Question: Highlighting on Kindle 4 (non-interactive)

[samba2]

• KOReader version: 2018.11
• Device: Kindle 4.1.3

Issue How to highlight/ take notes?

Steps to reproduce

The Kindle 4 has no touch-display. Instead it provides a virtual keyboard (in the Amazon reader) and four arrow keys to navigate left, right, up and down.
When reading an epub is it possible to highlight text using those arrow keys or is a touch-display needed?

[Frenzie]

I'm afraid we currently don't have that functionality, and I think it would take a fair bit of effort to add. Could you describe the workflow as a point of inspiration, should someone decide to tackle this? Pinging @onde2rock just in case of potential interest.

As a general note, this kind of functionality could also be useful on touch-screens for more precise selection since sometimes it can be hard to select the first word of a sentence or some such.

[samba2]

The original software provides "adding comments" and "highlighting". The first one is in my eyes unbearable - too much fiddling with the arrow keys to select the single characters. Its a bit like writing SMS back in the days.
Which leaves "highlighting" as the only viable use case (in my opinion).

It works like this:

• I am reading a document
• to enter highlighting I press either the "up" or "down" arrow key
• pressing "up" positions a blinking cursor on the lowest possible text position (usually the footer)
• pressing "down" positions the blinking cursor at the very top e.g. in front of the first character
• also a little help text box is displayed saying "press the middle button" to start selecting
• this text is positioned at top top when the cursor is at the bottom and vice versa
• I can now move the cursor around to the position where I want to start highlighting
• In the middle of the arrow keys is an other button which usually starts the KOReader page menu (where I can e.g. change the screen orientation)
• When I am in "blinking cursor" aka "selection" mode, this middle button on the Kindle almost starts the selection
• since the original software allows to "add notes" or "to highlight" the little help text box changes to a dialog asking "do you want to add notes or highlight?" I select "highlight" (since I think taking notes is not really useful this extra dialog could go, pressing the "middle" key could directly start "highlighting")
• I can now use the "right" arrow to select the text. the behaviour after pressing the middle key is like holding the Shift key on a keyboard and than using the keyboard arrow keys to select.
• the little help text box now says "press middle button" to stop selection
• When I do this in the little help text box I am asked if I want to finish the selection or not
• I choose "yes"
• I am then still in the "moving cursor" mode. The help text again says "press middle button" to start the selection so I could start over selecting something else.
• to go back to reading mode i press the "back" key

All clearity gone by now? ;-)

I am not familiar how KOReader usually handles highlighting but this workflow description should you just give some inspiration on how KOReader could support "highlighting" for non touch devices.

PS: I am a dev at day time but unfortunately I currently don't find the time to get into KOReader development in my spare time. But I am happy to act as a (hopefully) competent user.

[Frenzie]

Wow, they went all out on that. Thanks for sharing!

[onde2rock]

Yeah, look like a bunch of code need to be written. I will look to see if I can reuse the code that does the touch selection, since it's dealing with document backend libraries, it can be a pain.

I will look into it, if it's not to hard, I may give it a try.

[ofalvai]

Is there any update on this issue? I'd love to use KOReader on my old Kindle 4, but unable to highlight text is a blocker for me :(

[NiLuJe]

Without someone interested actually doing the work, extremely unlikely.

[poire-z]

Solved by #8877.