[Feature Request] Improved Native Annotations Export

[lamnatos]

I'd like the following two enhancements to the hidden functionality of exporting book annotations to text files:

1. More detailed & structured exports. At best, I'd like the same information as shown in the Annotations page for a book. Highlighted Text, Chapter Name, Chapter Position, Date and any Comments added should be exported for each annotation entry. I hope that since the information is already available to be shown in the Annotations page, it could also be included in the exported text file.

2. Batch export for all annotations on device. It's nice to tap & hold for each book to export its annotations, but sometimes I'm not certain if I've exported a book's annotations or not. I'd like to have a button in the settings page that would display a warning about taking some time and then export a text file for each book with annotations.

[m040601]

+1 for this much needed and usefull request.

I cant write anything better than lamnatos has very clearly and concisely described. Both of them. The batch export issue is from an usabilty point of view, an absolutely essential and basic feature for some one who reads many books over long periods of time.

But in addition, I would like to remember the Kobo Developer Team, the current mess that you get, as of today, on your books/collection/shelves when you export annotations from a book.

• You're reading book "my_awesome_book.epub"
• You highlight and anotate
• Some times later, you decide to export your annotations
• Kobo saves a file nameb "my_awesome_book.txt" on your root folder
• This same file "my_awesome_book.txt" is added to your collection of books next time kobo restarts.
• So you get the title "my_awesome_book" twice listed in your books. (one epub and one txt)

So in addition to what lamnatos has requested, I would like to add:

1. The ability to decide WHERE
   (folder/locations) your annotations exported text file(s) will go exactly, and make sure it doesnt get added to your kobo books collection. It's not a book you want to read in your Kobo device. It's a text file(s) you want to take out from your device for further use elsewhere. It should be simple to provide an option to choose ONE single text file containing all the annotations from all the books (ordered by book), or, ONE text file per book.

And please, keep it simple as it is now, an offline TXT file.
as lamnatos as suggested :

Highlighted Text, Chapter Name, Chapter Position, Date and any Comments added should be exported for each annotation entry.

2, Don't reinvent the wheel with complicated formats or rules.

There's already a good plain text solution for this, markdown. Anyone who wants their annotations to end up in html, rtf, doc pdf, with colors etc, can take this markdown plain text file and use one of the billion solutions available to get what they want.

Please dont come up with the complicated ideas of uploading your annotations to some kobo online acccount/service profile account and having to login to something to download them again

[pgaskin]

I'd disagree on the format. Personally, I think JSON would be the most universal, but I'm fine with it the way it is right now (when I need detailed info, I directly extract it from nickel).

About it scanning the exported annotations, it's possible to use the new(ish) sync ignore config entry to prevent it form scanning all .txt files. But, a word of warning: as of the last time I checked, if the file already has been imported, nickel will delete it, so you'll want to make a backup first.

Alternatively, I could write a patch (note that this is not officially supported by Kobo) to change the file extension for exported highlights.