Kobo (ereader) Highlights importer

[Edo78]

I’m working on a proof of concept and I’m having fun with the Obsidian API.

I was thinking to create a single obsidian note for each note taken in a book (instead of the kindle plugin that put all the notes in a note for the book).

Not sure if I’m able to made myself clear (English isn’t my first language and I have a strong headache right now).

[Edo78]

The code itself is ugly as hell but it’s a working proof of concept GitHub - Edo78/obsidian-koreader-sync: Obsidian.md plugin to sync highlights/notes from koreader

Right now I still haven’t released it yet so if you want to test it you must follow the same instructions as if you want to develop a plugin.

I’m planning to refactor the code and made a first beta release in the weekend so if you aren’t eager to test it you can wait a few days.

[heiders]

Oooo I’m very eager! But since I’m not that technical and its weekend by now, I guess I’ll wait a few days more

[Edo78]

I had some free time, so I was ahead of my schedule. As soon as they approve my [PR] (Add obsidian-koreader-sync to community plugins list by Edo78 · Pull Request #738 · obsidianmd/obsidian-releases · GitHub) my plugin can be installed like any other community plugin.

BTW, I only have Linux, so I can’t test it with other operating systems (I’m pretty sure it shouldn’t have any major problems on Mac but I have no idea how it might behave on Windows).

Anyway any feedback will be welcomed

[heiders]

Perfect! I would be able to test it on Mac and Windows this weekend.

[heiders]

I took a look at the GitHub ReadMe. Will the plug-in generate a note for each highlight/note made in Koreader or a new note for each book with all associated highlights?

[Edo78]

The plugin KOReader Sync is now available

Right now it generate an obsidian note for each note in koreader so a single book can have multiple notes.

Do you prefer a single big note for each book?

[mleo2003]

Thank you very much for this. I’ve tested it with my rather large KoReader library that I use Syncthing to sync between multiple devices. Just pointed the plugin at the Sync folder, and setup the destination for the notes. Worked just as needed, and now I can read on other devices, click one button, and know the things I’ve highlighted will be captured/noted in Obsidian for later combination with other notes.

I’m fine with separate files vs one big file, since I don’t think the management of updating notes in the file is going to ever be a “nice” experience, my idea is to just link these extracted notes from other actual notes with my thoughts (and combine multiple together if I need to).

[Edo78]

An happy user is a great reward, thank you.

BTW I already found a bug. If the title of the book contains “forbidden” chars (eg. \ / : ) then Obsidian thrown an error if you click on it to create a note.

If you have any issues or suggestions you are more than welcome to report them Issues · Edo78/obsidian-koreader-sync · GitHub

[Edo78]

I released a new version with a breaking change.
All the old notes have to be removed or they will be duplicated. I’m really sorry about this but now the name of the note can be freely changed.

[jcolesy]

Hi there, I’m using KoReader on an Android phone, is this plugin compatible? Clicking the button doesn’t do anything - is this because my phone isn’t mounted as a drive?

[Edo78]

It should works … I’m not sure about the right path to have in the settings …
If your are you on linux/mac you can try:
find [path] -iname metadata.\*.lua (replace [path] with the path you use in the settings)
This way you can check if it’s right and if the system can find those files.

[heiders]

Ok this is marvelous work @Edo78! I had to adjust the path on a Mac to /Volumes/KOBOeReader and after that it worked like a charm. I love the fact that so many metadata is also captured. And I must say, I’m also very happy that I switched to KOReader again. Making notes and highlights is a much smoother proces than on the native reader .

For my workflow however, a singular big file for each book would be ideal. Maybe it’s a bit excessive, but I probably highlight something every 2 pages. I use those to make literature notes after I’ve finished the whole book, only after which I distill singular atomic notes from that big literature note.

I don’t like to make notes while reading, so I usually err on the side of too many highlights so I can still grasp the essence of the text just by rereading my highlights. So with the current setup that would mean around 150 separate notes for a 300 page book.

I would love to see an option that would result in something similar like the attached picture. I really like the fact that the chapter is captured. This would help me so much in quickly seeing the general outline of the book and my notes.

I really don’t know if this would be possible and I’m already extremely grateful for the current plugin, so sorry if I’m over-asking!

[Edo78]

I’m glad that you like my work. Don’t be afraid to ask new features, in the worst case I’m not gonna do it

This request is already an open issue All annotations in the same note · Issue #9 · Edo78/obsidian-koreader-sync · GitHub and if you want to be update (and if you have or want a github account) you can subscribe to that issue.

BTW I recently released version 0.2.0 with support for custom template so this should be fairly easy to do.

In the meantime, if you are familiar with Dataview, I have detailed few example that can help you creating a view similiar to your screenshot. Sadly it will be readonly but with a link to the original note you can quickly jump to a note to edit/remove it.

[heiders]

Ahh yes, I just noticed that I’m late to the party.

I was already trying to figure out a way using dataview, I’m getting close with this approach:

table without id koreader-sync.data.chapter AS Chapter, koreader-sync.data.highlight AS Hightlight, koreader-sync.data.text AS Note
where koreader-sync.data.title = "Flow"

But not yet ideal. I’m subscribing to the issue and will check out the custom template function. But you really are on fire with these quick updates!

[Edo78]

I don’t want to spam but if you are interested be notified about new releases of my plugin…
On github the button “Watch” → “Custom” → “Releases”

[heiders]

Thanks, done. I just added two feature requests as well to the GitHub!

[heiders]

@Edo78 Going to check your updates today, love the speed you put out!

In the meantime, since it looked like you were taken a bit by surprise that anybody would want a single note for a book. Im very curious as to how you process a book into your zettelkasten/PKM system.

I’m still struggling with the concept of literature notes from books, mainly because I have so many notes/highlights. Sometimes my literature note ends up like an extended excerpt in my own words of the whole book, which I then process into small atomic notes. But this is quite a laborious process with a lot of friction.

So I’m very interested to see how others tackle this. Could you share your general take on how you process books in obsidian?

[Edo78]

As the update are small and easy to implement I have no problem in doing a bunch of small releases.
Right now I’m still studying “How to take smart notes” so I’m really not 100% sure about how to manage them.
I’m just trying to create “atomic” notes. If an idea in a book trigger something inside me I’ll take a note but I have no other reference to the book. Then, usually a few days later, I’ll look at the note and see how to give it a better value or if it’s useless and I remove it (right now it’s a problem with the plugin because deleted note in obsidian are imported again). Then link will emerge, something in the note can ring a bell and I remember or search something to link the note to or let a broken link to something that still isn’t in obsidian.
Then exploring the graph I can see the hub of concepts that are spontaneusly emerging and than I can use those connections.

[Edo78]

I’ve just released version 0.6.0 and (to me) it’s a big update. Now the plugin is automagically detect whenever the text (and only the text itself, no title, chapter, page, highlight, etc) is changed and will update the frontmatter without any user intervention.

This is really useful if you have a dataview query to list all the notes that you still have to edit or you can create a more complex book template extracting only the text it will be always updated.

Let me know if you have any feedbacks