Feature Request: Highlight and Annotate PDF

[mchapman]

I collect most of my journal articles in electronic rather than paper form. I am trying to start reading these articles on the screen rather than printing them out.

However, there are two things that would make this more productive for me: the ability to highlight and annotate sections of the PDF. There are PDF readers that provide this feature (e.g., Skim) but I would like to be able to do this within Bookends.

Just an idea,

Mark

[Jon]

Hi,

Thanks for the suggestion. FWIW, although you can't create or read Skim annotations in Bookends (which is what you want), you can at least open and read pdfs in Skim (that you edited in Skim) by dragging and dropping them onto the Skim icon in the Finder or dock (this assumes you have turned off "use WebKit to display pdfs".

Jon
Sonny Software

[mchapman]

Thanks for the very quick response.

Your suggestion is a good one. My hesitation with doing this at this point is that as soon as I start using one program to do this I get locked into that program. I would prefer to get locked into Bookends

Mark

[david-emil]

Are there any plans on implementing Snow Leopard's pdf-annotation features? Right now I have to disable the webkit rendering of pdfs, open the pdf in preview, annotate, save and enable the webkit rendering of pdfs to see any annotations I made (which is kind of cumbersum)...

david-emil

[dspedersen]

I don't use neither Adobe Reader (horrible) nor Preview (which I find works better as a picture format Swiss knife) to read PDFs. Skim is a good choice for reading PDFs, with its possibilities of highlighting and other useful annotations. I have set Skim as my default PDF reader and just a double click on the attached PDF and BE opens the file furiously quick in Skim.

Thanks for the very quick response.

Your suggestion is a good one. My hesitation with doing this at this point is that as soon as I start using one program to do this I get locked into that program. I would prefer to get locked into Bookends

Mark

But isn't locking exactly what you do, when doing everything in one program only? BE is, in my opinion, first and foremost a bibliography program, although it has become quite extensive within the last years.

Once again I'd suggest to combine BE with Skim, as Skim is being developed upon in a fast pace and by now is a really sleek and useful PDF reader, imho

[david-emil]

The reason why I prefer using preview is that bookends uses webkit (which seems to be based on Preview) to render pdfs. By enabling preview's annotation features the process of annotating would still be left to preview while within bookends (elminating the steps I mentioned). One possible option (I don't know if technically feasable) would be to enable different viewers based on preference (webkit, preview, skim, adobe acrobat etc.) in bookends - kind of like in safari where adobe acrobat can be used to view pdfs.

david-emil

p.s.: I don't want to use Skim since I want to reduce the amount of programmes used in my workflow and since annotations in preview are stored within the pdf (not as a sidecare file) and are readable in adobe's pdf reader as well.

[ozean]

Yup, I also prefer to use preview for the reasons you gave. In addition, the highlighting features got much better in snow leopard – good enough for my requirements at least. (But nonetheless I am impressed by Skim and I can surely understand why one would prefer to use it instead of Preview…)

[dspedersen]

The reason why I prefer using preview is that bookends uses webkit (which seems to be based on Preview) to render pdfs. By enabling preview's annotation features the process of annotating would still be left to preview while within bookends (elminating the steps I mentioned). One possible option (I don't know if technically feasable) would be to enable different viewers based on preference (webkit, preview, skim, adobe acrobat etc.) in bookends - kind of like in safari where adobe acrobat can be used to view pdfs.

That would, indeed, be the most optimal. I've been using SKim for a while, but I can see that Preview has gotten much better with respect to annotations, i.e. different colors, etc. However, I like the notes pane in Skim, alongside the opportunity of full-screen view, making it more comfortable (and less "noisy") to read longer PDF documents.

[Jon]

Are there any plans on implementing Snow Leopard's pdf-annotation features? Right now I have to disable the webkit rendering of pdfs, open the pdf in preview, annotate, save and enable the webkit rendering of pdfs to see any annotations I made (which is kind of cumbersum)...

Bookends uses webkit, which also uses pdfkit for pdf-specific functions. Preview is an application that also uses pdfkit. The annotation features in Preview are part of the application, not the framework, and Bookends can't "turn them on".

I don't know why you turn of the webkit display in Bookends, edit in Preview, and then turn the webkit display on again. All you need to do is edit in Preview and then, to see the changes in Bookends, click on the reference in the list view again -- that will cause a refresh the pdf display and you'll see the edits.

Jon
Sonny Software

[david-emil]

Bookends uses webkit, which also uses pdfkit for pdf-specific functions. Preview is an application that also uses pdfkit. The annotation features in Preview are part of the application, not the framework, and Bookends can't "turn them on".

in other words, bookends cannot use/implement preview's new annotation feature?

I don't know why you turn of the webkit display in Bookends, edit in Preview, and then turn the webkit display on again. All you need to do is edit in Preview and then, to see the changes in Bookends, click on the reference in the list view again -- that will cause a refresh the pdf display and you'll see the edits.

quite simple: if i open the pdf attached to a reference in bookends with webkit enabled and make an annotation, then preview won't let me save the file under the same name. if i disable webkit then i can open, annotate and save.

the reason i raise this is that i am kind of wishing for a feature similar to that of sente's: "Highlight some text or a figure in the PDF, click a button, and Sente will highlight the selection in the PDF and create a new note on the reference including the selection as a quotation." (http://www.thirdstreetsoftware.com/site ... ement.html)

that would combine both annotating the pdf as well as copying relevant quotes from the pdf to the note stream - but for that to happen a pdf-annotation function has to be possible first.

david-emil

[Jon]

in other words, bookends cannot use/implement preview's new annotation feature?

That's right. It's not something that's accessible to other apps.

As for marking up the pdf in Preview, I see that Preview won't let you save. But rather than turning on and off webkit in Bookends, I'd click on another reference, markup and save from Preview, then click back on the reference. Or close the pdf pane and reopen it. Both require clicks, not menu selections, and are therefore faster.

that would combine both annotating the pdf as well as copying relevant quotes from the pdf to the note stream - but for that to happen a pdf-annotation function has to be possible first.
david-emil

Maybe you're aware of this, but to be sure and so that others reading this thread know, copying quotes from the pdf to the note stream is easy -- drag and drop text from the pdf to the notestream and Bookends will make a notecard out of it.

Marking up the pdf in Bookends isn't possible now, although I wouldn't rule it out the possibility in the future (this is not a hint, there are no plans at present, I'm just not ruling it out).

Jon
Sonny Software

[mchapman]

I just tried to drag and drop text from a PDF and I can't get it to work. Some PDFs will not let me select any text at all. On the PDFs where I can select the text it unhighlights as soon as I click on it to drag it to the notecard. I can copy and paste the text into a notecard.

Use Webkit to display PDFs is turned on. PowerBook G4. OS X 10.4.11

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks, Mark

[Jon]

I can't test on Tiger, so it's possible it's a limitation of that OS. In Leopard/Snow Leopard, if "Use Webkit to display pdfs" is checked, you simply highlight the text you want, drag it to the notes stream pane (you have to be showing notecards for this to work) and drop it. Bookends will make a new notecard and place the dragged text there. You can use the Option key when you select the text in the pdf -- that will give you the ability to select columns of text.

This drag and drop to create a notecard is not limited to pdfs, BTW. Drag and drop text from any application onto the notestream and Bookends will make a notecard out of it. Try it with text from Word, for example.

Jon
Sonny Software

[david-emil]

As for marking up the pdf in Preview, I see that Preview won't let you save. But rather than turning on and off webkit in Bookends, I'd click on another reference, markup and save from Preview, then click back on the reference. Or close the pdf pane and reopen it. Both require clicks, not menu selections, and are therefore faster.

i just tried that – it didn't work.

Maybe you're aware of this, but to be sure and so that others reading this thread know, copying quotes from the pdf to the note stream is easy -- drag and drop text from the pdf to the note stream and Bookends will make a notecard out of it.

i know (and i really like how you implemented the note stream - thank you!!! ) - but i actually copy the text in the pdf and have a keyboard short cut which when activated in the note stream pastes the copied text, adds quotation marks, adds @ and places the cursor after the @ so i can add the page number.

Marking up the pdf in Bookends isn't possible now, although I wouldn't rule it out the possibility in the future (this is not a hint, there are no plans at present, I'm just not ruling it out).

ok, thanks for that

I just tried to drag and drop text from a PDF and I can't get it to work. Some PDFs will not let me select any text at all. On the PDFs where I can select the text it unhighlights as soon as I click on it to drag it to the notecard. I can copy and paste the text into a notecard.

while i don't know how 10.4 works and handles pdfs, i do know that some pdfs - especially older ones from jstor - consist of scanned pages, in other words, each page is an image and that means you can't select and copy the text.

david-emil

[Jon]

I opened the pdf in Preview with the WebKit HUD display (the gray controls that popup). In that case I couldn't edit the pdf in Preview and save (in Preview) as the same name. BUT, if I opened with the pdf using the Bookends Open Attachment contextual menu, or simply double clicking on it in the Finder, I could edit it in Preview and save. The change showed up in Bookends when I simply clicked again on the reference. Please try that.

Jon
Sonny Software