Touch Mark books as Finished

[Gallips]

Hi there,

I've bought my Kobo Touch (N905) a few months back and sometimes I have to do a Factory reset (not sure why, the ereader just goes nuts).

I use epubs and kepubs and, when I do the factory Reset, they disappear. This shouldn't be a problem, since I use Calibre, for the side-books, and Kobobooks to manage them.

The thing is, I grew to enjoy (a lot) the reading stats, thus me using the koboTouch Extended to transform the epubs into kepubs, and when I do a factory Reset the damn books and stats are gone and the books are marked as "To Read".

My question is: is there a fastest way to mark the side-books as read, in order for them to appear on the reading stats without having to open one by one?

Thanks in advanced.
Misa

[davidfor]

Unfortunately no. My Kobo Utilities plugin has a way to mark the books as read from calibre. Or store the reading status and restore it later. Finishing a book on the device is different from marking it as read. It updates some other data which I haven't decoded yet.

[Gallips]

Too bad =/

Thanks for the reply =D

[_pietro]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Unfortunately no. My Kobo Utilities plugin has a way to mark the books as read from calibre. Or store the reading status and restore it later. Finishing a book on the device is different from marking it as read. It updates some other data which I haven't decoded yet.

i was curious so i went into the database... i think, you could check these fields

table "contents"

"ContentType=6" to get books record
"__PercentageRead", the name says all
"ReadStatus" can be 0=new/not read, 1=reading, 2=completed

the status "completed" that we read is given by "ReadStatus=2"+"__PercentageRead=0"

"ReadStatus=1"+"__PercentageRead=100" = we are in the last page (eventually)

take care that these values are updated by the software when the kobo shout down. so, if you update the values and then you shout down the device nothing changes...so the switch off is needed before using any plugin


hope it helps. if you did already know... it was an exercise for me

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by _pietro

i was curious so i went into the database... i think, you could check these fields

table "contents"

"ContentType=6" to get books record
"__PercentageRead", the name says all
"ReadStatus" can be 0=new/not read, 1=reading, 2=completed

the status "completed" that we read is given by "ReadStatus=2"+"__PercentageRead=0"

"ReadStatus=1"+"__PercentageRead=100" = we are in the last page (eventually)

take care that these values are updated by the software when the kobo shout down. so, if you update the values and then you shout down the device nothing changes...so the switch off is needed before using any plugin


hope it helps. if you did already know... it was an exercise for me

Your detective work is pretty much correct. The __PercentageRead is ignored when the ReadStatus is either 0 or 2. An annoying thing is that when finishing the book, the device does not set __PercentageRead to 100. It tends to be 99 if you finish by paging past the end end of the book.

The above columns plus two others are what the store/restore look at. But, the reading stats uses other information.

The percentage of books read is from the content table. It is the count of books marked as read (ContentType=6 and ReadStatus=2) divided by the count of books in the library (ContentType=6 and other conditions to exclude previews and recommendations).

The count of books finished comes from the Event table. It is the count of books with EventType=5. But, it also looks at the ExtraData and CheckSum columns. Simply adding a row for a book with EventType=5 is not enough for it to be counted. The data in these other columns has to be valid. ExtraData is a BLOB and is a pain to decode. It's probably a serialized class, but I don't have access to the class. And what the CheckSum is calculated on, I don't know. It could just be ExtraData, or it could be the rest of the row. I have a couple of thoughts for experiments that I will try, but I don't hold out much hope of success.

[Gallips]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Your detective work is pretty much correct. The __PercentageRead is ignored when the ReadStatus is either 0 or 2. An annoying thing is that when finishing the book, the device does not set __PercentageRead to 100. It tends to be 99 if you finish by paging past the end end of the book.

The above columns plus two others are what the store/restore look at. But, the reading stats uses other information.

The percentage of books read is from the content table. It is the count of books marked as read (ContentType=6 and ReadStatus=2) divided by the count of books in the library (ContentType=6 and other conditions to exclude previews and recommendations).

The count of books finished comes from the Event table. It is the count of books with EventType=5. But, it also looks at the ExtraData and CheckSum columns. Simply adding a row for a book with EventType=5 is not enough for it to be counted. The data in these other columns has to be valid. ExtraData is a BLOB and is a pain to decode. It's probably a serialized class, but I don't have access to the class. And what the CheckSum is calculated on, I don't know. It could just be ExtraData, or it could be the rest of the row. I have a couple of thoughts for experiments that I will try, but I don't hold out much hope of success.

Bummer!!

My Touch went nuts again.... here I go to mark my 200 read books as finished!

[MartyTX]

The Nook Simple Touch is indeed "simple" and does not provide utilities to keep track of books read.

So, I use calibre and the calibre catalog to keep track of books I've finished:

1. Create a "Read" custom column in calibre.
2. Remember to update the column after you have completed a book. This is manual, not automatic.
3. Create a calibre epub catalog with the option of showing a "prefix" (a tick-mark) for books that have been read.

When you export the catalog to your Kobo, you can easily see which books you've read.

This method does not address "percentage read", but it is bullet proof. The "Read" status is maintained in calibre even if your Kobo "goes nuts".

Marty

[Gallips]

Originally Posted by MartyTX

The Nook Simple Touch is indeed "simple" and does not provide utilities to keep track of books read.

So, I use calibre and the calibre catalog to keep track of books I've finished:

1. Create a "Read" custom column in calibre.
2. Remember to update the column after you have completed a book. This is manual, not automatic.
3. Create a calibre epub catalog with the option of showing a "prefix" (a tick-mark) for books that have been read.

When you export the catalog to your Kobo, you can easily see which books you've read.

This method does not address "percentage read", but it is bullet proof. The "Read" status is maintained in calibre even if your Kobo "goes nuts".

Marty

That's actually a good tip. I'll definitely do that.
Although I do like to have those library statistic. I'm that of a freak

Thanks for the tip.