[GUI Plugin] Annotations

[Quoth]

Possibly because unless the paper size is A5 or A6, a PDF on an ereader makes no sense. Almost all the PDFs I have are old magasines or old text books and thus scans. I'll get an 11" approx eink if I'm ever rich. The DXG was a big disappointment.

I'll have a look at this on my Kindle keyboard and Kindle PW3 if I have time. I gave away the DXG to someone with macular degeneration, it's not as good as Kobo H2O original for PDFs, and it's too small and slow also for PDFs.
I've found if the PDF is discoloured and has a large margin it's worth importing to The Gimp as layers, setting resolution at import. Export as an animated png, process with imagemagik* to crop, set brightness, contrasts and threshold as 1 bit mono and then PDF is about 20x faster and might fit on the screen of a larger eink ereader like H2O or DXG.

[*Only change security on imagemagic to allow PDF export, not import]

[LunarPierro]

I deleted the old plugin and installed the beta, unfortunately it still doesnt recognize the pdf's and doesnt put them in the list. i dont even know what the culprit might be

[Quoth]

Do you see the PDF annotations in "my clippings.txt" which can be copied to laptop & opened without Calibre via USB?

I think the plugin only reads that, not the database as can be done on Kobo.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by LunarPierro

I deleted the old plugin and installed the beta, unfortunately it still doesnt recognize the pdf's and doesnt put them in the list. i dont even know what the culprit might be

As @FrustratedReader said, the plugin reads the "My Clippings.txt" file to get the annotations. If the annotations are not in there, they cannot be retrieved. And it also needs the book on the device to match a book in the library.

If the annotations are there, please run calibre in debug mode while fetching the annotations and post the log. Plus the My Clippings.txt file. Or PM them to me if you would prefer not to post them. I'll hopefully be able to work out what is happening.

[LunarPierro]

Ok guys, sorry for the wait. The annotations do appear in "my clippings", here is the debug log. I noticed that for all the pdf's, it will say "Title not found in books on device". I load pdf's to Kindle just like any other book, first to calibre and from there to the device

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by LunarPierro

Ok guys, sorry for the wait. The annotations do appear in "my clippings", here is the debug log. I noticed that for all the pdf's, it will say "Title not found in books on device". I load pdf's to Kindle just like any other book, first to calibre and from there to the device

To check, one of the PDFs on the device is "In the Blink of an Eye_ A Perspective on Film Editing, 2nd Edition - Walter Murch"? When you connect the device, does calibre show this book as on the device in the library? With the green tick? What is the title on the device? Does it have an author?

Can you give me the name of another PDF that has annotations in it? And a non-PDF that has annotations. I want to check that I am putting everything together correctly.

[marp68]

Hi.
Been using a Kobo Glo HD for a while now. But I have always been a bit unsure about preservation of the annotations (highlifts) I make in the books.

There are two "annotation" options in Kobo when selecting a word/sentence. To Highlight or to Add note. I've always been using only Highlight option, but they both seem to be treated as Annotations and both end up the configured Annotation column.

- If I first Export all Calibre data, will the plugin and the column with existing annotations (highlights) added also be included in the Calibre data file? And will the plugin and the column and existing annotations appear after reinstalling Calibre and importing the Calibre data file?

- If I need to do a complete factory reset of the device and then reimport all books through Calibre, will the annotations I made in the books earlier on the device and imported to Calibre through the plugin be reimported along with the books to the device?

-When I make a backup of the device database, is that something I can use to reinstall all books and annotations after a factory reset?

- How does the Annotation plugin behave when updating Calibre?

- Is it possible to print/save annotations for a specific book to pdf/word etc?

/Martin

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by marp68

Hi.
Been using a Kobo Glo HD for a while now. But I have always been a bit unsure about preservation of the annotations (highlifts) I make in the books.

There are two "annotation" options in Kobo when selecting a word/sentence. To Highlight or to Add note. I've always been using only Highlight option, but they both seem to be treated as Annotations and both end up the configured Annotation column.

There are actually three types:

• Bookmark - Created by tapping the top-right corner. Shown in the book as a dog-eared corner.
• Highlight - Select text in the book and use highlight in the popup menu. Shown as grey background around the text.
• Annotation - Select text and use "Add Note" in the popup menu. Shown as grey background around the text. In kepubs. the text is also underlined. In the Annotations list these are labelled as "Note".

Either of Bookmarks or Highlights can have a note added. They will then show in the annotations list as a "Note". And if you remove the note, it reverts to either a Bookmark or Highlight.

The plugin will fetch all three. The difference is what you see. The bookmark has just the location details. The highlight has this, plus the highlighted text. The annotation then adds the note that was entered. Each part can be styled differently.

- If I first Export all Calibre data, will the plugin and the column with existing annotations (highlights) added also be included in the Calibre data file? And will the plugin and the column and existing annotations appear after reinstalling Calibre and importing the Calibre data file?

The annotations are put into a column in the library. Once that is done, calibre will treat it as any other column. If you export the library and import it on another machine, the data in the column will be there. But, you need to install the plugin to use it on the new system. You will also need to configure the plugin to use it.

- If I need to do a complete factory reset of the device and then reimport all books through Calibre, will the annotations I made in the books earlier on the device and imported to Calibre through the plugin be reimported along with the books to the device?

No. The plugin fetches the data from the devices and stores it in column. It does not store enough information to restore it to the device. And most devices, it wouldn't be possible at all.

-When I make a backup of the device database, is that something I can use to reinstall all books and annotations after a factory reset?

If you are making a backup of the device database, it contains the annotations. If you restore the database and books correctly, the annotations will be there. This has been discussed in the Kobo forum here.

- How does the Annotation plugin behave when updating Calibre?

Like any other plugin. It doesn't care unless the version of calibre is beyond what it is recorded to support. In that case, the plugin will be disabled by calibre.

- Is it possible to print/save annotations for a specific book to pdf/word etc?

Probably, but it is not something I have even considered doing. The annotations are stored as HTML. You could copy that and paste it in word. If you want annotations from a lot of books in the library, you could probably create a catalogue in calibre with the annotations in it. I don't use this function, so I don't know if it would work.

[marp68]

Thanks for this informative response.

Originally Posted by davidfor

If you are making a backup of the device database, it contains the annotations. If you restore the database and books correctly, the annotations will be there. This has been discussed in the Kobo forum here.

Is there any information on how to restore the database and books correctly after a factory reset, so that annotations are shown.

A curious question about "not enough information to import back the Annotation column data". How come the data on the My Shelves column are imported to the device and not the Annotation column? I thought they both were Calibre configured features.

/Martin

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by marp68

Is there any information on how to restore the database and books correctly after a factory reset, so that annotations are shown.

It basically means you need to put the books back in exactly the same place as they were before and then restore the database. But, there is more discussion in the Kobo forum if you want to search. And that is the appropriate place for the discussion.

A curious question about "not enough information to import back the Annotation column data". How come the data on the My Shelves column are imported to the device and not the Annotation column? I thought they both were Calibre configured features.

Because I can easily construct the data needed to put a book into a collection. It is simple. For annotations, there is a lot more data needed and this is not stored as part of the annotations column.

[marp68]

Originally Posted by davidfor

It basically means you need to put the books back in exactly the same place as they were before and then restore the database. But, there is more discussion in the Kobo forum if you want to search. And that is the appropriate place for the discussion.

Okej, thanks. Will do.

[marp68]

When doing a search in the Kobo forum, I now saw that I had already asked about this a few years ago. Bad memory indeed...

[LunarPierro]

Originally Posted by davidfor

To check, one of the PDFs on the device is "In the Blink of an Eye_ A Perspective on Film Editing, 2nd Edition - Walter Murch"? When you connect the device, does calibre show this book as on the device in the library? With the green tick? What is the title on the device? Does it have an author?

Can you give me the name of another PDF that has annotations in it? And a non-PDF that has annotations. I want to check that I am putting everything together correctly.

Yes, all of the pdfs have a green check mark to them in Calibre, the title on the device is exactly what you said. The author is there.
Another pdf with annotations would be "Tete a Tete - Henri Cartier-Bresson", titles on the device and in file explorer on PC match, a non pdf would be "Watership Down". For pdfs calibre adds the author name in the title.

I noticed that for all non pdfs, in the clippings.txt file it will spell out annotations title like this "Watership Down (Adams, Richard)" with an author name in parenthesis, while in the file name and title on device it won't have author name. And for pdfs its like this "Tete a Tete - Henri Cartier-Bresson", author after a hyphen, since calibre adds author name in pdf file names, if there is no author in metadata it will be Uknown.

[zeusosphere]

Is there any way to add a default book for the annotations that couldn't be matched to books in the library (instead of just putting them in the book that happens to be selected at the time)? And also a way to get the plugin to just add them all to that book when the import process gets there (or alternatively, skip all unmatched entries) instead of asking again for every unmatched book?

[davidfor]

I have just released version 1.10.0 of the plugin. I should have done this before, but kept forgetting. The release of calibre 4.0 has triggered this release a it has a change that breaks this plugin. I'll be fixing this soon, but am making this release as the last version to support calibre 3.x and earlier.

The changes in the plugin are:

• Change: Add PDF as supported format for Kindle devices.
• Fix Kobo: Not getting annotations for kepubs if filename contains spaces.
• Internal Change: Use rowfactory and names in database.
• Fix: Some issues with merging with existing annotations.

All of these changes are in the beta releases.

As usual, calibre will announce the update in the next hour or so. And if there are any problems, please report them here.