Some thoughts/questions/suggestions about Notes I create in Calibre-viewer

[droopy]

Section 3.3 of the Calibre manual talks about highlighting text and adding notes to your highlights. It also says:
“You can browse all highlights in your entire calibre library by right clicking the View button and choosing Browse annotations.”

I noticed that when I highlight and add a note, the modification date does not change in the main Calibre. I sometimes sort my calibre library by Date-Modified because I’d like to see any edits made to a book, including notes I create.
I guess I was expecting this because of experience with the Annotations plugin (https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=241206). When I’m on my Kobo Forma and highlight and add a note, and then sync to my Calibre library with this plugin, the new note, either in Comments field or its own Annotations column, would lead to a change in the Modified date.

Speaking of the annotations plugin leads me to my second point. I can see the notes I made on the Kobo without using the View>Browse_Annotations dialog window. I think it would be quite nice if we have an option of seeing the notes we create in the Calibre viewer, not just in the Browse_Annotations dialog window, but perhaps in the same place we see the notes we create on our device (e.g. also in the Annotations column).

Would love to hear everyone’s thoughts.

[kovidgoyal]

modification date is calibre internal, it is not going to do anything anyone expects. And you can view highlights in the calibre viewer. Open the highlights panel from the viewer controls.

[droopy]

i know that i can view highlights in the calibre viewer. i just thought it would be nice if we can have the highlights/notes in the calibre main GUI (like in its own column).

[kovidgoyal]

How would notes be displayed in a column?

[droopy]

I was thinking of maybe the same way that the Annotations plugin does it.
It will have the date when the highlight/note was created in one line
A new row with the highlighted text
A new row with your note.

You can choose to have a colored line/row in between your highlights/notes

[kovidgoyal]

A column can display only a single line of text.

[Comfy.n]

sounds cool... I never tried the Annotations Plugin myself but i see that it has an option to add the highlights to Comments or a custom column.

that way, instead of opening Calibre's Annotations Browser to search the notes, it would be possible to search the highlights directly from the main search bar, using something like #highlights:word

Highlights would be a custom column of the type "Long text, like comments", that could somehow mirror the Annotations Browser

[droopy]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

A column can display only a single line of text.

I'm not sure I understand you.

My Annotations column has cells with many rows of text

[theducks]

Annotations uses a Comments type field: The spreadsheet only shows the first line (as fits), the rest is only available (if enabled ) in the details view

[BetterRed]

↑ ↑ ↑ ✔

If a Long text custom column (LTCC)) is shown in the book list, you'll only see the starting fragment, and if it contains html it won't be rendered i.e. you'll see the markup etc.

If the LTCC is shown in the book list, you can select the cell and press F2.

I attach 'is set' icons to the first column in the book-list line for each LTCC. If I want to see the content I can look at the embedded book details panel, or pop a detached book details panel, or pop the JobSpy Notes viewer.

BR