Kindle Scribe - Sideloading books with USB?

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by talaivan

All right, I sent a pdf of a 100 pages or so to my Scribe with send-to-kindle. I could annotate it -- no problem, and the pen works well on the screen. Then I sent it from the Scribe it to my email, and it appeared. When I clicked the file to "download" it, it appeared in Safari and I had to export it as a pdf from Safari. I couldn't see any way to download it directly as a pdf, though the pdf produced by Safari was satisfactory. But why so many steps? Send, wait for it to appear, annotate, email it to yourself, save as pdf. Am I missing something?

No, I think that's right.

It's much better than including an email attachment which might fail due to attachment size limits or mailbox policy, not to mention chewing up mailbox storage (local and or cloud). And if they offer option to send SMS instead, it's going to work the same with that.

Keep in mind it's designed to let you share the link with other mail addresses, so you want it to just work and not clutter up their inboxes with attachments.

But in real world this is going to look suspicious and there will be some question that it is really you sending it and that it's okay to click the fancy link, particularly since you cannot even say 'it is me! really!' along with the link.

For that reason alone I'd like SMS option, then I can forward without them questioning identity so much, use Contacts groups instead of having to type a bunch of email addresses on Scribe.

I hope very much this is just another placeholder for better things to come.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by jhowell

Kindle Create is a tool that Amazon makes available for publishers. You double click Create New, select Print Replica format, import your PDF file, and then Export as a KPF file.

To convert the KPF open a Command Prompt window (Windows), switch to the folder where the file was saved and run:

calibre-debug -r "KFX Output" -- "your-file-name.kpf"

That will produce your-file-name.kfx which can be sideloaded to a Kindle device or app.

Not having as Scribe I can't actually test how the results will work. If someone tries it let us know.



You can sideload them, but they work poorly at present. For example you cannot select text within the document.

I don't have a Scribe yet either, but I did test a 36mb 1000+ pages PDF. The result of the print replica KFX is lacking when I sideload this onto my Oasis. Same symptoms as I assume are on the Scribe - no TOC, no selectable, searchable, highlightable, noteable text. No hyperlinks, no cover. The ONLY benefit over the PDF viewer is the option to "crop margins." But the Oasis crashes every 10 or 15 pages.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

I don't have a Scribe yet either, but I did test a 36mb 1000+ pages PDF. The result of the print replica KFX is lacking when I sideload this onto my Oasis. Same symptoms as I assume are on the Scribe - no TOC, no selectable, searchable, highlightable, noteable text. No hyperlinks, no cover. The ONLY benefit over the PDF viewer is the option to "crop margins." But the Oasis crashes every 10 or 15 pages.

I'm surprised it works at all and what possessed you to torture your Oasis like that?

That's very interesting. So I would infer that it's in the works to support. And smaller Kindles will need some small screen accommodations, as the PDF support does. Does the 36MB PDF even open on Oasis?

Note Scribe has higher firmware number than Oasis.

There is a TOC on Scribe, just a minimal one.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by tomsem

I'm surprised it works at all and what possessed you to torture your Oasis like that?

That's very interesting. So I would infer that it's in the works to support. And smaller Kindles will need some small screen accommodations, as the PDF support does. Does the 36MB PDF even open on Oasis?

Note Scribe has higher firmware number than Oasis.

There is a TOC on Scribe, just a minimal one.

Minimal TOC as in (Beginning, Page or Location, Cover, End) I see as well on my Oasis.

The PDF file never hiccups, crashes, or shows weird behavior. It just so happens that it is the manual (for my camera) I am currently reading. Notes work, highlights work, search works, TOC works. The size of the text is readable in portrait mode (a tiny little bit smaller than size 1 in ebooks).

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Yes, azw is usually encrypted mobi (KF7) and azw3 is KF8.

Let's not start this again. Mobi is not called KF7 by Amazon.

[talaivan]

Originally Posted by tomsem

No, I think that's right.
Keep in mind it's designed to let you share the link with other mail addresses, so you want it to just work and not clutter up their inboxes with attachments.

Another thing: the pdf one finally gets is a "flat" pdf in which anything written on the pdf on the Scribe is not editable, and also there is no way to see which pages were bookmarked after downloading. I doubt this will be changed, but one way to save the bookmarks might be to make them chapter headings as PDF Expert does. This may not be possible for Amazon to implement, given the rather contorted process of downloading.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by talaivan

Another thing: the pdf one finally gets is a "flat" pdf in which anything written on the pdf on the Scribe is not editable, and also there is no way to see which pages were bookmarked after downloading. I doubt this will be changed, but one way to save the bookmarks might be to make them chapter headings as PDF Expert does. This may not be possible for Amazon to implement, given the rather contorted process of downloading.

To edit, you need to show Writing toolbar and select Eraser icon. Then erase. (with Premium pen you can flip the pen over and erase without putting it into erase mode)

I assume you are referring to PDF bookmarks created before the PDF is ingested. Yes, it would be nice if they represented those as Kindle bookmarks, and used the PDF bookmark label instead of 'Page 1', 'Page 2' etc. It would at least let you create a sort of TOC that way for quicker navigation. And when they export, they can add any bookmarks created on Scribe as bookmarks to the PDF.

And I assume they are not migrating any PDF annotations at this point, since Scribe has no comparable features to map them to.

They cannot be unaware that they are not migrating these things. In meantime I sent a little note about importing the bookmarks to Feedback FWIW.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Let's not start this again. Mobi is not called KF7 by Amazon.

And amazon does not use PW3 to refer to a PW3 and amazon does not participate on mobileread. People will continue to use KF7 to refer to mobi7 whether you like it or not. Get used to it.

You've stated your opinion on this dozens of times. Everyone knows. Please stop.

[bonzi]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Unlike Elipsa there is no handwriting conversion.y.

There is now (5.16.3, IIRC), but only when one mails the notes. Still much clumsier than on dedicated "eInk notebooks", which Scribe is actually not, or at least not primarily.

[bonzi]

Originally Posted by mg10

I tried to send a file in azw3 to be converted to kfx and it returned the error of not supported format. After December 2022 is not possible to send any of both format by email, as describes the article.

MOBI was supported until very recently by older versions of SendToKindle for PC. Version 1.1.1.255 supports only EPUB, but several days ago, for a day or so, both STK and e-mailing reverted to MOBI. Now it works again as documented.

Weird.