Sync reading position (current page) from reader to calibre?

[gingerbeardman]

Is it possible to sync reading position (current page) for each book from reader to calibre (and back)?

[davidfor]

Depends on what you want to do. If you want to backup the positions and restore them later, my Kobo Utilities plugin can do it for the Kobo ereaders. But, if you want to sync the position so you can open the book in the calibre viewer and then send it back to the device later, then no.

Theoretically it is possible, at least for epubs and Kobo and probably Sony's. I have done it manually a couple of times to prove this. I didn't pursue this as the interface to the view didn't exist, or wasn't usable for this (don't remember now) and Kovid was promising an update to the view after the update to server. I don't know if he has started this.

Also, I'm not as convinced as the usefulness now. As you need to connect the device to sync the positions, I'm not sure I'd bother using it over just searching for the chapter and text in the chapter.

[gingerbeardman]

Yes, you're right about having to sync and probably never bothering to do so.

I'm trying to keep two Sony readers in sync here, so I'll have a go at a little plugin.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by gingerbeardman

Yes, you're right about having to sync and probably never bothering to do so.

I'm trying to keep two Sony readers in sync here, so I'll have a go at a little plugin.

If you want to sync between similar devices, it's a lot easier, and something my Kobo Utilities plugin can do. Someone did start porting this to the Sony, but I haven't heard from him for a while. And I remember looking at the Sony database, and it wouldn't have been to hard to do.

[gingerbeardman]

Yes, my initial look seems to indicate it shouldn't be too difficult. Need to see if I can convert to calibre reader bookmark as a middleman.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by gingerbeardman

Yes, my initial look seems to indicate it shouldn't be too difficult. Need to see if I can convert to calibre reader bookmark as a middleman.

My take in the Kobo Utilities plugin was simply to store the bookmark entry from the database on the device. I did strip some parts, but the bits I am storing is basically the location reference that the Adobe RMSDK uses. I think I only needed to strip about three more characters to get have something that could be used on the Sony devices.

To get to the calibre reader bookmark was also fairly simple. I think for the first two levels of the reference it used file numbers instead of names. It's two long since I looked at this, so I don't remember. There was some discussion about it. It might be in the Kobo Utilities plugin thread, but it might have been a separate thread somewhere here.

[gingerbeardman]

Originally Posted by davidfor

My take in the Kobo Utilities plugin was simply to store the bookmark entry from the database on the device. I did strip some parts, but the bits I am storing is basically the location reference that the Adobe RMSDK uses. I think I only needed to strip about three more characters to get have something that could be used on the Sony devices.

To get to the calibre reader bookmark was also fairly simple. I think for the first two levels of the reference it used file numbers instead of names. It's two long since I looked at this, so I don't remember. There was some discussion about it. It might be in the Kobo Utilities plugin thread, but it might have been a separate thread somewhere here.

I'll take a look, thanks!

I'm currently writing a little font tool to normalise the size of custom fonts I've loaded onto my reader. So there is a lot less variation in type size when switching between fonts. Spits out CSS so might be useful for other readers?