Sonny Software

AppleScript? Unlikely. You can already move PDF annotations to notes directly in Bookends. However, we will be introducing a feature that will make it easy to use attached PDF annotations in other apps, which I think you will find useful.

Jon
Sonny Software

That sounds great. Looking forward it. I should say, one of the top reasons I stick with bookends is because of how it plays nicely with external apps and doesn't force you into a closed garden.

I just wanted to state, though late, that the changes made really make my workflow much more efficient. As a former Sente user —this was one of its strongest points— and a humanities scholar, close reading is essential for my work. I resorted to using MacOs Preview in the meantime, but it is a bit clunky and the colors are too dark. The current workflow in Bookends and its number of options (notecard, quote, highlight, underline, comment, PDF note, Add a highlight to a notecard, etc.), its more stylish and clear design, make it way more efficient and flexible than Sente ever was. I use this feature for reading, researching, and even teaching. Thank you for the continued improvements!

In the latest version (14.0.6), when I highlight text in an attached PDF file, the pop-up appears very briefly and then text is deselected - I normally highlight text in order to copy it to paste somewhere else, but the pop-up is there too briefly to do anything useful, and then text is deselected. I can copy text by selecting text and then pressing command-c before releasing the mouse button, but that is not expected behaviour.

This may have already been addressed by a "silent" update since 11 March, since I have this problem on two of the three macs on which I use bookends, and the one without the problem was the one on which bookends was updated most recently.

- David

I haven't heard of this before. My guess is that you're running some process, maybe a utility, that is grabbing the focus and thus causing the popover window to close. If you can't think of anything, try rebooting in Safe mode (Shift key held down).

Jon
Sonny Software

That sounds likely, 'though why I have not experienced it before 14.0.6, I'm not sure. It also seems to be intermittent (on all 3 macs!) - I'll try the safe boot and also take a look in the console logs as well as trying to work out under what circumstances it happens.

I came here to report the same problem with losing highlight focus. Happening on both my machines.

Since there are few reports of this it's clearly some local issue that's interfering. Please try the same steps I suggested to DRNash and let us know what you find.

Jon
Sonny Software

I have had the same problem, with the popover only staying up for about 1 second. Too brief to do anything. After quitting every other running app (using cmd-tab) the popover was still transient. I quit and restarted Bookends 14.0.6 and the popover stayed open, without resorting to Safe Mode.

Thanks for the info. If it happens again, please test after quitting each open app and see if we can identify an app that is doing this.

Jon
Sonny Software

A user reported, and I confirmed, that the PopClip utility can take the focus away from the Bookends annotation popover and cause it to close. The behavior is erratic, though, sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. Turning off PopClip and then back on again can also help. If you are running PopClip and are running into this problem, you can exclude Bookends.app in the PopClip app and it should no longer conflict.

Jon
Sonny Software

Is there a way of turning it off, though?

I use Popclip most often for copying and pasting, and found it helpful to copy and paste text from the PDF into the database fields. Excluding Popclip means I can only copy easily from the PDF without being able to paste as easily. This is the functionality I would prefer.

Turn off the popover dialog in Bookends? No, that isn't an optional feature, it's integral. It's possible I could allow the selection to remain when the popover window was closed, but I haven't tried that with PopClip.

Jon
Sonny Software

In the next update the selection in the PDF will remain when the popover is closed. This will allow you to use PopClip while in Bookends (but of course you won't have the other features it offers, like creating a notecard from the selection).

Jon
Sonny Software

Thanks! I think this will work fine. I know you have a lot of people with very particular workflows that are asking you to accommodate everything. Thank you for your continual and continuous work!