Highlighting Text

[valarcher]

Hi - is there a way to highlight in calibre? I see buttons only on the left side and none of them is for highlight.

I also tried this, to highlight it while reading on kindle:

- added book to calibre from my kindle so as to strip its DRM (installed plugin tools v.4.0)
- sent book to my kindle
- deleted it from calibre library
- opened the calibre book in kindle + highlighted text
- re-added book to calibre library
- went to location but text was not highlighted

When I read the original DRM ebook in kindle + highlight it, then open it on my laptop in KforPC, I see the highlighting there right to the end of the book - although of course in clippings.txt I see it only to the DRM limit.

I prefer to read books in calibre because the scrolling is easier in calibre but I need to see the highlights I made when I was reading it on kindle.

Is there any way to highlight text in an ebook on kindle (that I sent from calibre to kindle) then add it back into calibre and see the highlights?

And is there any way to highlight while reading in calibre?

thanks, Val

[kovidgoyal]

No and no. Adding highlighting to the viewer is on my TODO list, but then my TODO list is about 30 miles long

[valarcher]

Hi Kovid - wow, thanks million for replying! I'm going to send you a donation. I'm so grateful for Calibre! Hope all's well in Albq. I lived there for a year in 2000 Now I'm at the bottom of Africa.

all the best, Val

[kovidgoyal]

You're welcome

[frank14612]

I realize that this is a tall order, but this is what I would like to be able to do.

In Calibre I would like to be able to highlight various text in my e-books and:

1. to have that highlighting be retained for subsequent readings,
2. to have the highlighted text be capturable as a whole for consolidation, which could then be
3. placed at the head of the e-book as an abstract or digest of salient points of the book.

Is this possible now or could it be possible in the future?
Are there alternatives which will accomplish the same thing?

Thank you.

Frank D

[frank14612]

Pursuing my intention (in the previous post) of adding my highlighted text selections to the front of an existing e-book, I looked into the work-around of merging two e-book files, the first containing my excerpts (saved as a separate file) and the second containing the original e-book.

On searching I found the following:
======================================
Editing E-books — calibre User Manual
http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/edit.html

Merging files

Sometimes, you may want to merge two HTML files or two CSS files together. It can sometimes be useful to have everything in a single file. Be wary, though, putting a lot of content into a single file will cause performance problems when viewing the book in a typical ebook reader.

To merge multiple files together, select them by holding the Ctrl key and clicking on them (make sure you only select files of one type, either all HTML files or all CSS files and so on). Then right click and select merge. That’s all, calibre will merge the files, automatically taking care of migrating all links and references to the merged files. Note that merging files can sometimes cause text styling to change, since the individual files could have used different stylesheets.
======================================

Consequently, I converted the two epub files to html, selected them in Calibre as instructed above, and right-clicked on the selection. Unfortunately, there was no option to merge the two files, as the help article stated would be the case.

Am I doing something wrong? Am I misinterpreting? Are the help instructions applicable? Is there another way to accomplish this?

Thank you for any help.

Frank D

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by frank14612

Pursuing my intention (in the previous post) of adding my highlighted text selections to the front of an existing e-book, I looked into the work-around of merging two e-book files, the first containing my excerpts (saved as a separate file) and the second containing the original e-book.

On searching I found the following:
======================================
Editing E-books — calibre User Manual
http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/edit.html

Merging files

Sometimes, you may want to merge two HTML files or two CSS files together. It can sometimes be useful to have everything in a single file. Be wary, though, putting a lot of content into a single file will cause performance problems when viewing the book in a typical ebook reader.

To merge multiple files together, select them by holding the Ctrl key and clicking on them (make sure you only select files of one type, either all HTML files or all CSS files and so on). Then right click and select merge. That’s all, calibre will merge the files, automatically taking care of migrating all links and references to the merged files. Note that merging files can sometimes cause text styling to change, since the individual files could have used different stylesheets.
======================================

Consequently, I converted the two epub files to html, selected them in Calibre as instructed above, and right-clicked on the selection. Unfortunately, there was no option to merge the two files, as the help article stated would be the case.

Am I doing something wrong? Am I misinterpreting? Are the help instructions applicable? Is there another way to accomplish this?

Thank you for any help.

Frank D

Did you do it in the Edit Book GUI, or the calibre library GUI?

In Edit Book, you can merge 2 html files into one, WITHIN the same ebook. Which isn't really what you want.

Try looking for the EpubMerge plugin. (To find new plugins, go to Preferences ==> Advanced ==> Plugins ==> Get new plugins.)

[frank14612]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Did you do it in the Edit Book GUI, or the calibre library GUI?
<snip>
Try looking for the EpubMerge plugin. (To find new plugins, go to Preferences ==> Advanced ==> Plugins ==> Get new plugins.)

Thank you for your reply.

To answer your first question, I did it in both, with the same non-results.

However, I followed your suggestion, installed the EpubMerge plugin -- and now I'm very happy!

It works perfectly!

Thank you!

Frank

P.S. What I do is this: as I read an e-book in the Calibre reader, I highlight and copy passages that I consider worth remembering. I paste each one into a Word document I keep open and, when I'm finished reading and pasting, I format the document as an e-book, save it as an RTF, paste the resulting file into Calibre and convert it to an epub. I label the excerpts file with the same book title but with "excerpts" appended. Then I merge both files, using the new EpubMerge plugin, adjust the title accordingly, -- and there is the final result, with the excerpts first and the entire e-book following. This makes for easy reference and re-reading if and when desired.

P.P.S. This doesn't answer my original question, about highlighting text and having that highlighting persist, but I'm happy with what I have now.