Nook Note Taking

[Brandoch_Daha]

Is it true that only books purchased from B&N may be annotated by the user?  I can't take notes on Epub documents from other sources for example?  That's really a shame.  I can imagine that it might be difficult in some formats to flag the location of the notes, but it should be a feature for the usual formats, not just B&N's offerings. 

[Kevin]

---

Brandoch_Daha wrote:

Is it true that only books purchased from B&N may be annotated by the user?  I can't take notes on Epub documents from other sources for example?  That's really a shame.  I can imagine that it might be difficult in some formats to flag the location of the notes, but it should be a feature for the usual formats, not just B&N's offerings. 

---

Brandoch,

Yes, only content purchased from B&N can be annotated on nook at this time.

[joeypore]

Yeah, that needs to change.

That's a huge issue.

[KevinCK]

Kevin,

If only BN-purchased content can be annotated with the nook, what about resizing the text of pdfs, or doing word searches on non-BN books? Is it that the nook doesn't recognize the text of other documents AS text?

[ajrosen]

I'm not an expert on these file formats, but I'm guessing ePub is designed to be marked up, whereas PDF is not - ePUB probably has some kind of addressing scheme along with the plain text which makes it possible to have a text file point to locations you have "annotated". I don't know if PDF is structured the same. For example, if someone edits a PDF separate from the nook (adds PDF comments or something else), it may change the file structure such that to notations would no longer point to the right place, even though the nook thinks it's the same file. Just a guess, but I can easily see this being the issue.

[joeypore]

Actually...

The way these files are delt with on other readers...

There is one file that is the original eBook; it cannot be altered. There is another file created for annotations; this is defined by the ereader itself and it designed to whatever specification the vendor decides.

The reason I believe B&N is not including notetaking for non-B&N books is because it cannot be synced. If this is the reason, it's pretty stupid. And I'm not saying it is by any means. I really don't know why that's the case.

There needs to be note taking, and exportable notetaking for all eBooks. As far as PDFs go, that's another issue entirely. As you said, they are structured differently as they are not designed for reflow. Whether or not this would stop B&N from allowing annotations, I don't know.

[alanajoli]

Kevin, you say "at this time." Does that mean that annotations to other files are something B&N hopes to add in the future? (Hopefully along with reading .doc and .txt files natively?)

[crisandria]

I just got my nook Monday and just checked out adding highlights and notes in documents in the my documents folder.  I was able to add a note and highlight text in my side loaded content from other sources. (PDB and ePub formats)  I've got the 1.1.1 update on the nook. So somewhere along the lines they started to allow highlights and notes in non B&N content.

[alanajoli]

Crisandria -- good news! Thanks! I'll play around with it all some more. Did you have to install the 1.1.1 update manually? (I just received my nook in the mail yesterday and didn't know if it would come fully updated or need the updates.)

[luminessence]

I just tried to add a note to a sideloaded epub book, and it worked fine. I don't have the 1.1.1 update, just 1.1.0.

[alanajoli]

Just an update -- I've also found that all side-loaded ePub books allow for notetaking, which means all you need is a program like Calibre to convert pdfs, txt, or doc files. Easy as pie!

[Hakob]

There is a simple line of reasoning that I want B&N to understand.

There is a vast army of scholars like me who are craving for a good eReader. But the reader that we are expecting must allow highlighting and commenting in PDFs. Why in PDFs? Well, because surprisingly scholars read academic articles and all current scholarly archives are in PDF. Not “a majority of”, but simply all of it. So, if Nook doesn't allow to highlight and comment in PDFs, it is simply useless for a scholar.

When I say “highlighting and commenting” I don’t mean some third party tool which would store my comments in a separate XML file or something (e.g. iAnnotate for iPad). NO!!! My comments must be stored in the PDF file itself!!! For I need to be able to transfer my PDFs from my eReader back to my Laptop with all my comments freely. No limitations are acceptable. The good thing is that nothing new has to be invent, since it has already been invented and it is called Adobe Acrobat. Its functionality is quite sufficient for the task.

I'm just hoping that guys from B&N are reading these lines and making notes.

[withfeeling]

That's why I am hoping Foxit does an Android version. That is the way annotations work with their PC PDF Reader.

[Michael-V]

Please post update suggestions for NOOK here:

http://bookclubs.barnesandnoble.com/t5/NOOK-General-Discussion/Ideas-for-nook-classic-v1-6/td-p/7282...

Please post update suggestions for NOOKcolor here:

http://bookclubs.barnesandnoble.com/t5/NOOKcolor-General-Discussion/What-users-want-in-the-NOOKcolor...