Calibre epub notes intergration via calibredb

[sati-bodhi]

This may be beyond the scope of the current project, but I see a lot of potential - as far as epub-reader support is concerned.

The issue is this: before my discovery of org-remark, I add highlights to my epub library primarily through Calibre's E-book Viewer. These are not easily accessible for consolidation in org-noter at present.

Again, pdfs are "more equal" than epubs in this case because org-noter has a create-skeleton function that can extract annotations out from the pdfs through pdf-tools. org-remark can now serve as an annotating device with nov; but notes previously taken in Calibre remain out of reach.

Annotations for a single Calibre Library are collectively stored in metadata.db, which can be accessed with sqlite3.

Here's the fun part: the calibredb.el project has already built up a whole ecosystem to access and process data stored in that database from Emacs.

This means, with a little bit of effort, we might just be able to integrate the two systems together to build an epub note-taking system on Emacs which is at least as good as the present pdf support.

Notes taken in Calibre can be imported into org-remark and accessed with nov; vice-versa. How cool would that be.

This also fits nicely with your intuition of having a separate module for epub support and integration.

Originally posted by @sati-bodhi in #54 (comment)

[sati-bodhi]

Annotations for a single Calibre Library are collectively stored in metadata.db, which can be accessed with sqlite3.

I appreciate your enthusiasm :) Not within the scope of the core feature set but it might be an interesting avenue for further extension.

Could I suggest that you raise a new issue on it to discuss further? No immediate work can be expected, at least of me. But calibredb.el looks to use Org mode’s derived mode for editing an annotation. At the moment, I use save-buffer to save the notes buffer (assuming it’s a file) but perhaps it does not need to be; which means… you might be able to directly work off an annotation buffer stored in calibredb? (Not sure if this is tenable).

I personally find marginalia.org more intuitive, flexible and easier to work with because it features nesting #54 (comment) capabilities and the possibility of mix-matching between disparate notes - thanks to org-mode.

This, in fact, is something I believe org-remark does substantially better than the pdf-annot features offered by pdf-tools - highlights are laggy and note content cannot be easily identified through pdf-annot-list-annotations; you need to click through to see - luckily they provide a create-skeleton function to bring locked-up pdf annotations back into good old org-mode.

The same concept should apply to Calibre epub integration.