last character on the page, not the first character. For example, the current location at the first page of a chapter in one book is OEBPS/Text/asimov-youthebook-3.html#point(/1/4/12/1:248). The /1/4 seems to be constant everywhere I've seen (1 for html, 4 for ????), and indeed the last character on the page is the 248th character in the 12th element (remembering to count each <p> as an element [B]and[\B] the whitespace between each paragraph as an element.

Also, the end of a chapter (or more rightly I suspect a html file) is simply OEBPS/Text/asimov-youthebook-3.html#point(:1) so it would seem a simple :1 represents that. How that is actually worked out (no reference to the DOM tree structure!) I have no idea.

For your first example, point(/1/4/2/6/1/1), we have the same /1/4 prefix. I'm guessing the /2 is caused by the <div> and the whitespace before that (which my book didn't have), then the 6 is the 6th element (<h3>, <hr>, <p> and whitespace before each), the next 1 is the the <em> (with no whitespace before the <em> so it's 1 and not 2) and the final 1 is the text node after the <em>. I haven't double checked all that, but it mostly makes sense at my first attempt .

In your example for near the start of the second line we have point(/1/4/2/8/1:3), so the 8 means it's two nodes after the first line (remembering that the white space between paragraphs counts as a node), there's only a single /1 after that as there is a single <p> without the <em> that the first paragraph has, and obviously "DON" starts 3 characters after the start of the text node.

Hopefully we're on the way to understanding this a bit better now!

Cheers,
Simon.

[silentguy]

Hm, my new PRS-T1 seems the do something weird with collections in main memory and sd card. It seems that uses the same collection ids in both leading to some weird merging of unrelated collections. I read something about ppl having the same problem with book ids but they seem to be fine...
any way to fix this?

[silentguy]

Forget I asked. I fixed it...

EDIT: Because a friend of mine JUST complained about ppl only posting THAT they fixed it but not HOW they did it, here what I did. :-)

I emptied the sd card, manually added a book to it AND THEN STARTED THE READER SOFTWARE... manually creating a collection on the reader might have worked as well. Looking at the internal db, it seems just adding the book leads to a creation of a new db but it does NOT populate the collection start id. that only happened after starting the software.

[theducks]

@silent
Thanks for not being silent on the solution

[Quoth]

I think my PRS-T1 is recognised as a "pre PRS-T1" in Calibre on Linux?. If the older Sony driver is disabled in Plugins it doesn't connect. The PRS-T1 notes plug in doesn't appear. I see READER and SETTINGS icon appear on the Linux Mint desktop (18.3 and Mate). Calibre seems to copy books to it fine, but calls it "Sony Reader". Disabling the PRS-T1 plugin has no effect, so I'm thinking it's recognised as an earlier ereader?

Settings read when connected:
USB Vendor ID (in hex): 0x54c
USB Product ID (in hex): 0x5c2
USB Revision ID (in hex): 0x226

The Firmware Version 1.0.03.11140

I've downloaded the "latest" firmware, PRS-T1_Updater_1.0.07.05070_a.exe, but how do I apply that via Linux?

Do I have to install the reader software on Win7, or can I use the old PRS-350 "Reader software" on XP?

Is the 1.0.03.11140 too old for Calibre?

[Quoth]

Updated from 1.0.03.11140 to 1.0.07.05070 using a Win7 PC, stupid that it's a Windows self-extrator exe that then runs a windows program.

I'm still thinking Calibre isn't regarding it as a T1? At any rate identifies as Sony Reader and no sign of the Notes plug in.

I also think the battery may be nearly dead? Shouldn't show a stripe pattern after unplugging charger at 100%?

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by FrustratedReader

I think my PRS-T1 is recognised as a "pre PRS-T1" in Calibre on Linux?. If the older Sony driver is disabled in Plugins it doesn't connect. The PRS-T1 notes plug in doesn't appear. I see READER and SETTINGS icon appear on the Linux Mint desktop (18.3 and Mate). Calibre seems to copy books to it fine, but calls it "Sony Reader". Disabling the PRS-T1 plugin has no effect, so I'm thinking it's recognised as an earlier ereader?

Settings read when connected:
USB Vendor ID (in hex): 0x54c
USB Product ID (in hex): 0x5c2
USB Revision ID (in hex): 0x226

The Firmware Version 1.0.03.11140

I've downloaded the "latest" firmware, PRS-T1_Updater_1.0.07.05070_a.exe, but how do I apply that via Linux?

Do I have to install the reader software on Win7, or can I use the old PRS-350 "Reader software" on XP?

Is the 1.0.03.11140 too old for Calibre?

The ids you have are what the driver for the PRS-T1 is looking for. The names you are seeing are common to both the PRS-T1 and the older Sony devices. If you open the driver configuration when the device is connected, the titlebar should show you which it is.

The other thing to do is to disable both Sony drivers and run the "Debug device detection" which is on the miscellaneous page of the preference. That should show what is happening.

As to the notes plugin, it hasn't been updated since 2012. It almost definitely won't work with current a calibre. And it probably stopped working with calibre v2. If you run calibre in debug mode, you will probably see errors when calibre attempts to load it.

[Quoth]

OK, Thanks. I wonder why then the PRS-T1 Notes plug-in is on the list of plugins via preferences, plugins, add?
I've established that the battery is OK.

Title bar says Sony Reader


So why doesn't it use the PRS-T1 driver?

The Highlight/annotation sometimes makes the Reader seem dead, but if you wait it recovers. I'll start a thread on the Sony Reader sub forum.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by FrustratedReader

OK, Thanks. I wonder why then the PRS-T1 Notes plug-in is on the list of plugins via preferences, plugins, add?

Because it doesn't state a maximum supported version and it is still valid for anyone running older versions of calibre.

I've established that the battery is OK.

Title bar says Sony Reader
Attachment 171494

So why doesn't it use the PRS-T1 driver?

Well, apparently I was wrong about the title of the config dialog when it is connected. It is using the generic SONY title. But, those are the options for the for the PRS-T1 driver. So, that must be what is being used.

[Quoth]

OK, thanks. So no annotations import for me as I don't normally run Windows. The Sony PC Reader SW on Win7 seems like it was written by the the team that did the awful Minidisk NetMD application / DRM.