Highlighting non Kobo books

[PF4Mobile]

Hi everybody

Does anybody know if it is possible to highlight on non Kobo books?
If it is could anybody please tell me what format should they be?

Have you heard anything about this being planed to be fixed?

Thanks
PF

[Psyke]

KEPUB books are the only ones that can use advanced features to date, such as highlighting, dictionary, and as Taming found out, custom fonts. While I'm sure there are always thoughts about bringing them to non-KEPUB books, nobody knows for sure if those plans will see the light of day with current kobo ereaders.

[PeterT]

Well.. take a look at this thread --> https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=140044

[gpw11]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Well.. take a look at this thread --> https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=140044

Amazing. Although I did notice two strange things as well:

-While the standard font size seemed locked, chapter headers would switch to a smaller or larger font.

-I lost a complete chapter from one book while making the switch. Possibly more.

[Psyke]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Well.. take a look at this thread --> https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=140044

I had actually seen that after I responded and had tried it out, only to have it fail (book wasn't detected); I then noticed I renamed the book *.epub.kepub instead of *.kepub.epub (doh!), and worked like a charm. amazing.

I'm trying this trick with the wifi to see if it's something new to the touch or if it's something that's been there all along, which would have given dictionary support if it had been shared. Odd that the book covers don't show up though...


- update: yes, works with the wifi kobo too, although the first time I tried to open the book it turned off the kobo? tried it the second time and it worked fine and dictionary support for the sideloaded book was there. the fonts trick does not work however with the wifi.

[taming]

Hummm, so I am guessing that the update we are now anticipating will automate that process, so that sideloaded books do the extension thing magically rather than manually.

[mdclements]

I would strongly discourage you from renaming your ePubs. Kepub-only functionality will most likely not work on your renamed sideloaded books.

[PeterT]

lol

[Psyke]

Originally Posted by mdclements

I would strongly discourage you from renaming your ePubs. Kepub-only functionality will most likely not work on your renamed sideloaded books.

oh sure, tell us this after you opened the can of worms

Seriously though, it does seem to work quite well; any word on if this type of functionality will be coming officially at one point?

[george.talusan]

The official word is that we're working on it.

[PeterT]

Any chance we can get the release notes from that last firmware upgrade ?

[PF4Mobile]

HI guys

Thanks a lot, it worked but I believe below you are wrong again :-))

the final extension should be *.kepub.epub

1) Is there any way to make Calibre change that automatically?

Now another question: after using the above trick on two books one English epub downloaded from internet and another one obtain by using Calibre to convert a doc file to a epub file, I noticed that highlighting and saving the highlights is slower with the file obtained via Calibre.

Any idea why that is happening?

2)Is there any way to export the highlights to your desktop?

[PF4Mobile]

Originally Posted by PF4Mobile

2)Is there any way to export the highlights to your desktop?

This is solved, the highlights are all stored in KoboReader.sqlite

To see them follow these steps:

1. connect your device via USB
2. Open My computer and there you should see the internal memory of your device as Removable drive
3. Browse that drive and loko for the folder named "kobo"
4. Open that folder and copy the KoboReader.sqlite file to your local disk
5 Download SQLite Browser from http://sourceforge.net/projects/sqlitebrowser/, unzip the file and run the .exe
6. Open the KoboReader.sqlite file using this utility

I am now exploring the option to export these to an Excel file
with SQLLite Data Wizard (free for 30 days) the link to it can be found here
http://www.sqlite.org/cvstrac/wiki?p=ConverterTools

There are a couple of other tools which can probably be used ... any other suggestion will be much appreciated

[FJames]

I can understand why reliable use of the advanced features might require specific formatting of the epub file, and given the wide range of variation used by different sources, the Kobo developers would currently caution against trying to use those features on any old epub. The results might well be hit and miss, and the misses might damage your database. But obviously this is the type of problem which is easily solved with more careful programming to detect and handle format variations, so let's wait and see if the Kobo team has what it takes.

[darkhatreader]

Originally Posted by FJames

I can understand why reliable use of the advanced features might require specific formatting of the epub file, and given the wide range of variation used by different sources, the Kobo developers would currently caution against trying to use those features on any old epub. The results might well be hit and miss, and the misses might damage your database. But obviously this is the type of problem which is easily solved with more careful programming to detect and handle format variations, so let's wait and see if the Kobo team has what it takes.

Or... they could open up the kepub format (or release a DRM-free spec) for converter software like Calibre to use.