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Old 03-27-2023, 01:19 AM   #1
komali_2
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Handwritten annotations for epub files: collecting info

I've been googling for the last week or so to see if anyone has solved the problem of annotation epubs with a stylus for devices that support it. My goal was to find some app, any app, I could run on Android for Android tablet devices with styluses. As you can guess, that failed, so now my goal is to evaluate whether this is something I have the capacity to program up.

First, I know it's possible: the Boox tablet e-reader app can do it, I went and bought one and tried all sorts of epubs. Works really well too, actually, without too much weirdness on reflow if you change fonts or margins or whatever.

However, Boox doesn't offer their app on any android stores, and I haven't found an APK. Obviously also they aren't open sourcing it any time soon.

So I need to do a proper evaluation. I thought I'd ask here in addition to my googling I'm doing:

1. Does an Android app already exist that allows epub handwritten annotation, and I just failed to find it?

2. Has anyone else tried tackling this, or is in the process of doing so? If so, who, and for what app? Can I help?

3. If you tried and failed, what led to you giving up in the end?

4. In general what kind of implementation strategy should I try? I'm learning about epub format and how apps display things like highlights, I'm hoping the highlight implementation is some kind of UI layer I can draw arbitrary svg style curves on or something, and they have a coordinate system that I can anchor to document locations (in a thread somewhere I can't find right now, someone was speculating this is what Boox does)

5. What open source ebook app should I build this on top of, if any? Reinventing the wheel sounds stupid and pointless so hopefully I can adopt one. So far leaning towards Librera.

These are the questions I'm researching to answer, but any advice is greatly appreciated. Hopefully this is something I'm capable of doing and then we can just have this feature some minority of us have always wanted and that'll be that!
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Old 03-27-2023, 03:08 PM   #2
Quoth
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I do a huge amount of annotation and it's worthless unless it's computer readable text. So I use the touch keyboard on the Sage with epubs as the handwriting annotations in ebooks & pdfs are only images. Only the Advanced Notebook converts handwriting to text (also sketching to maths, shapes and checkboxes).
I only do simple freehand markup on PDFs for POD as the content is proofed on the epub. I might scribble notes on a PDF manual, which is added as some sort of image layer as you copy back entire PDF.

The iOS based iPad can have the similar Nebo App, and again only handwriting to text in the Nebo app, otherwise using touch keyboard.

The Kobo Sage & Kobo Elipsa do sort of support a BT keyboard. BT keyboards work better with Android and iOS as the Kobo may disconnect while you read a page.

Only a very few Android tablets support a true digitizing stylus. The Kindle Scribe and reMarkable have no native conversion of handwriting.
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Old 03-28-2023, 12:10 AM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Quoth View Post
I do a huge amount of annotation and it's worthless unless it's computer readable text. So I use the touch keyboard on the Sage with epubs as the handwriting annotations in ebooks & pdfs are only images. Only the Advanced Notebook converts handwriting to text (also sketching to maths, shapes and checkboxes).
I only do simple freehand markup on PDFs for POD as the content is proofed on the epub. I might scribble notes on a PDF manual, which is added as some sort of image layer as you copy back entire PDF.

The iOS based iPad can have the similar Nebo App, and again only handwriting to text in the Nebo app, otherwise using touch keyboard.

The Kobo Sage & Kobo Elipsa do sort of support a BT keyboard. BT keyboards work better with Android and iOS as the Kobo may disconnect while you read a page.

Only a very few Android tablets support a true digitizing stylus. The Kindle Scribe and reMarkable have no native conversion of handwriting.

Right, OCR / handwriting conversion is a whole different issue. You don't get that for epub notes in boox, for example.

There's still plenty of people that want this usecase. For those of us that liked taking pencil notes in hardcopy books, and then would transcribe those notes into other systems, being able to do the same in epubs would be nice to have. I'm already doing the same anyway for annotation notes in epubs, because they're all over the place and usually super brief anyway. Furthermore, writing by hand improves recollection, creativity, etc.
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Old 03-28-2023, 08:43 AM   #4
Quoth
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Right, OCR / handwriting conversion is a whole different issue. You don't get that for epub notes in boox, for example.
I don't think Nebo (Kobo, Android, Mac, Windows, iOS) uses OCR.

Quote:
Originally Posted by komali_2 View Post
There's still plenty of people that want this usecase. For those of us that liked taking pencil notes in hardcopy books, and then would transcribe those notes into other systems (2), being able to do the same in epubs would be nice to have (1). I'm already doing the same anyway for annotation notes in epubs, because they're all over the place and usually super brief anyway. Furthermore, writing by hand improves recollection, creativity, etc(3).
1) The Kobo Sage & Elipsa allow Stylus for handwritten notes in epub and PDF, there is just no conversion.
The Libra 2 seemingly could do it (but doesn't) as the digitizer is present and works with Kobo/MS compatible Pen in Sketchpad.

2) Nebo conversion (Kobo Advanced Notepad) beats my own, my daughter and son's interpretation of handwriting the next day for conversion/transcription to text. Don't knock it till you tried it on up to date FW. But sadly it's not available for epub or pdf annotation, though the Pen does work for handwritten notes

3) If you convert handwriting, you still did it and typing may work as well or better than handwriting for recollection. But I like the Advanced Notebook because writing a page is faster with the pen than touch keyboard. Annotations are fine typed as they are a big highlight and only a few words.

I used handwriting and then later transcription from about 1980 to 1995. 1995 to 2000 was a mixture, then the laptop keyboard was good and I only typed other than short notes.
When I got Jota on an smartphone with a 4.3″ Android 5 I almost stopped handwriting, but still did some and bought notebooks.

Then I got the Elipsa. Two weeks later I bought the Sage as a far better size (8″) for epubs and writing scraps of stories in the Advanced Notebook. Since then I only have the very occasional one word or part number or password temporarily on a Post-It note.

I stopped printing paper proofs and other text when I got my first 300 dpi ereader; I "print" to ebook. I even copy/paste webpages to LO Writer, edit in odt, extra SaveAs in docx and conversion to azw3 originally, then epub when I got an original Kobo H20.

I had an Oasis gen 2 and a reMarkable till recently which is why I didn't buy a Kindle Scribe. Going from 227 dpi to 300dpi and having no local control of annotation, broken series and broken collections and poorer support from Calibre and annotations seemed a bad idea.

I still have the Amazon Kindles: PW3, KK3 and DXG for testing mobi & azw3 & KFX and Amazon ebook purchases.

Last edited by Quoth; 03-28-2023 at 08:48 AM.
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