Another one for the "note to self" file.

Richard asked me to proof-read a review of a book he'd written.  He sent it to me as a RTF document directly to my kindle via the free.kindle.com email address.  

I found a few spelling mistakes, some grammar issues and some bits which didn't scan/parse as well as they could.  I initially started making notes against them, but realised that without context these were useless, so started highlighting the relevant text too.  Highlights and Notes are stored in date order, with the most recent at the end of a file, which means that to get this right, the order needs to be:

  • Highlight the text to give the comment context
  • Make a note about the thing that is spelt wrong or whatever

As I hadn't done this, I needed to edit the clippings afterwards in a text file which was time-consuming and painful, and the main reason why I've written this as a blog post.

The clippings for all books can be found on the My Clippings.txt in the documents folder on the Kindle (or at least they can when mounted on a mac).  This is a text file which contains information like:

==========
<File Name> (<author name>)
- Highlight Loc. 14 | Added on Friday, December 31, 2010, 04:23 PM


<highlighted text>
==========
<File Name> (<author name>)
 - Note Loc. 14 | Added on Friday, December 31, 2010, 04:24 PM

<contents of note>

I needed to go through this file after I'd read the review and match up the Highlight with the Note and re-order.  Definitely something to avoid next time, or to find/write a macro/script to help with