Making notes from highlight while in the Notes field moves focus to Notes stream

[Asutu]

I don't know if this was addressed before, but a quick search didn't return meaningful results.

I really like the Notes field as it's possible to edit and see all the annotations together as a single continuous note file, and have been trying to start taking all my notes there. For the major part it's great, however, one thing that's not really working quite well for me at the moment is that every time "Highlight Selection and Make Bookends Notecard" or any of the "Make Bookends Notecard from Selection" options are used, Bookends leaves the Notes field and takes me to the Notes stream. (I don't use the other PDF notes options, but it seems the behaviour is the same)

Is it possible to change this behaviour and tell Bookends to avoid this back and forth between the Notes field and the Notes stream and add the notecard directly in the former? At least for the user, it would be better to never loose the focus on the Notes field if notes are being added here.

Thanks,
Pedro

[Jon]

You mean it takes the focus from the PDF to the notes stream, right? You can't add to the notes stream from the Notes field.

Jon
Sonny Software

[Asutu]

No, what I mean is that takes the focus from the Notes field (in the Edit reference panel) to the Notes stream.

Not sure if this terminology is the most correct, but when I'm writing notes in Bookends in the Notes field (in the Edit reference panel), with the PDF shown in the attachments window (I usually do this in full screen with the PDF and the Notes field open on the right), and then select some text in the PDF and do any of the "Highlight Selection and Make Bookends Notecard" or any of the "Make Bookends Notecard from Selection" options, the focus (of the right panel) changes from the Notes field (in the Edit reference panel) to the Notes stream. I then have to click to move to the Edit reference panel, click again to enter the Notes field and scroll the way back to where the (last) notecard was added.

[Jon]

I understand. It's done on purpose, the notion being that if you make a notecard you want to work with it (e.g. edit it or otherwise manipulate it). I'm not sure if this is something I'd want to change (and it's not something I'd make a preference). Actually, the option to make a note card when the note stream is not showing should be disabled (this snuck through), so one option would be to do that so there is no confusion. The PDF note stream options are meant to be used when the note stream is visible.

Jon
Sonny Software

[Asutu]

I see. No worries, it's not a big deal. What I usually do is to copy the text from the PDF, highlight it and then paste it into the notes field. The only snag is that I have to manually add `>` for quoting and the page number. Maybe there are other options to streamline annotations (maybe other can also share their workflows), but I like to use the notes field because it acts as a single document and is easy to see everything written above and below even with large texts.

In any case, many thanks for the prompt reply!
Pedro

[Jon]

Why do you need to see the Notes field? When you use the command to make a notecard from the selected text, the text is added to the Notes field for you? It seems to me you are taking extra steps.

Just select the text and choose the menu option "Highlight Text And Make Bookends Notecard". Then all is done in one step.

Jon
Sonny Software

[Asutu]

I was also starting to realise that. I was using the notes field because I could go back and forth in the text and also because could easily change the text that was written before (I guess this was my main motivation). But the bulk of notes are actually atomic and could work directly from the Notes stream.

[Asutu]

After exploring a bit more the annotation functionality in Bookends, I'm posting below some thoughts that I think could help improve the workflow, imho, for note-taking within Bookends (this has nothing to do with reference management, which I think is 5 stars). It is possible I may have overlooked some functionality and if so I apologise for that. This is all related with the Notes stream:

- I don't understand why the text formats that are sent to the notecards for “Highlight Selection and Make Bookends Notecard” and “Make Notecard from Selection and Page #” are different. Sometimes I don't want to highlight the PDF, as the quote is enough, but these 2 methods are inconsistent in their output. In the former, we get "@100\n>quoted text" whereas in the latter "@100 quoted text". It seems the first method is much preferable because in the notes stream the quote is easily distinguishable with a dim grey colour and it is also compatible with Markdown, which is nice when exporting the notes. Since the return value is apparently (to the user) the same, it would be nice to be consistent independently of whether I want to highlight the PDF or not.

- most of the times I want to add additional content to a notecard. This works OK with a single return between phrases/paragraphs, but two returns and Bookends creates a new notecard, thus breaking the connection between the comments I add and the quoted text of the notecard. Having all the text without any separation between "sections" within a notecard is not an option for me because I like to have ideas/comments/criticisms/whatever in clearly defined and visible paragraphs.

- I thought the "Copy Notecard as Hypertext Link" could be useful to link between notes, but they only seem to copy the associated reference, not the notecard, e.g. bookends://sonnysoftware.com/24718 (which seems to be the reference?).

- it would be nice to have some option to expand the notecards in the Notes stream so that we can see the full content of the notes. Otherwise, for some notes with a few more lines of text I need to click in the notecard to enter edit mode and then exit again which breaks a bit the whole flow for reading/reviewing notes. Switching to the Notes field in the Edit reference pane could be another option, but that would lead to the initial question in this post.

Hope these are useful comments.
Cheers,
Pedro

[Jon]

1. These sorts of small inconsistencies creep in as features are removed, added, and modified over the years. I agree with you, and in the next update both will put a return after the page number.

2. You can deal with this in many ways. For example, use Return + space for each separating line. Bookends will keep each separated section in the same notecard.

3. Notecards are by design atomized sections of the Notes field. You can switch back and forth when you think it's useful. But the PDF note stream features are meant to be used when the note stream is visible and you have instant feedback.

Jon
Sonny Software

[Asutu]

1. These sorts of small inconsistencies creep in as features are removed, added, and modified over the years. I agree with you, and in the next update both will put a return after the page number.

Thanks for looking into this. I think that to be consistent, both would also had the same '>' before the quoted text.

2. You can deal with this in many ways. For example, use Return + space for each separating line. Bookends will keep each separated section in the same notecard.

This is nice, and it works! Thanks!

3. Notecards are by design atomized sections of the Notes field. You can switch back and forth when you think it's useful. But the PDF note stream features are meant to be used when the note stream is visible and you have instant feedback.

I understand. Having some option to toggle to show the full content of the notecards in the Notes stream would also be nice though. I was (heavily) annotating a paper in Bookends and needed to look into the annotations from yesterday and the day before and seeing all the text in the notecards would be useful for these cases.

Pedro

[tonywatkins]

I also find the switch between notecards in the Notes stream and edit mode to be very slightly irritating in terms of workflow. One small thing that would help is to be able to exit edit mode with a keyboard command – cmd+enter or cmd-S – after typing in the note, rather than having to mouse down to the bottom right corner to click close (I wonder if 'close' might be better labelled 'save', in contrast to 'cancel', since the note closes in both cases).

[Jon]

Press Enter to accept (not Return), Escape to abort.

The note closes in both cases, but Cancel closes it without saving any changes. But Save isn't bad, either.

Jon
Sonny Software

[tonywatkins]

Thanks, Jon. There is no separate enter key on a MacBook Pro keyboard.

[Jon]

I found this with google:

To access the Enter key on a MacBook Pro, hold down the fn key and press the Return key.

Jon
Sonny Software

[tonywatkins]

I have just found the same thing and was about to post it here. You're too quick! Thanks! I can't believe I've never known that having used a MBP since about 2007!