[GUI Plugin] Kobo Utilities

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Frankly I would have been far more likely to
A) ensure all books were loaded on the new device
B) backed up reading location on old device via kobo utilities
C) restored reading location to new device via Kobo utilities

Can't do that yet. Calibre doesn't recognize the H2O until Friday :-)

Still, it worked.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by mbovenka

To answer my own question: yup, that works. Copy over the books, the config file, the fonts and the database, and the new H2O behaved like a clone of my old HD.

The main concern I have with that is the contents of the user table in the database. From memory, there is something in it that seems to be unique to the device and user. That might cause problems if you sync to the Kobo server, but it shouldn't be a problem for sideloaded books.

ADE authorisation is also device dependent. If you copied ADE related directories, that could be a problem when you use ADE to add a book.

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by davidfor

The main concern I have with that is the contents of the user table in the database. From memory, there is something in it that seems to be unique to the device and user. That might cause problems if you sync to the Kobo server, but it shouldn't be a problem for sideloaded books.

ADE authorisation is also device dependent. If you copied ADE related directories, that could be a problem when you use ADE to add a book.

I'll try to sync to Kobo this evening and see what happens. In practice I only sideload books, so it's not *that* big a deal anyway. I didn't copy any ADE stuff (and don't use ADE anyway), so I should be OK there.

Thanks for the info.

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by davidfor

The main concern I have with that is the contents of the user table in the database. From memory, there is something in it that seems to be unique to the device and user. That might cause problems if you sync to the Kobo server, but it shouldn't be a problem for sideloaded books.

I just synced; it redownloaded my Kobo books and dictionaries, but that seems to have been it. No other issues that I see offhand.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by mbovenka

I'll try to sync to Kobo this evening and see what happens. In practice I only sideload books, so it's not *that* big a deal anyway. I didn't copy any ADE stuff (and don't use ADE anyway), so I should be OK there.

Thanks for the info.

You do use ADE if you read any ePub eBooks. ADE is what is the underlying renderer for the Kobo unless you use kepub.

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

You do use ADE if you read any ePub eBooks. ADE is what is the underlying renderer for the Kobo unless you use kepub.

I use kepubs. I only use (desktop) ADE to download DRM-ed epubs, which then go into Calibre, getting the Alf treatment on the way. The Kobo Touch Extended driver does the rest.

[PeterT]

Enhancement idea: Backup (and optionally restore) the Kobo eReader.conf file at the same time as the database.

[jbennion]

mbovenka, thanks for being the guinea pig for this! I am contemplating this exact same scenario, and don't have any DRMed books. In addition to the reading status (finished, reading position), I am even more concerned with my annotations. Do you know if those transfer over? Or, taking davidfor's suggestion, do some combination of backing up/restoring reading position along with a database backup/restore, maybe?

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Enhancement idea: Backup (and optionally restore) the Kobo eReader.conf file at the same time as the database.

Yes, backing up this and a couple of other files is a good idea. The config file, the .adobe-digital-editions directory and the version file (it has the serial number and current firmware version). I don't think of anything else that would be useful. Putting them in a zip file with the same name as the database would make it easy to handle.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by jbennion

mbovenka, thanks for being the guinea pig for this! I am contemplating this exact same scenario, and don't have any DRMed books. In addition to the reading status (finished, reading position), I am even more concerned with my annotations. Do you know if those transfer over? Or, taking davidfor's suggestion, do some combination of backing up/restoring reading position along with a database backup/restore, maybe?

I can think of three ways to transfer the annotations from one device to another. All assume the location and name of the book is in exactly the same place on both devices.

- Copy the directory "Digital Editions/Annotations". This contains the annotations files produced by the RMSDK. There is one for every epub and PDF in the main memory that you have opened. If you copy these files to another device, the annotations in them will be read into the database when the book is opened.

- Extract the bookmarks table from the database on one device and load it into the database on the other device. So long as you don't copy the data for the downloadable books, this is pretty safe and should work for all formats.

- Copy everything like mbovenka has done. That seems to be safe. The only issues I can think of is the ADE authorisation and maybe the contents of the user table.

The best way to handle this is an extract of the database that removes the file location. This would handle the ids in the data in a way similar to how the plugin handles the reading positions. Technically, it wouldn't be that hard to do, I just haven't had a real desire to do it. Plus, I have never decided on the best place or method to store the data. Adding them as yet another custom column has never felt right. And calibre doesn't really support adding extra files in the library directories. Putting them elsewhere means keeping track of the books the they are for.

[PeterT]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Yes, backing up this and a couple of other files is a good idea. The config file, the .adobe-digital-editions directory and the version file (it has the serial number and current firmware version). I don't think of anything else that would be useful. Putting them in a zip file with the same name as the database would make it easy to handle.

Nod; all of those would be highly useful. Sure some of them rarely change, but it would be handy to have them (and it's not as if they take up a great deal of space either).

Of course, the .adobe-digital-editions is handy in that it saves having to register a new kobo; just plop those files down and tada... Registration in place.

[davidfor]

I have just update the plugin to version 1.8.0. This has two changes in it. They are:

• New: Copy shelves from device to one column
• Change: Backup config, affiliate.conf and version files and ADE registration directory.

The change to the backup is that these files will be backed up as part of the automatic database backup. The files are put into a zip file with the same name as the database backup. The files being backed up are those that are most likely to be useful after a factory reset. Or to check information about the state of the device.

The other function is a method to get the shelves from a connected Kobo device and them into a column in the calibre library. This can be done for all books on the device, or just the selected books.

When started a dialog for options will be displayed. The options are:

• List of custom columns that can be used for the list of shelves
• "All books on device" - Select this if you want to get shelves for all books on the device. If it is not selected, only the selected books will be updated.
• "Replace column with shelves" - If this is selected, the current value in the column will be replaced with the list of shelves. If it is not, the list is appended to the current value.

Once the options have been selected, press the OK button to start. When this is done, the selected column is checked against those used in the driver configuration. If it is, a warning is displayed and you can cancel the action. If you continue at this point, the shelves are retrieved from the device and the library is updated.

This allows the shelves to be retrieved. You could then use this column as the shelf column in the driver configuration. Or copy the names to other columns.

This function is probably only useful if the shelf management in the driver is not configured. If it is, the shelves will be updated from the calibre library. And what will be retrieved from the device will be the same as what calibre just sent to the device.

As usual, calibre will show an update for the plugin soon. And if there are any problems, please report them here in as much detail as possible.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by davidfor

ADE authorisation is also device dependent. If you copied ADE related directories, that could be a problem when you use ADE to add a book.

Near as I've been able to tell, the device.xml file which is part of the Kobo firmware and is restored on a factory reset is device specific since it contains the serial number and a fingerprint while the activation.xml file is tied to the user's Adobe ID. It's possible that I am seeing this since I've activated all 4 Kobo devices that I looked at activation.xml on from the same computer.

[Sylveon06]

Thank you very much for this plugin.

We were having a bunch of problems with updating the thumbnails!!

You solved 'em

[srichard]

Hello,
When I select "Upload covers for Selected Books", the plugin creates image files with empty book name, i.e. " - N3_FULL.parsed", " - N3_LIBRARY_FULL.parsed", etc.
If several ebooks are selected, the same (empty) name is used for all of them and files are overwritten. And the cover is not displayed on the reader.
Note: most of my ebooks are in kepub format only (if this helps).