[GUI Plugin] Kindle Collections (old)

[meme]

Originally Posted by nynaevelan

Meme:

I know this doesn't help you with the plugin but I just read something on the Amazon plugins that state the collections info is saved in the Documents folder on the Touch. When looking in the Documents folder I noticed each book in a collection now has a sub-directory that is the name of the collection and then another sub-directory with the name of the book and an .sdr extension. For example: \Documents\Fantasy - Series\Against All Things Ending - Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, The - 03 -.sdr Now if only you can take your genius and create a Touch Collections plugin....

Sounds promising.

Can you (or anyone with a Touch) verify a few things.

Can you PM me a link to a file containing the contents of the .sdr file (or if its just text, just paste it here) - or confirm the file is 0 length.

Can you add a new book to your Kindle.

Think of a new unique Collection name.

View the Documents folder to verify there is no subdirectory for the new collection name, then disconnect your Kindle

Using the Kindle, add the new book to the new collection

View the Documents folder again and confirm a subdirectory for collection name was created, and an .sdr file was created for the book in the collection.

Go into the Documents folder, create a new subdirectory with an unused collection name, and then copy the .sdr file from the other directory to this directory.

On your Kindle, see if a new collection name is created with the book in it.

If not, try a Restart and check again.

If its there, try deleting the .sdr name from your PC, then see if it disappears from the collection on the Kindle - if not, try a Restart.

[nynaevelan]

It's going to take me a little longer than anticipated to test, my Touch locked up on me and CS is sending me another one.

[abookreader]

I tried to help but I got lost. This is what I found.

1. Two books added to Kindle by author Joe Hill
- putting books onto device with Calibre puts 2 .mobi files and 2 .apnx files (one set for each book) in the Hill, Joe Folder (under Documents)

2. New Collection Name:- A Test Collection (no books added to collection yet). Can't find any changes to Documents Folder. No Folder added under Documents for "A Test Collection."

3. Disconnected Kindle and added the 2 Joe Hill books to "A Test Collection" Now I have two folders under Hill, Joe Folder (see first attachment for a picture). These folders are empty. They are also ~not~ named for the new Collection. They are the names of the two books.

4. This is where I lose you. There is nothing in these sdr folders and I have my options set to display hidden files. Mine aren't the names of the Collections. When I browse through it looks like books that I've opened and read some have two files in there but books that I've never opened on this Kindle have empty folders. I took a picture of a folder for the book I've been reading, the new Stephen King, so you can see the contents of the folder. See attachment 2

5. I've looked all over my Kindle and I'm not seeing any subfolders with my Collection names. I performed a search over the entire Kindle and found nothing for "A Test Collection."

I don't know what to do from here but if you need something else post and I'll try.

Originally Posted by meme

Sounds promising.

Can you (or anyone with a Touch) verify a few things.

Can you PM me a link to a file containing the contents of the .sdr file (or if its just text, just paste it here) - or confirm the file is 0 length.

Can you add a new book to your Kindle.

Think of a new unique Collection name.

View the Documents folder to verify there is no subdirectory for the new collection name, then disconnect your Kindle

Using the Kindle, add the new book to the new collection

View the Documents folder again and confirm a subdirectory for collection name was created, and an .sdr file was created for the book in the collection.

Go into the Documents folder, create a new subdirectory with an unused collection name, and then copy the .sdr file from the other directory to this directory.

On your Kindle, see if a new collection name is created with the book in it.

If not, try a Restart and check again.

If its there, try deleting the .sdr name from your PC, then see if it disappears from the collection on the Kindle - if not, try a Restart.

[abookreader]

The other thing I've been noticing is the time on my Kindle is correct. But if you look at that first attachment you can see a really funny time stamp on those two new folders when you compare it to the two books I added. I don't know if that means anything or not - I've just been noticing many funny time stamps on the Kindle files and folders.

[meme]

Originally Posted by abookreader

I tried to help but I got lost. This is what I found.

1. Two books added to Kindle by author Joe Hill
- putting books onto device with Calibre puts 2 .mobi files and 2 .apnx files (one set for each book) in the Hill, Joe Folder (under Documents)

2. New Collection Name:- A Test Collection (no books added to collection yet). Can't find any changes to Documents Folder. No Folder added under Documents for "A Test Collection."

3. Disconnected Kindle and added the 2 Joe Hill books to "A Test Collection" Now I have two folders under Hill, Joe Folder (see first attachment for a picture). These folders are empty. They are also ~not~ named for the new Collection. They are the names of the two books.

4. This is where I lose you. There is nothing in these sdr folders and I have my options set to display hidden files. Mine aren't the names of the Collections. When I browse through it looks like books that I've opened and read some have two files in there but books that I've never opened on this Kindle have empty folders. I took a picture of a folder for the book I've been reading, the new Stephen King, so you can see the contents of the folder. See attachment 2

5. I've looked all over my Kindle and I'm not seeing any subfolders with my Collection names. I performed a search over the entire Kindle and found nothing for "A Test Collection."

I don't know what to do from here but if you need something else post and I'll try.

Thanks for the info. Its definitely confusing.

1. Good to know you can still store the files under a subdirectory (I wonder if doing so makes any difference)

2. If you created a new Collection name and can't find it under Documents or any directory (even when showing hidden files) then that's not good (on the other hand it doesn't really matter since we're only really interested in collections that have books). Have you tried Restarting the Kindle after creating the new collection?

3. So the .sdr entries are folders - not files. That's useful to know. But still no sign of your collection name - anywhere? That's really not good. Have you tried a Restart?

4. Since the .sdr entries are folders not files as I thought, the steps won't make sense. So the Kindle stores other files in the .sdr directory - its not just about collections. I wonder whats in the 2 files - maybe syncing/note/other information - haven't had a chance to look around to see if anyone has documented this yet. And as you know, I can't get a Touch yet...

5. I wonder why collection names showed up or appeared to show up on Nyn's Kindle.


Seems like a bit more investigation is needed. If anyone does see their collection names anywhere, let us know.

[nynaevelan]

No, I didn't say the collection names showed, it was the folders abookreader is talking about. A user on the Amazon boards stated those folders were due to the collections, but I am starting to think that is not the case. Another user stated that Amazon was storing the collections on their servers instead of the kindle itself, but that doesn't make sense because what happens to the collections for users who keep their wireless off?? My new Touch should arrive tomorrow so hopefully I can remember to look at the directories before putting any files on it to see if I notice any differences.

And abookreader I too noticed those oddly timed files. I wonder where the discrepancies in the time is coming from.

Nyn

[nynaevelan]

BTW, the Fantasy - Series is directory is the name of my collection.

[abookreader]

Nope - restarted and can't find anything - except the obvious fact that there HAS to be a bunch of stuff hidden from me. The attached is the system folder. Assets appears to be all Kindle Special Offers stuff. ACW is empty and I don't know what it is for. Indexing is just a long list of indexing files etc etc.

The Documents folder is all folders by Author - no collection names anywhere that I can find.

TTS appears to be Text To Speech stuff.

There is nothing here to make a Kindle a Kindle. Wherever those firmware files are is probably where the Collection stuff is too. I just don't know how to make it show up.

Originally Posted by meme

Thanks for the info. Its definitely confusing.

1. Good to know you can still store the files under a subdirectory (I wonder if doing so makes any difference)

2. If you created a new Collection name and can't find it under Documents or any directory (even when showing hidden files) then that's not good (on the other hand it doesn't really matter since we're only really interested in collections that have books). Have you tried Restarting the Kindle after creating the new collection?

3. So the .sdr entries are folders - not files. That's useful to know. But still no sign of your collection name - anywhere? That's really not good. Have you tried a Restart?

4. Since the .sdr entries are folders not files as I thought, the steps won't make sense. So the Kindle stores other files in the .sdr directory - its not just about collections. I wonder whats in the 2 files - maybe syncing/note/other information - haven't had a chance to look around to see if anyone has documented this yet. And as you know, I can't get a Touch yet...

5. I wonder why collection names showed up or appeared to show up on Nyn's Kindle.


Seems like a bit more investigation is needed. If anyone does see their collection names anywhere, let us know.

[93terp]

Originally Posted by meme

Thanks for the info. Its definitely confusing.

4. Since the .sdr entries are folders not files as I thought, the steps won't make sense. So the Kindle stores other files in the .sdr directory - its not just about collections. I wonder whats in the 2 files - maybe syncing/note/other information - haven't had a chance to look around to see if anyone has documented this yet. And as you know, I can't get a Touch yet...

I can confirm on my KT that in the .sdr folder are 2 files - .mbs and .mbp1. You only get these files for books that have been opened on the Kindle. I think this is the info on your most recent location read??

[nynaevelan]

Meme, you know when you get this you are going to get a donation.

[meme]

Unless the Kindle writes its collection data out to the visible filesystem area, and reads it back in from the filesystem, then this plugin cannot work on the Touch. It might be that a true hack opens up the possibility, but so far I haven't seen anything new on that front.

So far we don't have any conclusive evidence that the Touch writes its collection info to the filesystem. It does appear to create a directory for storing files if you either open the book or add the book to a collection - but it doesn't seem to be putting any info about the collection into that folder.

@Nyn - I was under the impression your collection name was part of the newly created folder on your Touch, but it could be that the collection name was only created as part of the way you saved your books to the Kindle. Once you get your replacement you can test before/after, but abookreaders searching/checking seems to suggest you won't find anything...

[MacKindle]

Hello,

I have a replacement Kindle 3.0 and am running Calibre 0.8.27 under OS 10.7.2 and using the Kindle Collections Plugin.

I uploaded all my 600 books into the replacement Kindle through Calibre and then created collections based upon Author Sort.

Instead of having all the books solely in collections, I have them in collections and separately in the kindle. This creates some 60 pages in the Kindle. How do I create the collections so that the books only reside in collections?

As an aside, modifying sorts through the Kindle Collections plugin causes the modification to take, but Calibre to crash on the MacBook Pro -- without fail.

Thank you for any help you can provide. MK.

[meme]

On your Kindle go to the Home page, navigate to the top line, then to the right and select Sort by Collections. You will now only see the collections, but they will be ordered by the most recent access time (initially this will also be alphabetical but will change as you open the collections).

What do you mean by 'modifying sorts' in the plugin? What are you actually doing? You can try running in debug mode and seeing if any output from the crash is given (run "calibre-debug -g > out.txt" to save the debug output in the out.txt file - it would be the last few lines that are of interest.

[Only]

Hello everyone,

I have a Kindle 4 (French model, not touch or anything) since October 14 and I use calibre 0.8.27 with Kindle Collections 1.7.9.

I always used the 'Edit Kindle collections manually' option to edit my Kindle Collections and had no problem and all worked well, but now, I don't know if it's from an update of calibre or the plugin, but I have that:
http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/4...board02ozu.jpg

It add @fr-FR to all my collections, and I have to manually edit each collection name to remove that bit before saving. I did not modify any setting in the plugin or in calibre that I know of.

[meme]

Originally Posted by Only

Hello everyone,

I have a Kindle 4 (French model, not touch or anything) since October 14 and I use calibre 0.8.27 with Kindle Collections 1.7.9.

I always used the 'Edit Kindle collections manually' option to edit my Kindle Collections and had no problem and all worked well, but now, I don't know if it's from an update of calibre or the plugin, but I have that:
http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/4...board02ozu.jpg

It add @fr-FR to all my collections, and I have to manually edit each collection name to remove that bit before saving. I did not modify any setting in the plugin or in calibre that I know of.

It was the plugin. When I got the Kindle 4 non-touch I noticed the locale info showing up at the end of collection names as well. (I'm not sure its the non-touch, more likely I just happened to have a book with a different locale loaded for the first time and just happened to notice it). I put a fix into the last version, but didn't generalize it enough to handle non-english locales.

I've uploaded version 1.7.10 to the main page and this should fix the issue for any type of locale. It may be necessary to manually edit the collection names one more time if they still show up - I only remove one locale from the name to avoid removing too much.