opening ebook-viewer at the offsets that Kindle uses for exported annotations

[code7]

Hello,

Is there a way to pass the offsets that Kindle uses for exported annotations as a CLI parameter to ebook-viewer, so that it opens at a given annotation?

I use Kindle Paperwhite + Calibre as a tool to upload books in azw3 format. I just leant that the annotations I make, while using Kindle, are stored in a separate file with azw3r extension and can be extracted from it.
I successfully used 2 methods:

• https://github.com/jps-e/azw3r
• Calibre [GUI Plugin] Annotations

The annotations are in a format

OFFSET_START  OFFSET_END  Note:   'annotation text'

e.g.

309905  309906  Note:   'my annotation'
565577  565581  Note:   'my second annotation'

I was super excited to discover that ebook-viewer supports --open-at parameter but I can't seem to find the format used by Amazon.
I'm not sure what exactly the offset represents. Maybe it could be converted to epubcfi somehow? Maybe there's another notation of the open-at argument that I should use.

I would like to store the notes outside of Kindle or Calibre and use deep-linking to the Calibre viewer.

Thank you in advance

[kovidgoyal]

No, there's no pre-existing code to convert offsets in amazon's formats to something more standard. The offsets refer to byte offsets in the internal binary representation of those formats.

[code7]

Thank you for the quick answer

Since ebook-viewer can read and render azw3, maybe there is a code there that I could re-use to at least extract the highlighted text between the binary offsets? (I'm a developer)
Are you aware of any other library that knows how to use those binary offsets?

This way I could use --open-at search:"EXTRACTED_SELECTED_TEXT"

I know it's not perfect but as long as the selected text is unique enough it would do the job.

[jhowell]

You might want to check out these threads:

azw3r highlight and note extraction info

KRDS - A parser for Kindle reader data store files

[theducks]

Slightly
I would love a plugin that seeks the location of the annotations.
I use them on my reader to note errors. Being able to use GoTo Location in the Editor would be wonderful.
(And not just for Kindles. A whole series for the different devices. After all, what is the best way to PROOF? On the target device)

[code7]

Originally Posted by jhowell

You might want to check out these threads:

azw3r highlight and note extraction info

KRDS - A parser for Kindle reader data store files

thanks so much jhowell
Reading through those threads helped me realize that azw3r tool has -r option, which should give me the original text. I tested it briefly. It didn't work for me yet but maybe I'm doing sth wrong.

Then I discovered the tool you wrote: KRDS. It worked like a charm. I followed your explanation to combine it with kindleunpack and this gave me the results I needed. The only remaining step in my project would have been filtering out formatting tags. Some of my annotations highlighted the text that had additional formatting.

At the end of the day, in one of the comments in the thread, I came across somebody recommending Kindle Mate. This software works for me out of the box, so I won't have to add any scripting for now. Otherwise I would build it on top of KRDS.

You guys did a fantastic job.

Thanks again