[GUI Plugin] Annotations

[arooni]

1) Let's say I want to read a book on both my paperwhite and my fire tablet. Will my progress AND my highlights be synchronized across devices?

2) As an aside; where do you folks store all your book notes? As I start to read more, I like taking notes/highlighting passages but I don't want it just go away forever. I find myself reading more sideloaded books so the Amazon highlights feature isn't really an option. Do you simply store them in calibre?

3) I think I screwed up by importing a bunch of book notes from different books. Can I 'redo' this? I have created an annotations column so not sure how to blow away the data there and resync the annotations?

4) After sucking up the annotations from the myclippings file, do they still stay there forever in that file?

Best,
arooni

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by arooni

1) Let's say I want to read a book on both my paperwhite and my fire tablet. Will my progress AND my highlights be synchronized across devices?

Sorry, no idea. And that's a question for the Kindle forum.

2) As an aside; where do you folks store all your book notes? As I start to read more, I like taking notes/highlighting passages but I don't want it just go away forever. I find myself reading more sideloaded books so the Amazon highlights feature isn't really an option. Do you simply store them in calibre?

Well, that is the purpose of this plugin - copy the annotations from the device to calibre. For me, most annotations are temporary. I mark problems in the book for fixing, or something I want to look up later. For others, the problem is getting them off the device somehow, what they do afterwards, I don't know. The plugin is designed to merge the annotations for a book over time and from different devices. So, it is a way to store the long-term.

There are also other solutions for fetching the annotations for different devices. I know about the other methods for Kobo devices, but have no knowledge about any other device.

3) I think I screwed up by importing a bunch of book notes from different books. Can I 'redo' this? I have created an annotations column so not sure how to blow away the data there and resync the annotations?

Just clear the column you used and do the import again.

4) After sucking up the annotations from the myclippings file, do they still stay there forever in that file?

The plugin reads the file but doesn't change it.

[BeckyEbook]

Unnecessary bracket after the book title in the Preview window.

File: annotated_books.py

self.label.setText("<b>" + _("{0} annotations &middot; {1})").format(book_mi.reader_app, book_mi.title) + "</b>")

Remove red bracket.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by BeckyEbook

Unnecessary bracket after the book title in the Preview window.

File: annotated_books.py

self.label.setText("<b>" + _("{0} annotations &middot; {1})").format(book_mi.reader_app, book_mi.title) + "</b>")

Remove red bracket.

Thank.

And my apologies to everyone. I was hit with some work stuff this week and just haven't felt like looking at anything. Hopefully it will be back to more normal this week.

[dsestero]

Thank you David, good to hear from you.
ciao

[please55]

Tried importing some annotations today but metadata was incorrect. It assigned the wrong chapter headings to highlights. Said highlight was from chapter 8 when in fact it was from chapter 17.

Is there a way to further modify format and what's included in the annotations? For example, if I didn't want chapter headings? Or wanted a line break between elements (right now I'm resorting to margins)?

//What is the clippings.txt some people refer to in previous posts on this thread? Is that related functionality to this plugin or separate?

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by please55

Tried importing some annotations today but metadata was incorrect. It assigned the wrong chapter headings to highlights. Said highlight was from chapter 8 when in fact it was from chapter 17.

What device are you retrieving the annotations from?

Is there a way to further modify format and what's included in the annotations? For example, if I didn't want chapter headings? Or wanted a line break between elements (right now I'm resorting to margins)?

In the plugin configuration, there is an editor for changing the style of the annotations. I can't remember if you can exclude parts or not.

//What is the clippings.txt some people refer to in previous posts on this thread? Is that related functionality to this plugin or separate?

That is where the annotations are read from for a Kindle device. Other devices use different places.

[please55]

Thank you for your time David

Originally Posted by davidfor

What device are you retrieving the annotations from?

Running the latest version of Calibre and connecting to a Kobo Mini 3.4.1

In the plugin configuration, there is an editor for changing the style of the annotations. I can't remember if you can exclude parts or not.

It appears that from the config ui that you can only do some slight css changes to predetermined parts.

For example for the Timestamp Element, the default css is
font-size:80%;
font-weight:bold;
margin:0;

But I can't seem to actually delete that element or add anything else to the list. Was wondering if any other alternative was around.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by please55

Thank you for your time David

Running the latest version of Calibre and connecting to a Kobo Mini 3.4.1

If you the annotations were for an epub, the wrong chapter titles are probably related to a very long standing bug in the firmware. If you make annotations in an epub, if you close and reopen the book, the chapter title and percentage into the book are changed. The percentage is always changed to zero and the chapter is changed to whatever chapter the book reopens to.

There is a workaround for this problem. In the "Digital Editions" directory on the device, there is a folder called "Annotations". If you delete this and create a file of the same name, it prevents this problem without affecting the annotations in any bad way. But, I'll have to look at the plugin again as it is possible to get the correct chapter, but probably not the correct percentage.

It appears that from the config ui that you can only do some slight css changes to predetermined parts.

For example for the Timestamp Element, the default css is
font-size:80%;
font-weight:bold;
margin:0;

But I can't seem to actually delete that element or add anything else to the list. Was wondering if any other alternative was around.

The style changes are fairly basic and are mainly about colour. I rarely play with them, so I never remember what can and can't be done. You could try hiding them with "display:none", but it will probably hide to much.

[dsestero]

Hi,

I would like to ask if it would be possible to make a couple of improvements to the plugin.

1. At this time the plugin retrieve the annotations and inserts, and merges them if needed, into the specified field of the Calibre Library. Having more than one Kindle device, this behaviour reflects what is present in the MyClippings.txt file on the connected device. This is good because it is possible to have clean annotations in the library by having a clean MyClippings.txt file (in Kindle case) on the device.
It happens to me that me or another family member read the same book on different a device and take annotations.
At this time if a book which annotations were previously fetched in the Calibre field is fetched for the annotations taken from a second device then the annotations that are not present on the second, connected, device get deleted from the library.
I would like to ask if it is possible to add a flag to choose from this original behaviour to one where they get merged instead.

2. Now the plugin retrieve from the device three different types of annotation: highlightings, notes and bookmarks. The latter results in an empty annotation. They sometimes could be useful, howewer, to keep track in the Calibre library of specific positions of the book.
What I would like to ask is if it would be possible to add three checkboxes to have the plugin retrieve only the selected annotation types.

Thanks,
Dario

[BlackPinguin]

This is a fantastic plugin!
I have one problem though:

A few months ago I made like 400 notes in a side-loaded book. Then I deleted that book accidentally, so I transferred it with Calibre again to my Kindle.

Now I've got the following situation:
On my Kindle Paperwhite I've got the book with no notes. However, the notes do show up in Calibre with this Annotations plugin.

Is there any way to make the notes show up on my Kindle again?

[davidfor]

Sorry, no. The plugin doesn't pull enough details from the devices to restore the annotations. In the case of the Kindles, the place it gets them from, the My Clippings.txt file doesn't really have the details.

[BlackPinguin]

Thank you for your fast answer, davidfor.
I feared that this would be the case.

When there are notes in a book on the Kindle, how do the notes and highlights get saved then and where?

[davidfor]

The plugin reads annotations from the "My Clippings.txt" file on the Kindle devices. I when annotations are made on a Kindle, they are stored elsewhere for re-use when reading the book and a copy added to the "My Clippings.txt" file. But, I don't know anything about the other storage except that it is not practical to get the annotations from it.

[BlackPinguin]

Thanks for another helpful answer, davidfor.
That means I probably ought to burry that idea.