Sonny Software

I'm seeing something a bit odd when I mark up a pdf with a text highlight and then add a comment to the highlight (by right-clicking the highlight and choosing 'Comment…'). In the notes sidebar, such comments are displaying above not below their respective bit of highlighted text, and also coming apart from the highlighted text.

For example, just now I'm highlighting some typos, and putting corrections in comments. I have two on one page and the order I see in the sidebar is:
-Comment on highlight 1
-Comment on highlight 2
-Text highlighted in highlight 1
-Text highlighted in highlight 2

I expected this order (as it would be in the sidebar in Preview or Adobe Reader):
-Text highlighted in highlight 1
-Comment on highlight 1
-Text highlighted in highlight 2
-Comment on highlight 2

Is this expected behaviour? Is there a way to get the order I prefer? If not, could a change be considered? Ideally this would fix the order and also somehow indicate that the comment belongs with the highlight it is attached to.

Highlights and and comments are segregated in the note stream (and colored differently as I recall), as you see. Grouping them would require entirely refactoring how the various elements in the note stream are displayed (it handles a variety of information: highlights, comments, notes, underlines, as well as entries in the Notes field, which are entirely independent of any PDF attachments. Nothing is impossible, but changes here would require some thought, as well as a fair amount of work. I'll add this to the request list and think about it.

Jon
Sonny Software

Many thanks for this reply, and for considering the issue. They are coloured differently, which is helpful.

(As I guess you know, Jon, but for the information of anyone following) it looks like at present the grouping is per page in the pdf, so the Notes pane shows:

All the highlight comments for page 1, in order
All the pieces of highlighted text for page 1, in order
All the highlight comments for page 2, in order
All the pieces of highlighted text for page 2, in order
and so on

Obviously, that gets most problematic when there are lots of highlights with comments on one page, because the highlighted text and its comment then get far apart from each other in the Notes pane – often far enough that scrolling is needed.