[Kavita] Highlighting / saving selected text / annotating for epub and pdf

[DieselTech]

Idea Description

Posted by Starry_air
· Mar 2022
· 23 Upvotes
https://feats.kavitareader.com/posts/86/highlighting-saving-selected-text-annotating-for-epub-and-pdf

Description

As the server doesn't perform any writing operations on the files, saving highlights / annotations cannot be done in the epub/pdf files themselves, but perhaps they could be stored in the database with a browse/export function? Or perhaps, with time, even in the files themselves?

Duration of Using Kavita

42

Idea Category

Feature Enhancement

Agreement

• I agree that this is solely for submitting ideas, and I will search for existing ideas before posting.

[ProfDoof]

This may just be me, but ideally I would prefer if the annotations are alongside or in the file rather than in the database as I would like to be able to just grab the file/folder and be able to put that anywhere and it work.

As for the annotations themselves, ideally they would allow for

• Various highlight colors (maybe even a color picker)
• Me to see the highlighted text and the comment that was added
• Me to associate a concept or context with highlight colors and create an annotation legend (just something I've missed in the switch from paper to digital)
• Underline and not just highlight
• Link annotations together directly rather than just via color

My MVP would be

• Highlight with some distinct neon color
• Associate a comment with a highlight

[Menghini]

I second the need for this. Moreover, I think it would beneficial to be a database or something similar because you will then be able have more than one user add highlights and annotate/comment in the book.

[AlbertMarkovski]

Thirding the need for this. Database would be ideal so as to leave original ebook files unmodified (I prefer to mount them over NFS as read only).

Seems like lots of people are looking for such a thing:

https://old.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/12gybq2/looking_for_a_pdfepub_reader_with_annotation_and/

I gave Kavita a test drive anyway and it's slick otherwise!

[jvarghe]

Fourthing this. I came in from the link posted by AlbertMarkovski. It lays out everything that's missing in ebook readers nicely.

I want to be able to highlight (in various colours) bookmark and annotate all kinds of books (pdfs, epubs etc.).

It would be good to leave the original files untouched, and yet have annotations that are portable, but these requirements might conflict.

I don't want to leave my annotations trapped in one any app. Has anyone looked into the Web Annotation standard? Perhaps implementing that would make it easier to export annotations.

Even more advanced features, like searching your annotations database, and collating and linking annotations across books would be great.