Skim PDF Reader and Note-taker for OS X

The absence of this feature is a show-stopper for me too. It must be
possible to overcome the technical issues since solutions exist out there
that do exactly that.

First off, I love Skim.

But, I think this feature is critical to an application really having
"note" capabilities. I would first, however, forget about pen
input--that's bogging down the conversation. Let's start with mouse input
(the pen also provides mouse input, so no big deal). And how to store the
data? How about a box simply pops up (like notes) and everything drawn in
there is encapsulated by that object? It would be nice if this was
transparent such that it looked like it was being drawn on the page, but
anything would do.

Can we get down to details on why this would be so difficult?

There's no "compromise" in that, it just is a completely different request
that has no relation to this RFE, and that has already been rejected.

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From what I am reading, it seems difficult to add free-hand input. How
about as a compromise to allow in presentation mode to make notes (like
arrows). In this way one can at least highlight something on slides (what
tablets with pens are great for).

I currently display my slides in fullscreen mode, have note-type line
switched on and change to the next slide with the mouse wheel. I guess,
however, this is abusing the fullscreen mode. What I would prefer to have
is to present the slides in Presentation mode and be able to make certain
annotations (and be able to delete them again would be an additional
bonus).

Thanks a lot for the great work.

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I fully agree with last post. THe freehand tool would be great, making
sure that not single strokes, but but a group of strokes is the note.

I would also find very useful to have a freehand input as well. (I'm
adding to this feature request as the freehand input feature request points
here; I would not use this with a tablet but just with the mouse.)

However I would not do it as it is done in PDFPen. There, each stroke is a
separate note, and it's not very useful when doing multi-strokes scribbles
(they are painful to move later on, for instance). The way I would see it
working is:
- switch to scribble input, mouse drags in the PDF view now correspond to
strokes
- when switching out of scribble input (for instance hitting the scribble
button, or using a keyboard shortcut), convert all these strokes to some
graphic format
- add the graphic as a note in the PDF

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I don't know what you mean by "not knowing what the workflow would be",
but in Acrobat, yes each pen stroke of an annotation is handled as a
separate note-like object. It is not very different from drawing a straight
line or circle on the page, just that the object is a bezier curve.

As for testing, a pen/tablet is not required; the mouse is also capable of
drawing a line using the pencil tool, as in Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.

As a student, now that all our class notes are supplied in digital format,
this tool is exactly what I'm looking for.

That's correct. But it's also not really relevant, because there does not
exist a tablet layer view or something. It's all custom implementation. And
I don't want to and cannot implement it. It's also a lot of work. Moreover
I don't know what the workflow should be.

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...I guess you cannot "extend" the PDFView to add a layer for tablet
notes, can you?

Display can easily be done using the PDFAnnotationInk objects, which are
built into PDFKit.

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Thanks for the reply.
Just one question: how do you draw notes on the PDF view?

If I had a tablet, I would happly help.

I know what you mean and the answer is no. We don't have control over the
views used to display the PDF. And anyway, it's irrelevant, because it does
not solve any of the problems, it only adds problems we cannot solve. The
problem is in the workflow design and most of all (time to do the)
implementation (you want to do that?)

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Simply... Wouldn't it be possible to add a layer for hand-drawings?
A sort of bitmap image...

Do you know what I mean?

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Jannis would love this too!

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I agree, drawing like with a simple pencil tool using my tablet would be
great. It could be like drawing with the mouse in Windows Paint, so just
use the mouse coordinates for pixel input.

You could use additionally an algorithm to convert the drawing to splines
to
smooth the drawing and to save it efficiently.

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I would love this feature as well.

I would really like this feature.

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I like the suggestion to have a transparent page-sized field to capture
all pen input. It would be impossible to differentiate diagrams from text
unless inkwell is being used but inserting a "Diagram" that covers the
whole page would be a good tradeoff. If it's too difficult to add pen based
support, would it at least be possible to allow mouse-based freehand
drawing? The wacoms can use the pen for mouse input too. Keep up the good
work!

That's not logic, it's implementation (and impossible for us, as we don't
control the views). The lgic is what the workflow should be. How do you
start/end/append to a note?Simply one note for each stroke wouldn't work,
as it would get you all separate notes.

And not the least, I cannot test it.

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Concerning the logic: A possibility could be to have one transparent
page-sized note per page, on which one could use the pen in order to draw.
All other notes should then be "above" the page-sized one. Perhaps it is
not optimal but it is almost exactly what we get with real paper.

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Writing down notes is one of the few reasons that force me to print out
papers. Let's be honest, typing notes in boxes is not practical.

Granted that not many people have tablets, but some do! And this feature
would make it that much easier not to print papers.

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I agree. Take a look at PDF Annotator
<http://www.ograhl.com/en/pdfannotator/>. I'm getting one of the ModBooks
in July and I'd hate to have to use Parallels Desktop to switch to Windows
so I could work on PDF files.

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i agree. the ability to make annotations with an e-pen would be great.

I wouldn't know how the logic would go to add such notes. How would you
know which strokes belong to the same note, or would every stroke be a
separate note?

Moreover, pen input also has different event handlers from mouse events; I
find them a bit confusing. And I cannot test out how they come.

It certainly would be non-trivial to add such support, I think.

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There's a mac program available that has this similar feature...
http://www.smileonmymac.com/PDFpen/

While it's not free and not nearly as awesome as Skim, it at least
accomplishes what you're looking at.

Well,

I would also love pen input, it is actually essential if the ambition is
to become a serious note taker and reduce paper print outs.

I will add some ideas about this in another feature request I have posted
(shortly). The highlight is basically that the first think the Skim could
do is support modifier keys to activate the different note types. That way
I just need to press OPTION and then click the document to highlight/markup
the text I am dragging over.

This should be quite easy, and should not require much more than changing
the shortcuts or preferably adjust the way they work. I would love to see
markup work similar to the Color Picker of PhotoShop; Option changes the
cursor to a markup marker allowing me to drag and mark text directly.

/Johan

PS GREAT work already by the way! Hopefully you will manage to avoid
bloating this slick and fast PDF note taker.