Highlighted PDF text badly displayed as notecards

[benjaminpelissie]

Hi all,
I noticed that when I toggle the display of highlights as notecards, it is frequently badly done. Some letters and spaces are missing, which seems to affect more words begin the highlight or that are at beginning of a highlighted line in the PDF. Anybody experienced the same issue?
Cheers,
Ben

PS: I would like to attach a screen capture for a specific highlight, but can't figure it out; seems that my 44Ko file is still too big for the forum (any clue?).

[Jon]

I believe this is mentioned in the user guide. Some highlights don't correspond to the actual dimensions of the underlying text when they are reported to Bookends. In that case you'll see truncated text (sometimes no text, sometimes more text). There's really nothing Bookends can do when it's given incorrect info. Note that if you click on the notecard you'll be instantly taken to the highlight, so you can always read what's highlighted yourself.

Jon
Sonny Software

P.S. You can also try removing the highlight and making it again in the PDF control.

[benjaminpelissie]

Oh sorry I didn't check the user guide as I didn't expect that I might encounter explanations about this kind of issues in it. Next time I'll give a quick look before posting a question.

But anyway, I don't get how a highlight made in BE can embed an incorrect info. I mean, (simple curiosity) what can be incorrect?

Plus, some words are concatenated even when they don't "touch" the borders of the highlighted zone.

Ben

[Jon]

Google for PDF format -- you'll find it's a mess. What you see is NOT a simple representation. And try copy and paste from a PDF -- you'll often find things like lack of spaces, odd characters, and general inaccuracies. I won't go through the details, but here's what I wrote in the user guide:

The text in a Highlight notecard may sometimes not exactly match the text in the PDF (too much or too little shown. or even nothing at all). This is due to inconsistencies in the way PDF highlight dimensions are calculated. Remember that you can immediately see the actual Highlight in the PDF by clicking on its notecard.

Jon
Sonny Software

[benjaminpelissie]

Of course I believe you, and although it does not answer my question I did read the user guide about this issue. I'm just curious about why other PDF apps extract highlights perfectly, like preview or papers. They should encounter the same problems as in BE, but actually they do a slightly better job (in my experience). It does not change the fact that BE is still the best app out there. Clearly clicking on notes helps a little, but most of the time the text in the PDF is too little to be read comfortably. If you zoom on it for better reading, navigating between highlights in the side bar is not straightforward, as you have to re-focus the PDF view between each quote (if your PDF is multi-column; 90% of my collection).
Ben

[benjaminpelissie]

Something to add: when I display those "problematic" highlights in Preview (in the side bar), most of them are very well displayed. I have just few missing spaces here and there; 95% is clean. It's really better than in the BE viewer, although those highlights have all been done in BE and BOT.
Ben

[Jon]

You can send me one pdf with examples you think handled better by Preview than Bookends.

Jon
Sonny Software

[benjaminpelissie]

Here it is.
Cheers,
Ben

[Jon]

Not a forum image. Send the PDF to tech support (support@sonnysoftware.com). And I can guess already that the lack of a space (which is frankly pretty trivial, I thought you were talking about something more substantial) is a PDF artifact that PDF Kit isn't correcting. But I'll take a look. Please take this off-forum now.

Jon
Sonny Software

[benjaminpelissie]

Sorry, but I couldn't guess that I had to send you the pics by mail. Will do that. But it is not trivial at all. Lack of spaces and letters makes reading notecards hard and searching in notes impossible, as no one can guess which spaces and letters will be omitted. So for me, it is a medium-to-big issue.
Ben

[Jon]

We'll have to agree to disagree. Nonetheless, the pics are of no value at all. The PDF is what is necessary.

Jon
Sonny Software

[benjaminpelissie]

Yes, mea culpa for the pics; I sent you the PDF. Really? You disagree on the fact that not being able to search correctly in notes is kind of an important issue?
Ben

[Jon]

I think a missing space is a cosmetic issue, it has only a tangential effect on functionality. And as I have said, it's not there because the PDF Kit APIs aren't seeing it. This is not a Bookends issue, it's an OS X issue. But I'll take a look at your PDF and see if there is a workaround.

Jon
Sonny Software

[benjaminpelissie]

I get that it might be an OS X issue rather than a BE issue, but it's not the point here. It's just not working well, whereas in Preview (which uses the same PDF Kit APIs, no?) I have significantly less problems.

In many PDFs, I have several spaces AND letters lacking by highlights. And even one is definitely not (only) a cosmetic issue. Again, if I can't search for terms in my notes accurately, how can you state that it represents only a tangential effect? I mean, ok the rest of the app is brilliant, but it's still impacting a very important functionality of BE. I still don't see how you (or anybody) can disagree on that.

Anyway, thanks for your (constantly great) reactivity.

Ben