Remote Kindle Indexing on PC.

[vugtitan]

Everyone here relates the horror stories of how indexing sucks the battery dry or causing freezing,rebooting,etc and takes many hours for a few hundred books.

Since amazon has released kindle software for the pc why not get that software to index a COPY of the hundreds of book files on the PC and then import or export that file to the kindle and hence the kindle will not have to index anything!

I am brilliant.

[emalvick]

Will that work. Unless the file has no DRM, I don't think you can just copy the files over to your Kindle, although I could be wrong.

Does the account synchronize indexing between devices and apps? It would probably be nice if it could, but I'm not really sure how the indexing works anyway. Are the Indexes stored in each book file, or is there a separate file for them?

[vugtitan]

Originally Posted by emalvick

Will that work. Unless the file has no DRM, I don't think you can just copy the files over to your Kindle, although I could be wrong.

Does the account synchronize indexing between devices and apps? It would probably be nice if it could, but I'm not really sure how the indexing works anyway. Are the Indexes stored in each book file, or is there a separate file for them?

It must as why have a kindle application for PC and Mac if it can't read kindle books?

DRM does not stop simple file copying/pasting but only playing.


1)
so you have your 1000 books on the pc..you would index with kindle for pc and transfer index file and 1000 books to kindle.

2)
or you already have 1000 books on kindle...you copy them via copy/paste to hard drive on pc ..let kindle for pc index them and then copy only the index file back to the kindle.


this would solve the battery drain/freezing/crashing.


i am brilliant.

[daffy4u]

Each Kindle device or app will have it's own DRM. You cannot move books between the devices or apps unless you remove the DRM. When you download a book to each device or app, if will download with DRM specific to that device or app.

[DiapDealer]

K4PC books are not readable on the Kindle and vice versa (with the original drm intact). So the idea of transferring all the books and indexing data from Kindle for PC to the Kindle device, well.... ain't gonna happen.

You might still be brilliant... just not as it pertains to this particular scenario.

[susan_cassidy]

I suspect that the indexes are kept in a single hash (a global set). The K1 had separate indexing for the main memory and the SD card, and if you moved a book from one place to the other, it reindexed that book.

It isn't efficient to search n indexes for a single word, when searching one is faster.

Therefore, the entire set of documents/books would have to be identical for the pc and the Kindle for your idea to work, disregarding the DRM issue for the moment.

Impractical, I think.

[vugtitan]

Originally Posted by susan_cassidy

I suspect that the indexes are kept in a single hash (a global set). The K1 had separate indexing for the main memory and the SD card, and if you moved a book from one place to the other, it reindexed that book.

It isn't efficient to search n indexes for a single word, when searching one is faster.

Therefore, the entire set of documents/books would have to be identical for the pc and the Kindle for your idea to work, disregarding the DRM issue for the moment.

Impractical, I think.

Are you saying that a kindle book downloaded on to pc and read via kindle for pc cannot be transferred to the kindle via copy/paste.That makes no sense.In any case indexing would still be the same as it is the same set of words.

I don't understand why DRM is even being discussed.

I already said for Large collections you just copy /paste into kindle for pc and let it index then dump same files into kindle.

[Tiersten]

Originally Posted by susan_cassidy

I suspect that the indexes are kept in a single hash (a global set). The K1 had separate indexing for the main memory and the SD card, and if you moved a book from one place to the other, it reindexed that book.

It isn't efficient to search n indexes for a single word, when searching one is faster.

One file per indexable book is generated and kept in System\Searched Indexes\ on your Kindle. The System directory is marked hidden.

[emalvick]

Originally Posted by vugtitan

Are you saying that a kindle book downloaded on to pc and read via kindle for pc cannot be transferred to the kindle via copy/paste.That makes no sense.In any case indexing would still be the same as it is the same set of words.

I don't understand why DRM is even being discussed.

I already said for Large collections you just copy /paste into kindle for pc and let it index then dump same files into kindle.

Exactly... A Kindle Book downloaded to K4PC cannot just be copied to a Kindle via cut and paste, specifically because of DRM, thus the discussion. Amazon has the store setup so that certain books can be limited to how many devices or apps that book can be downloaded to at one time. To keep track of it (i.e. to keep one from copying a book from K4PC to other Kindles), DRM is embedded for the specific file for that specific device.

Now if DRM is not in a file, then you could cut and paste, but I don't think the index would go with it, nor will it sync. Each device/app won't necessarily have the same books or other content, so the indexes wouldn't be the same either.

Of course, if you find that it does work, then please report back.

[emalvick]

Originally Posted by Tiersten

One file per indexable book is generated and kept in System\Searched Indexes\ on your Kindle. The System directory is marked hidden.

So I guess the question would be, is there a similar file in the K4PC system that could be copied over to the Kindle? If there is, is it tied at all to the DRM system (maybe via file name or a header within the file)?

[Tiersten]

Originally Posted by emalvick

So I guess the question would be, is there a similar file in the K4PC system that could be copied over to the Kindle? If there is, is it tied at all to the DRM system (maybe via file name or a header within the file)?

There is also a database file called Index.db in there which indexes all the individual search index files. You'd need to work out how to insert it into there even if you did have the search index file itself.

The contents of Index.db doesn't match up against the contents of the individual files. The Index.db contains some word lists along with a large amount of unknown data but the indvidual files are not human readable at all apart from a couple attribute words at the end.

[vugtitan]

Originally Posted by emalvick

Exactly... A Kindle Book downloaded to K4PC cannot just be copied to a Kindle via cut and paste, specifically because of DRM, thus the discussion. Amazon has the store setup so that certain books can be limited to how many devices or apps that book can be downloaded to at one time. To keep track of it (i.e. to keep one from copying a book from K4PC to other Kindles), DRM is embedded for the specific file for that specific device.

Now if DRM is not in a file, then you could cut and paste, but I don't think the index would go with it, nor will it sync. Each device/app won't necessarily have the same books or other content, so the indexes wouldn't be the same either.

Of course, if you find that it does work, then please report back.

But why does Amazon go on about syncing between different apps?

In any case this not about copying to 20 different computer but just to 1 to get indexed it.


"Each device/app won't necessarily have the same books or other content, so the indexes wouldn't be the same either".

I just said you would do the WHOLE thing en masse for say a 1000 books in one go to just 1 pc and back.

i.e you would organize/sort the whole think on pc4k and copy to kindle once perfection achieved.

[Tiersten]

There doesn't appear to be anything stopping Amazon from implementing what you want. If they're going to the trouble of doing this then they'd just preindex everything their side and then you'd get merge it into your local search index when it gets downloaded to your device or PC. In this case, you wouldn't even need to index it on the PC first.

However, at the moment it doesn't do that. Each device will generate its own search index for each item stored on itself. Until Amazon implements it, this feature doesn't exist.

[Alisa]

Frankly it seems easier to make indexing more resource sensitive than find a way to merge indexes of files from multiple file systems onto the Kindle.

A few simple changes:

If device is in use and there are pending indexing jobs, only index the current file. If the user does a search, put up a message and let them choose.
Only index when idle. Stop when battery goes to 50%. That way if it's idle and plugged in, it can index it's little heart out.

It doesn't make much sense to put a huge amount of development work to solve a problem most users don't experience and the users that do only experience rarely. Seriously. How often do you move 100+ books to your Kindle?

It reminds me of an old engineering story which may be apocryphal. The American astronauts complained that they couldn't use their pens while in space. NASA spent months of research and over a million dollars to design a pen that could work at zero gravity. The Russians gave their cosmonauts pencils.

[DiapDealer]

But why does Amazon go on about syncing between different apps?

Because you download the book to your Kindle AND you download the book to your Kindle for [whatever device] app. When you read the book on one device and synchronize... you can open the book on the other device and pick up reading from the same place you left off on the other device. No muss, no fuss... you know... synchronized.

This is all moot anyway, as I'm sure they will release an update that will alleviate the indexing woes that are being experienced. The only question is when.