The Skim PDF viewer and note taker for Mac OS X was originally developed for scientific researchers, but it offers features for anyone who wants to read and annotate PDF files. The most recent version, released last week, addressed issues brought on by Apple’s recent release of Snow Leopard.
The software is designed to simulate as much as possible what researchers do with their printed papers, including reading, highlighting, and adding Post-it notes. It’s free, fully featured, and highly customizable. Among other things, it offers:
- easy annotation modes, which allow one-sweep highlighting or quickly adding a single note
- full-screen reading mode
- a separate presentation mode with page transitions
- quick previews of link and bookmark targets in tool tips
- snapshots: static sections in separate windows for easy review (e.g. for a table or image on one page with a description on the next)
- a reading bar that highlights one or a few lines that you’re reading
- synchronization between LaTeX sources and PDF output, as well as automatic reloading
Though it lets you highlight and annotate documents, Skim does not modify the underlying PDF data, so you can always view the clean PDF with a button click, and can add notes to PDF files with restricted access. New features in the latest release let you open all PDF files in a folder and save PostScript and DVI files with attached notes. You can find a host of tips and tricks for using the software on the project’s wiki.
Developer Christiaan Hofman says Skim is basically feature-complete, but improvements are in the works, including 64-bit support. If you’d care to help implement things like enhanced support for animations and coverflow, you can contact the project through its mailing lists.