Clipping diagrams

[michaelward]

Hi,
I know this has come up occasionally for both desktop and iOS as a question. Any plans to enable easy clipping of figures as Sente used to? I appreciated we can screen grab then convert to PDF and attach but a way to do this a little more easily and ideally have the clippings in the note stream would really help in allowing us to grab the essential bits of a paper

Cheers

Michael

[iandol]

This sounds like an excellent feature I would certainly use! +1 for consideration for a future release

[Jon]

Notecards are text only. Changing that would be a massive undertaking. It may happen at some point, but it's not in our plans at the moment.

Jon
Sonny Software

[iandol]

Hi Jon, what about the simpler option, clipping makes additional attachments? I would still find that very useful. Often there is a figure that is critical from a paper and having an easy way to clip it as a separate attachment would be great. At its simplest, we would use the macOS screen clipping tools to clip out a figure to the clipboard and Bookends would import the clipped image to the reference. In this simplistic case the user would make two steps:

• With a PDF viewed in Bookends, use the macOS key bindings to clip to clipboard.
• Bookends and the reference will still have focus so have a command/icon to "Attach from clipboard".

[Jon]

Perhaps. The problem is that Bookends would have to know you've invoked the system grab and also know file path to the pict. I have no idea if that's possible (much less how one would do it). Frankly, this smacks of something quite peripheral to reference management. It's a task for information management software, like DEVONthink or Tinderbox, with which Bookends works quite well.

Jon
Sonny Software

[iandol]

If you "Attach from Clipboard" Bookends does not need to know anything, it is the user's prerogative to use that function after they have copied to clipboard. The only thing Bookends may need to do is check the clipboard content is a format that Bookends expects. It could use the same method Bookends uses for naming PDFs to name the attachment (plus append a –clip1, –clip2 etc).

I don't see how highlighting text data to notes and "highlighting" figure data to attachments is really conceptually any different; one may also argue the note stream is peripheral to reference management. But it is for you to prioritise Bookends features.

[Jon]

Indeed notes are not a core feature of reference management! I added them, however, because they are a logical extension to an abstract. Embedding graphics within text is not a logical extension to me, however, but a stretch. Adding them as an attachment is conceptually similar to having the full PDF as an attachment. Doing this easily and with an intuitive AI would be a challenge. Something to think about.

Jon
Sonny Software

[Jon]

The more I think about the request to allow figure clipping from an already attached PDF the less sense it makes. You already have the PDF (which has the figure), why duplicate it? In addition, if you make a quote from the, say, figure legend in a notecard (just highlight the text in the PDF) you can go to it instantly by clicking on the notecard. So making an additional attachment that is NOT linked to a notecard is a step backward.

Jon
Sonny Software

[iandol]

Because a picture is worth a thousand words!!!

Seriously, I have a visual memory, and I absolutely remember figures of a paper but can easily forget the author, the year, the title, the journal. I thus spend absolutely ages laboriously scrolling through potential candidate papers till I find it. Some papers the only thing of merit for my needs is one figure, the text is basically superfluous! Clipping the figure legend would be an option, but it is an indirect route (hmm, I clipped "Figure 3. blah", perhaps that means this is a clue the figure and not the text is important?). With an attached figure directly available I could much more easily scan through those refs (found because they have multiple attachments) and visualise instantly the relevant data figure instantly without scrubbing through lots of PDFs.

[Jon]

It's not "clipping" the figure legend, it's "quoting" the figure legend (i.e. it is still searchable text). I get the feeling you're not that familiar with notecard title, quotes, tags, and notes, all of which are separate things. And that if you have a quote from the text (which Bookends can make for you *automatically*, then you can go to it instantly (and anything around it, including a figure). I don't want to pursue this any more on the forum -- if you don't understand what I'm talking about contact me when I get back from vacation in a week and I'll send you screen snaps.

Jon
Sonny Software

[iandol]

Dear Jon, thanks, and indeed you hunch is correct in that I've only recently started using Bookends notecards for annotating my PDFs so this is new to me Perhaps the original poster has a different take than me, with his experience with Sente...

I'll contact you when you're back, enjoy your break!

[Dellu]

The main point of the clipping in Sente was to make the notes self-suffient after they are exported. Exportign a note that takes about an image without the image included--doesn't make sense. For the exported notes to be self sufficient, the image should be embedded. Sente stores the annotations in some kind of XML format. That is how people wrote scripts to export the annotations including the clipped images in RTDF format.

The thing is: the annotation is the main selling point for Sente. The reference manegement is a second citizen. That is my exerience.

BE on the other hand, is a reference manager in full force. The system built into the reference management in BE is rich. It is understandable if the extereme peripheries of annotation are not supported. Even the dedicated readers like PDF Expert are not able to do it. Skim can snap the pictures. But, it cannot export them with the notes; as the export templates are text only. Right now, I am augmenting it with Keyboard Maestro script to snap the images to a dropbox folder and insert the link into the annotation. Once the annotations are exported in Markdown format, the images will be visible in the notes due to the link inserted into the annotation. You guys might try the same strategy if your ultimate goal is for exporting the notes.

Still, in the long run, it might be something to think about, specially for the IOS version of BE. It would really be nice if the ios version of BE is a complete annotation system: as the desktop version is a complete reference manager. The ipad is best for reading; and the mac is the best for writing and inserting references. I support the idea of gearing the ipad version towards reading and annotating.

[michaelward]

Thanks all for the considered discussion. I personally use the quote feature to create a summary of the article within bookends. Being able to incorporate the most important diagrams would be very useful. I do use devonthink but I find bookends easier as my primary reading tool on the go. In an ideal world I'd read the articles and highlight the most useful bits including diagrams within bookends then import into devonthink for archiving

Cheers

M

[Dellu]

import into devonthink for archiving

Temporary solution: you can try a method like this: https://dellu.wordpress.com/2014/04/30/ ... down-text/
(this is how I solved the problem of images within plain texts across my systems--plain text is the future-proof method of storing notes; but, it is annoying that it cannot embed images)

You need to archive your notes in markdown format for this to work (simple: change the file extenstion to .md).
- you can use folder actions if you are not a user of hazel
- but, you need Keyboard Maestro ( or typinator) for this to work efficiently.

[kenedy]

sounds very interesting!!