PDF annotation changes -- comments

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Jon
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PDF annotation changes -- comments

Post by Jon »

I've been working on a major change in the way Bookends manipulates selected PDF text. Currently, you select the text and apply actions via the Action popup menu (e.g. highlight, add to the library as a notecard, etc.). In the new mechanism, selecting text will immediately bring up a small floating window that allows you to pick a highlight color (or none) and click on one of the following options: Highlight, Underline, Copy, PDF Note, Notecard, Quote. Clicking one of these (or clicking outside the window) will immediately dismiss the floating window.

If you used Sente, you'll recognize this approach (and Zotero uses a similar popup that lets you highlight, but unreliably detects selections in my tests). To maintain a clean interface, a few things that were previously optional will now be assumed (e.g. a page number will always be added when creating a notecard from a selection). The current highlight marker icon will remain, and if continuous highlighting is turned on, selected text will immediately highlight (as it does now).

Since this is a major change in a widely used function, I'm posting here to elicit feedback about any unintended consequences I might have missed.

Jon
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iandol
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Re: PDF annotation changes -- comments

Post by iandol »

How will this interact with the normal context menu "Look up" and "Search with" functions; will the context menu still be available?

I have to admit I sometimes forget what each of the many options in the action menu do and need to stare at it for a bit to grok what I want from it, so some sort of refinement is a welcome change! I wonder how much of the current flexibility most users use: we can highlight or underline, make a PDF note or quoted PDF note, or a Bookends notecard with or without a selection highlight or page number — having a default for each (highlight by default, quoted PDF note by default, Notecard with page number by default), and a "direct apply" would certainly simplify things. Will you remove the alternative options or keep them in the Action menu?
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Re: PDF annotation changes -- comments

Post by Jon »

Search isn't affected. The popup window only appears when you select PDF text.

The Action button options that act on the selection are removed -- they're redundant (and confusing!). And as I said, if you're just highlighting, setting the highlight marker icon will supersede the window and you can just highlight as you do now.

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swmartin1960
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Re: PDF annotation changes -- comments

Post by swmartin1960 »

Sounds great. I'm assuming that it only applies to PDFs that have been run through OCR. Is that correct?
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Re: PDF annotation changes -- comments

Post by Jon »

Yes. The text must be selectable (i.e. not an image of text).

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Dellu
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Re: PDF annotation changes -- comments

Post by Dellu »

Jon wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 3:48 pm I've been working on a major change in the way Bookends manipulates selected PDF text. Currently, you select the text and apply actions via the Action popup menu (e.g. highlight, add to the library as a notecard, etc.). In the new mechanism, selecting text will immediately bring up a small floating window that allows you to pick a highlight color (or none) and click on one of the following options: Highlight, Underline, Copy, PDF Note, Notecard, Quote. Clicking one of these (or clicking outside the window) will immediately dismiss the floating window.

If you used Sente, you'll recognize this approach (and Zotero uses a similar popup that lets you highlight, but unreliably detects selections in my tests). To maintain a clean interface, a few things that were previously optional will now be assumed (e.g. a page number will always be added when creating a notecard from a selection). The current highlight marker icon will remain, and if continuous highlighting is turned on, selected text will immediately highlight (as it does now).

Since this is a major change in a widely used function, I'm posting here to solicit feedback about any unintended consequences I might have missed.

Jon
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That sounds great: looking forward to test it.
Ken
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Re: PDF annotation changes -- comments

Post by Ken »

I see the rationale behind the new design, but I really really miss the option to assign keyboard shortcuts to underline and highlight. I had one shortcut for each colour and used it extensively when reading. I find it much more cumbersome to double click the colour in the pop-up. Would it be possible to have both options (pop-up and keyboard shortcuts)?
Cheers,
Ken
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Re: PDF annotation changes -- comments

Post by Jon »

Much more cumbersome? Really? Your hand is already on the mouse (which you need to make the selection). To use the keyboard shortcut you need to take it off the mouse, find the keys to press, and in mouse cases put it back on the mouse. I understand you prefer the keyboard shortcut, but I don't get it.

It might be possible to have both, I'd have to think about it.

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Ken
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Re: PDF annotation changes -- comments

Post by Ken »

I have two hands ;) And yes, I do find it very annoying to get the pointer to the right little colour icon. It removes my attention from reading, whereas the keys are in my body and require no attention. I customised the keys (using better-touch-tool) so ctrl+1-5 each assigned a colour. Worked like a charm. Since you changed it I have used PDFPenPro where I can do the same, but it is so full of bugs and so slow, so I really miss my Bookends workflow. I would be very thankful if you could make the keyboard shortcuts work again.
Thanks,
Ken
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Re: PDF annotation changes -- comments

Post by Jon »

You're speaking of the Command-1 through 5 keyboard shortcuts that turned on continuous highlight and highlighted the selected text, right?

If so that feature hasn't changed except that you can't use it to highlight the selected text.

I can bring that back if you like -- select text and the popover appears, press Command-number and the highlighted text is changed to the corresponding color, the continuous highlighting mode is turned on, and the popover disappears.

And note that once the continuous highlighting mode is on, you won't see the popover when you make a selection, the selection is automatically highlighted.

BTW, Control 1-5 is built into Bookends, it's not done by some outside utility app.

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Ken
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Re: PDF annotation changes -- comments

Post by Ken »

Yes, please bring it back 🙏
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Re: PDF annotation changes -- comments

Post by Jon »

It's done for the next update.

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Per
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Re: PDF annotation changes -- comments

Post by Per »

This is simply terrific! I have been considering starting to use use Highlights to annotate my pdfs for its fast manoeuvring, but with this update Bookends is at least on par also for reading and annotating (it excels in everything else reference related). Two things though, which I think would make it close to perfect:

1) When marking text and selecting quote, I would very much like Bookends to add citation marks around the text after the @Pagenumber in the note stream and not just a new row. Especially as Bookends integrates so well into text editors and other programmes, where quotes must be explicitly marked anyway. It would also make the distinction between the different types of notes clearer. If some people don't want that, or want to use different citation marks, it could perhaps be determined by a setting?

2) The highlight notes that are marked with a lock always comes last in my note stream. Since also they contain information about the page they are associated to, I think it would be great if it would be possible to choose to have them listed in the order of the quotes and notecards. Preferably right after each associated quote or notecard for easy navigation through long pdfs (by simply clicking the highlight card in the note stream).

Thanks for an amazing tool!
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Re: PDF annotation changes -- comments

Post by Jon »

Thanks for the suggestions. As for

1) It's possible to do that, although others might find that annoying. I certainly do not want to add another UI layer on top of this with options and preferences. It's easy enough to add the quote marks yourself, so this would be a minor convenience. I'd like to hear what others would have to say.,

2. That's not possible. The notes that appear on top are from text in the Notes field. The locked notecards you see are extracted from annotations in the PDF. There is no relationship between the Notes text and the annotation text. So Bookends outputs them in their respective orders. For Notes, it's from the beginning to the end of the field. For annotations, it's from the top to the bottom of the document.

Jon
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joao
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Re: PDF annotation changes -- comments

Post by joao »

Hi,

Since we're on the subject of pdf annotations and notes, would it be possible to add a feature to the AppleScript dictionary?

At the moment we can get the bookends notes from AppleScript. It would be great if there was another key to get the (locked) pdf-only highlight text as well. I am using a script that opens the selected reference pdf in skim and extracts the highlights in skim before putting them back in the bookends notes field. This would save me a trip to skim. As to why I am doing that.... it's because I have bookends than export those extracted notes and relevant information to text files that are kept in a folder for indexing and editing by other apps....
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