[FR/enhancement]: Synchronize highlights across separate KOReader devices

[arooni]

• KOReader version: 2019.02.01 stable version
• Device: Kindle PW4 / Google Pixel XL / Kindle Fire 10 Tablet

Issue

So seeing as I do all my reading on KOreader on my PW now, I figure I might as well take advantage of progress sync/whispersync (works great!!!) so I can read on any of my devices and always have my progress synced.

I tend to highlight quite a few passages, and then export those to Evernote (also, amazing feature). But it seems that highlights don't sync across devices.

This to me means if I made some highlights on separate devices, I'd need to export the notes to Evernote each time.. so potentially for one book I'd need to export the highlighted passages three times (if I were reading on my PW, tablet/phone). I'm also unsure of what happens when there's an existing evernote note for a given book. I'd assume the most recent device to export to evernote would overwrite any prior notes.

I don't know how many other people read across multiple devices, but this would seem to be a very useful feature, and would hopefully lead to more people running koreader in more places and on more devices.

NOTE: I did check other issues to see if this had been suggested before: #628, but didn't see anything. If I'm remiss and this is already available someone please correct me. Thanks!

Steps to reproduce

[Frenzie]

@embryo10 made a KOReader Highlights utility that can now also do syncing.
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3816259&postcount=40

[arooni]

Does Issue #4670 address this? EDIT: I guess that was just a question not an issue.

Looked into that utility but apparently it only runs on Windows and I use Ubuntu + Mac :.

It's cool that syncing highlights is coming along... definitely one fo the features I'm wishing for the most.

[noembryo]

KoHighlights is also running on Ubuntu (Python 2.7.x) as script.
The updated version is running on Python 3 too.
Edit: Uploaded and updated...

[Frenzie]

@arooni You'll have to install the dependencies (PySide and future; Python will be installed by default) and then it should run. :-)

[noembryo]

But bookmark with highlight sync is not available for multiple devices using KOHighlight or any other plugin. Is someone working on it or has a plan to implement it?

Highlight sync for multiple devices is available in KOHighlights, but manually, not automatically.
I also can't use online sync, since that will probably need some server/subscription and extra networking knowledge that I don't currently have.

[noembryo]

I am currently manually duplicating highlight line by line from one device to another, which is really annoying (3+ devices) to do, and I miss highlights or notes quite often.

I don't understand why you prefer that, over:

• Make highlight (and nothing more on device)
• Connect device to KOHighlights > "Archive" highlights
• Connect other device with KOHighlights > "Sync with archived"
• Connect other device with KOHighlights > "Sync with archived"
• ...

It is true that I don't use it like this, but the option is there.

[noembryo]

Also, if you can connect all your devices at once, you can use the option "Sync with file", and use your most recent metadata.xxx.lua file to sync the others..

[noembryo]

Unfortunately none of the methods worked. What I found lua file highlighted notes are synced. But those highlights are not being shown on pages where it supposed to be.

Well, they should have worked.
If not, please open an issue at KOHighlights's repository, so we don't pollute this issue.
You have to be a lot more specific though.. 😉

I also saw this warning during the process,

This is a normal warning that you can accept.
It has to do with the original page number of the highlights.
The highlights themselves should be identical though, and at the right place.

[noembryo]

this is probably KOHighlight sync with the file does which also worked

No, this is not it, but please, let's move this to KOHighlights's repository if something is not working..

[antrmn]

I believe SyncThing has a way to perform some custom operation after synchronization. A host could merge highlights after each sync and then sync the result to other peers.

However, it sems KOHighlight is for interactive usage only, so I don't know if it is actually feasible or not