Kindle Scribe Update 5.16.2

[tomsem]

Version 5.16.2 – May 2023

Here's what's new:

PDF Reading Improvements: For PDFs uploaded through Send to Kindle, switch between portrait and landscape mode, crop margins, and select text to make highlights with your finger or pen, add text notes, or look up dictionary definitions, translations, and Wikipedia results.

Lasso Select: In the writing toolbar, choose the Lasso Select tool to move, resize, cut, or copy your handwritten strokes. The Clipboard tool saves any copied or cut strokes; when selected, paste on the same page or across different notebooks or books.

Convert to text in Export: In the Share menu of a notebook, choose ”Convert to text and email“ to preview and edit the converted text of your handwritten notebook. Choose “Convert to text and quick send to [your registered email address]" to skip preview.

Another huge update.

Can finally select and highlight text with Print Replica! Also can adjust 'margins', and landscape. But not yet access to all Kindle Store content in this format. There is a more specialized selection for Scribe only here:

Write-on Books

[aceflor]

Yay! Thanks tomsem for the great info. Downloading it right now

[tomsem]

Landscape (for Print Replica) is a little unpleasant: you have to scroll (no way to 'page down'), and it's not smooth enough. There is a Page Animation Aa setting, greyed out. Perhaps we can look forward to an update that enables it. I think page turns are a little faster now, but like an idiot I've already updated both of my Scribe's so I can no longer check this. No Sticky Notes, I suppose the page annotations are better for this anyway.

As I sort of expected the handwriting OCR is cloud-based, and sends a link to a .txt file. Seems to do okay with the smaller samples I have, but is it as good as on-device competition? Others will have to weigh in on that as I have no basis for comparison. In theory it could be as good, if they actually analyze strokes and not just shapes. And also in theory, it could improve as whatever ML they are throwing at this improves.

And clipboard and paste features seem to work really well, though the clipboard only stores one thing at a time.

One might have hoped for new Pen shortcuts with this update (e.g. Undo, Lasso) but there are no changes.

[tomsem]

It turns out that a selection of Print Replica books from Kindle Store has been available for Scribe since last December, in a category called Write-on Books:

https://www.amazon.com/b?tag=georiot...eniuslink=true

...

I think Amazon is preparing a Scribe marketing push for Go Back To School (in July most likely), and as part of that, will be turning on the bits to allow Scribes to read most if not all of the Print Replica books, since a lot of these are textbooks. But clearly they could not do that without the Print Replica improvements in this update.

The other piece that needs to be finished off for this is the PDF Markup workflow, which is pathetic when compared to the competition. But that is mostly web services work. For all we know that is mostly ready to go as well, but again, you needed to be at least able to do proper highlighting and adding text notes, other common forms of PDF markup.

This is also why I think we'll get another update in another month or so that adds Shape and Text tools. Maybe even Strikethrough, Underline, Stamp? These are all part of the PDF annotation palette, and they are needed to provide more credibility to the notion that Scribe can do decent PDF Markup.

To be meaningful, this workflow has to return the original PDF, with Scribe annotations converted to corresponding PDF annotations. The current export product is a placeholder, while the other pieces are put into place.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by tomsem

I think Amazon is preparing a Scribe marketing push for Go Back To School (in July most likely), and as part of that, will be turning on the bits to allow Scribes [...]

I wonder why now. If they want to push some great update, they can clearly deliver. For years they been dragging their feet and gave us almost nothing to push the reading customizations ahead.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

I wonder why now. If they want to push some great update, they can clearly deliver. For years they been dragging their feet and gave us almost nothing to push the reading customizations ahead.

Software development is not as predictable as hardware. They wrote a Scribe product description in October and they are still trying to make all of that real.

And given the way Amazon chose to implement PDF Markup (and Notebooks for that matter), there are a lot of entirely new pieces to build out and coordinate, Scribe firmware updates are tip of the iceberg. They are building out a platform, the competition are building devices only.

Moreover there was no need to rush out PDF markup. It's not a big market, and it's not something recreational readers or even notebook people have much interest in. In fact better to hold it back, iron out the details, nail the requirements, and wait for natural market demand ('Back to school!') for more impact.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by tomsem

It turns out that a selection of Print Replica books from Kindle Store has been available for Scribe since last December, in a category called Write-on Books:

https://www.amazon.com/b?tag=georiot...eniuslink=true

...

I purchased one of these. I tried copying the KFX to my other Scribe, it ignored it so I assume it has DRM (KFX personal documents in Print Replica format can be freely transferred).

So I downloaded for USB transfer ('AZW4'), successfully removed DRM (took a couple of minutes, file is 45MB), and conversion to PDF appears flawless. (It might be nice to implement conversion to FXL ePub, which apparently calibre does not support.)

Given the contortions deDRMing AZW4 has required in the past, I was concerned that it wouldn't work with a Kindle AZW4 download, either, since it's never been possible to get one prior to the existence of Scribe. Fortunately, it does.

(update) Ironically, Scribe will not open the downloaded AZW4 file. It doesn't show up in Library. Hopefully the download option remains even if it doesn't actually work.

[tomsem]

Well that was weird: following the update, my newest Scribe had not indexed any of the content already on it, I would search for something and it would come up empty. Newly downloaded content got stuck in the Not Yet indexed list. Restart didn't fix anything. Re-downloading didn't fix anything. Finally, Reset fixed this.

But then one of my PRPDs ('print replica personal documents') would not download. It showed in Downloads filter but could not be opened. Thought maybe it needed to finish sync of my library so let it sit around for awhile. Nope, still not downloading.

Finally I vaguely recalled a suggestion that re-applying an update could fix some things. IIRC, I actually didn't wait long enough for the Update Your Kindle option to become enabled, went ahead and Restarted, which triggered update. This time, I waited and did it 'properly', and after this was able to do the download.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by tomsem

Well that was weird: following the update, my newest Scribe had not indexed any of the content already on it, I would search for something and it would come up empty. Newly downloaded content got stuck in the Not Yet indexed list. Restart didn't fix anything. Re-downloading didn't fix anything. Finally, Reset fixed this.

But then one of my PRPDs ('print replica personal documents') would not download. It showed in Downloads filter but could not be opened. Thought maybe it needed to finish sync of my library so let it sit around for awhile. Nope, still not downloading.

Finally I vaguely recalled a suggestion that re-applying an update could fix some things. IIRC, I actually didn't wait long enough for the Update Your Kindle option to become enabled, went ahead and Restarted, which triggered update. This time, I waited and did it 'properly', and after this was able to do the download.

I did the same thing. Was waiting for update to show up was impatient and reatarted. I did seethe"update" briefly from gray to black before it restarted. Have to check yet if I need to reset as well. I didn't download anything. I will check if my previously downloaded PRPD got indexed.

Thanks for the heads up.

[tomsem]

I think re-applying the update would have fixed things without a Reset.

Part of most updates is re-indexing all of the content. So I'm guessing one of the tasks before Update is enabled is to clear the current index and set a flag that tells it to 'index everything'. But it's as if only the first thing happened.

[tomsem]

Wish list for future updates:

PDF Markup

• add Shape, Strikethrough, Underline, and Text tools (text would be indexed and searchable)
• when exporting to PDF ('Share document'), return the original PDF with Scribe annotations mapped to PDF annotations
  

Print Replica

• enable page animation, improve performance
• enable 9 thumbnail view
• generate cover thumbnail from first page of PDF
• add 2 column (facing pages) option to Landscape
• Kindle Store access to all Print Replica titles
• add handwriting transcription to export of Notes for copy/paste
• Export all Pen annotations directly to a Notebook for editing
• generate thumbnail for personal documents

Notebook

• add Shape and Text tools (text would be indexed and searchable)
• add wide aspect templates and use landscape UI for these
• manage templates (to hide those not used, or reveal others not turned on by default)
• add Download All to folder options (to complement Remove all downloads)
• ability to change template on individual pages

Sticky Notes

• add Shape and Text tools (text would be indexed and searchable)
• add handwriting transcription to exported Notes for copy/paste
• add ability to have multiple Sticky Note 'pages': the panel is pretty small
• export all Sticky Notes to Notebook

Pen

• add Undo and Lasso to choices
• allow customization of eraser action

Other

• long press in any corner from any context brings up Recent items list for quicker task switching, with Home, Library, Notebooks, Store links (do this for all Kindles)
• Lasso tool option to capture a selected screen region to clipboard and Paste to notebook.
• Deliver personal documents in Print Replica format instead of PDF for all updatable Kindles and the Kindle apps, so they will sync reading position and annotation across the platform

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by tomsem

Wish list for future updates:

It sounds great, but I doubt the offline handwriting to text conversion is going to happen. I don't think there is enough RAM and CPU horsepower to do that with (good) quality. Unless you meant server side conversion.

[DuckieTigger]

Here is another kink in the story. I tried uploading a pdf with send to kindle web (from Windows and from Android phone) and through the share option on Android through the Kindle app. All three showed up as PDFs on my Scribe. No more conversion to print replica?

ETA1: Thanks Amazon, ya fixed print replica just so we have to buy them from the store?

ETA2: Even weirder: I removed the download for a previously sent PRPD (from a PDF upload). Redownloaded it. Now it shows up with the PDF icon, but it opens with the print replica renderer complete with ability to write on it. As fun as beta testing is, I rather they push out working updates.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

It sounds great, but I doubt the offline handwriting to text conversion is going to happen. I don't think there is enough RAM and CPU horsepower to do that with (good) quality. Unless you meant server side conversion.

Not asking for that, rather that they add it to the existing Share PDF inline.

For example after each Sticky Note in your notes, they'd transcribe any text found in it.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Here is another kink in the story. I tried uploading a pdf with send to kindle web (from Windows and from Android phone) and through the share option on Android through the Kindle app. All three showed up as PDFs on my Scribe. No more conversion to print replica?

ETA1: Thanks Amazon, ya fixed print replica just so we have to buy them from the store?

ETA2: Evem weirder: I removed the download for a previously sent PRPD (from a PDF upload). Redownloaded it. Now it shows up with the PDF icon, but it opens with the print replica renderer complete with ability to write on it.

It's working okay for me.

Note that if you sent it in prior to November of last year, it'll download PDF. I have a few dozen to re-send.

It's really confusing that they have the PDF icon for both. And misleading. There should be some other logo for PR.

They want to get rid of wireless delivery of PDF. It is absolutely useless in the Kindle apps, which have had Print Replica support for some years now.

Even for the newer 6-7" Kindles. They have some level of Print Replica support already, and the feature set in terms of functionality is pretty much the same now as the legacy PDF. And now will sync annotations and reading position, which PDF never did.

I would guess PDF support will disappear entirely in 12th generation Kindles.