I remember looking into this a while ago–but that was pre-DT and some new scripting skills–I’ll look at it again.
Google “ maximum export annotations kindle” to see maybe why.
Indeed, this is our stance on non-standardized and proprietary methods.
Additionally, if the developer of those methods changes something, we will be the ones with the support complaints and finger-pointing, and have to scramble to fix something they’ll likely iterate again.
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No one has said an unequivocal “No” to anything. However, DEVONthink is not DEVONthink To Go and the underlying frameworks are not all the same. If this happens in the future, it would be at a point where the same editor was running in our desktop and our mobile application. That is not Now. 
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NICE! Thank you!
(Sucks it’s Chrome only, but now I have a new project!)
OK thank you! I sincerely appreciate you dropping in and shedding some light on this.
You’re welcome
My two cents here.
- ePub 2.0 does not have standard annotation format. ePub 3.0 has, but it seems nobody is using it. in ePub world, annotations go in a side file, not inside ePub. Why? Because modifying the ePub you will break the DRM in those that have DRM. (BTW, mobi format had annotations standard since first release).
- I will pay extra subscription price for having a decent ePub reader into DTTG, and then my iPads will become a DTTG-only device).
- What I do is, if ebook has DRM, remove it. Second thing is add it to Calibre and reconvert it into ePub with some changes that will depend on the original ePub. Then convert it into PDF using Calibre with some special scripts (here) in the conversion process. PDF? Yes, a PDF of 14x22 cm and 22pt font size can be easily read/annotate in any device starting with an iPhone Pro Max in landscape (and sometimes in portrait) and ending in a 12.9 inches iPad. This is my last “that’s how I do it” blog post. You can translate into English.
Said that, I think there is some misconceptions here. First of all, DTTG is what Devon people wanted to be. For example, if it were only document management, it won’t support create/edit MD, TXT, and so on files, or allow annotate/scribble PDF.
And second, and more important to me: “think different”. IMHO, DT and DTTG are the only remaining “think different” applications, not only for the applications themselves but for support, etc…
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How do you save a website as a one page PDF? I have tried safari - export as, but there are many artifacts.
thank you
No problem.
I’m also someone who would really, REALLY love ePub support on DTTG. Here are some reasons in favor which haven’t really been brought up yet on this thread:
1- As far as I know, NO iOS ePub reader apps allow “open in place” access to ePub files. They all import the book into their own database. Which means that if you’re trying to have all your documents in DT/DTTG, your ePub at least will all be duplicated in whatever ePub reader you’re using, which is very annoying from an organizational perspective. My position has always been that DTTG should focus more on improving its performance when sharing documents via “open in place”, and let users pick whatever document editing app they prefer, but when there are no open-in-place apps for a certain format, this doesn’t work.
2- The lack of a widely adopted standard for annotation, when combined with the lack of any ePub readers that can open-in-place from the DTTG database, is a reason FOR doing this in DTTG! If there were an open standard and a reader that opened the files directly from DTTG, you could do your annotating in that reader app, and still use DTTG as a master database, ideally even searching for your annotations (like with PDFs). But as it stands, all of your annotations are trapped in whatever reader app you use, with no way to get at them from DTTG. If you’re committed to having all your documents and notes in DTTG, either you have to give up on ePubs, period (which is annoying, because ePubs’ reflowability is great), or go through crazy workarounds to constantly re-import your notes from whatever ePub reader you’re using back into DT/TG.
3- I believe DT/TG could use the Web Annotation standard, ideally copying the way that Hypothes.is worked to do it with Radium & Epub.js: https://web.hypothes.is/blog/epub-annotation/ … that way various tools developed to work with Hypothes.is’s API & data format could be used for DT/TG, too, or at least serve as a base to build on.
TL;DR – ePubs are an important enough document type that DT/TG should REALLY support users having them in their databases, especially in DTTG. But because NO iOS ePub apps allow for open-in-place, or easy export of all annotations back to DTTG, doing anything useful with ePubs in DTTG really requires support within DTTG itself; there’s just no viable halfway solution.
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Thanks for the link to those scripts! And I agree with you completely.
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The W3C standard dates from 2017, and “the vision” was that people could annotate directly in their browsers. I don’t see that. If not even the browser companies with their hundreds of developers implement that, how should DEVONtechnology be able to do that with their much smaller team?
I get your point, but I don’t see web annotations gain any traction.
Right, the W3C standard hasn’t had much success at adoption, but that’s not the point. The point is that it’s a stable and open standard, and there are already open-source tools that use it, so it would probably be easier for DTTG to use that than try to come up with something on their own. Readium and Epub.js are open-source ePub readers that already integrated this functionality, at least in the proof-of-concept Hypothes.is made.
Firstly, just because something is a “stable and open” standard at the W3C doesn’t mean it is useful – XHTML is such a standard, and it is a very dead one at that.
OTOH, a standard that doesn’t see adoption in a five-year time frame should raise a red flag. If it were useful and reasonably easy to implement, wouldn’t people flock to it? In five years, wouldn’t the likes of Apple, Tolino and other e-book readers have implemented it – especially if there are working open-source implementations?
But I didn’t even seem to be able to find a browser extension for Firefox that would offer annotations. Maybe it was too far down the list, though.
Don’t get me wrong: I can imagine that web annotations are useful. But I have no idea if the W3C proposal makes any sense (in fact, I have my doubts, given the non-uptake). And what is the point of implementing a standard in DT(TG), if it’s the only software out there that does so? Instead, it could simply invent its own method, like Apple and all the others did – no standard, but a standard that no-one uses is just the same.
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I just tried this out and Documents by Readdle will open DTTG files in place and it supports ePub file viewing.
After looking more closely, while Documents does support open in place, I dont think it works for ePubs.
To just give more reasons why EPUB matters to me, and as some have pointed out, EPUB support is actually pretty thin on iOS.
There are significant reasons for preferring for EPUB, especially on small screens, but the only app I know of that allows search across a library of ebooks is Reader from Readwise, which is not a native app.
iBooks is a nonstarter since, while it’s a very nice interface, its a one way destination for anything you put in the app. I’ve been bit by that limitation in the past.