E-book viewer - bookmark marking vanishes

[DrChiper]

Due to the mentioning of Closed ticket #1326198, I tried within the E-book viewer to make a bookmark via the newly added keyboard shortcut: this works. I can mark a location, it shows up in yellow background, and I can bookmark it.

However, when I click just somewhere else the yellow marking vanishes. The bookmark itself is still present as one can see in the book mark manager. Even after exit from the epub. I can also "jump" from bookmark to bookmark. But as the yellow marking is no longer visible, you have no clue *what* has been marked and where you are jumping to. The reason for the bookmark can thus be anywhere on the page.

Is this "working as designed"?

[kovidgoyal]

I'm confused, setting a bookmark has no visual indication of where the bookmark is. Do you mean the reference mode instead (the icon below the bookmark icon)?

[DrChiper]

What I did was selecting a certain phrase (which has thus a yellow background) and then used ctrl+B to bookmark it. As you can see in the attachment, there are 4 bookmarks made on the same page, of which only the last one made is "visible". This in the same manner as I am used to to make book marks in any of my e-readers.

What I now strongly suspect is that text selecting is not included at all to create a bookmark within the e-book viewer, perhaps the bookmarking was also never intended to be used as such.

That said, I therefore think that using the bookmarking within the e-book viewer has limited usage IMHO. Especially when you want to make more than 1 bookmark within the same page, but to different text sections.

But I might be wrong about this.

[BetterRed]

My experience of using calibre 3 years since, has been that going to a bookmark in the viewer has only ever gone to the 'page'. It has never given any indication as to the precise location of the bookmark.

Coincidentally, the same is also true of a traditional bookmark, or browser bookmark.

BR

[kovidgoyal]

Bookmarking is bookmarking not annotations. What you are expecting is support for annotations, an entirely separate thing. Bookmarks mark locations in the book not objects like bits of text or images or whatever.

[Sabardeyn]

DrChiper,
Bookmarks offering a quick and automatic "jump to bookmarked page/content" is how I remember the feature operating.

The built-in calibre viewer is a light e-reader, providing basic functionality, not including some of the more recent e-reader software features and benefits. One of those being annotation support. You may have to find more feature rich e-reader software to do what you want on the PC. Perhaps one of the programs you're already using for hardware offers a PC version?

Unfortunately I don't know of any software that offers PC and Android versions, so I cannot make a recommendation.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Sabardeyn

DrChiper,Unfortunately I don't know of any software that offers PC and Android versions, so I cannot make a recommendation.

@Sabardeyn I think I did find a reader for Windows that did annotations. Can't recall it's name, it created its own 'library' without offering any library management features and it wasn't a very good reader, so I gave the elbow

There an Epub reader for OS/X that does annotations quite nicely, can't recall its name, there's a thread about it somewhere. It puts the annotations into 'proprietary' sidecar files. You need to add the sidecars to your book folders if you want calibre to 'take care' of them on renames etc. I like the approach of using sidecar files for this purpose.

FYI: Open Annotation Data Model

BTW: my prior post was in response to DrChiper's rather than Kovid's posts.

I use the first few words of the paragraph I'm bookmarking as the bookmark name, so now all I have to do is select the words, ctrl/c, ctrl/b, ctrl/v and its done

Thanks to whoever suggested the idea, and to Kovid for implementing it.

Be nice if there was a kb shortcut to get a list of current bookmarks, rather than having to click the button

Or maybe they could be displayed in a sidebar tab, with the ToC in another tab - that would be awesome - not a word I use lightly.

BR

[Sabardeyn]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

@Sabardeyn I think I did find a reader for Windows that did annotations. [...] it wasn't a very good reader, so I gave the elbow

About 18 months ago I searched and there wasn't any particularly capable PC reader supporting multiple file formats and offering cutting-edge features. Effectively, calibre's viewer is at the forefront of the PC market simply because it displays multiple formats (even if it is via an EPUB sleight-of-hand). Various own-format software (Kindle/Nook/Kobo for PC and similar) exists but why use multiple tools? Strangely, multi-format software is readily available for Android (Moon+, Mantano, and many others), but not for the PC. I've got to imagine it's either a licensing issue or a problem of too many hardware variables to make coding worthwhile.

Be nice if there was a kb shortcut to get a list of current bookmarks, rather than having to click the button
Or maybe they could be displayed in a sidebar tab, with the ToC in another tab

Oh, don't get me thinking about changes to the Viewer!

[DrChiper]

Thanks for all the comments. I guess I'm spoiled by the features on all my e-readers and hoped the current bookmark implementation in the e-book viewer could more or less function as a kind of crude annotations vehicle. Well, you can't have everything

[Sabardeyn]

DrChiper,
That's understandable, I think we all do it. Particularly as regards calibre since most features are already included but, not needing said feature, we forget it's there.

As for your comment, "Well, you can't have everything"... We could if they would finally resolve those pesky cloning bugs! It's really the "here Kovid, Kovid, Kovid..." part of the process that gets a bit tricky.

[BetterRed]

Perhaps someone could try using an Android based annotating epub viewer under one of the Android 'emulators' for Windows - Winroy, Bluestacks and Youwave are 3 that I've heard of.

- I remembered the name of the Mac program I mentioned, its Skim. However, I misremembered that it annotates EPUBS, it doesn't! It annotates PDF's only - sorry. Here's the thread where it surfaced - Annotating PDFs in OS X w/o modifying the file

BR

[cybmole]

i am pretty sure that Sony reader desktop software does annotations, just like the sony readers do, and you can open any epub on your pc within that program.
in fact, it makes itself the default handler for epub when you install it.

it can also sync annotations across ( Sony) devices- they are stored ( on PC) a database file in some obscure location.

my experience is with Sony reader for PC but I expect there's a mac version

[AnotherCat]

Originally Posted by cybmole

i am pretty sure that Sony reader desktop software does annotations...

It does, and furthermore it is quite a nice reader in my view.

The Windows Store app Freda claims to do annotations but as far as I have found it only does highlights (that as of the current version because the Freda's developers state Freda is a work in progress). But it may be worth watching for developments if one wants annotations.

While I find the Windows Store reader apps are a bit overbearing on a big screen, they are fine (and very convenient) for me on notebooks and smaller. They are also, of course, limited to users of Windows 8.x.