Micro.blog notes while reading books: manton.org
@thisness No, notes aren’t available in Micro.one. Sorry, I should have mentioned that. It’s possible in some cases that you might accidentally see notes-related buttons appear… I’ll work on making sure those are hidden for Micro.one.
@manton This is the feature I needed! Thank you. Micro.blog’s book functionality is excellent.
A question: Will the notes appear in the csv export of books?
@timlockridge Thanks! That’s a great point about CSV export, no, currently they aren’t included. You can export the notes separately as a .zip of Markdown files. I’ll look at adding to CSV too, to see if it can be done in a way that is compatible with services like Goodreads.
@manton Terrific idea! Once you enter a note for a book, I don’t see a way to edit it or add to it. Is the idea that you enter multiple notes per book in a stream of consciousness fashion, or do you envision being able to create a single note that you add to over the course of reading? Would you consider adding markdown support for notes?
I really like the direction you’re taking here with notes and books.
@robertbreen Yes, the idea is you would just enter new notes whenever you had a new thought about something that happened, or a major milestone in the book. Basically you could use it as much or as little as you wanted. Markdown is supported on the web, but we need to make that easier, with editing buttons.
@manton Gotcha. These feel like the updates you might make on Goodreads, but privately (though you make it easy to publish too).
I was thinking these notes could be used to write a comprehensive review of the book to be shared when I finish reading it. My dream feature for bookshelves in Micro.blog is that book covers link back to my review of the book vs. the generic Micro.blog book database.
Thanks for continuing to push the envelope on reading features!
@robertbreen I’d love to do more with book covers and links too. That generic book page is there because we’ve gotta have something, but ideally someone could own these URLs on their blog.
@manton I checked out the updated notes API documentation and I didn’t see a way to create a note associated with a book. It looks like you are linking them by isbn and/or book title. Are there form-encoded params for this I can submit for this? Thanks :) Also, awesome update!
@heyloura Oops, I’ll update the documentation… There’s a new form-encoded param when creating a note: attached_book_isbn. Also, notebook_id is optional, it will use the “Reading” notebook if it’s not set. Let me know if any other APIs would be useful!
@heyloura One more thing if you are working with the notes + books API: I added a “_microblog” → “type” field when getting the JSON for notebooks. This is used to identify the “Reading” notebook if someone has renamed it (type: lowercase “reading”).