#1459 Notes list (and export) could include highlighted text even if there is an attached note
When annotating text, the text that is highlighted and any text written in a note attached to that highlight could be considered equally important. In fact this is how Preview for macOS and the ebookreaders Kindle and iBooks operate on PDF and ebooks, respectively: one can select text and write a note, which will both create a highlight and attach a note (in Preview, you have to first create the highlight and then the context menu allows attaching a note to that highlight). As an example of how this could work, please use Preview for macOS and highlight text in a PDF and then attach a note to that highlight. If you open the "Highlights and Notes" view on the left-hand side, you will see that both the text from the highlight and the text from the attached note are displayed. This is great for searching annotation text and for exporting (via Mail) to, for example, Evernote.
At this time, in Skim, if a note is attached to a highlight (i.e., after highlighting text, double-clicking on the text and adding one's own personal notes), then the text of the highlight is "obscured" from the list of notes and from any export. As a workaround for Skim, I have to resort to create highlights and attached notes separately. This means that I need to create 2 highlights: one so that the highlighted text is displayed, and another so that I can edit the note to have my own text. As for notes tied to highlights created in other apps (e.g., Preview) and converted into Skim notes, there is no workaround.
It would be great if the highlighted text were still included in the list of Notes and from all exports, even if there is a note attached (i.e., even if the user has "overridden" the text of a highlight by double-clicking on it and writing a note).
For illustration, I've attached a couple of screenshots of how this looks right now in Preview for macOS and Amazon Kindle for Mac.
The additional notes you see are not really separate notes with a separate text. They are popup annotations, which are just proxies for the text contents of the markup annotations. So "their" text is conserved when cponverting to Skim notes, because thye are part of the markup.
Note that the marked up text is really never contained in any annotation (wherever), and therefore also never exported/saved. It can only be guessed indirectly, and this guess is often quite bad in Apple's PDFKit.
We cannot provide editing through popup annotations proxies, because this is not compatible with earlier OS versions, as Apple didn't have support for it. And we won't drop support.
However we can just display the marked up text separately in the note table, to make it more visible and searchable.
I am not sure whether we should export this in export to text, because for most users this would just duplicate the contents, as the contents by default is set to the marked up text by Skim.
Sounds complicated :)
I thought you already provided editing of the popup annotations. When I double click a marked up text, I get a popup window that I can edit to override the text with my own note. I think I'm misunderstanding
As for export, is it not possible to have both situations:
I don't understand why there would be duplication, but then again I don't know how it's implemented.
Last edit: Julio B 2017-03-02
A popup annotation is a separate annotation added to the page that is a proxy for editing the text contents of another annotation, it's part of the PDF specs, and therefore of the PDF. The editing window is just a facility Skim provides to edit the text contents of the note. Those are different things.
Again, the highlighted text is never exported, and also cannot be exported, as it is never part of any annotation. We just by default set the additional text oif the highlight to the highlighted text when creating the highlight. In Skim, there is no additional note, there is only the text contents of the note. Also, the exporting (with embedding notes) is done by PDFKit, so we cannot modify that is done. In Preview, the highlights table shows the highlighted text (we will also in the next release), the actual text contents is a bit more hidden, but it still there (look in the Inspector). However, Preview makes a mess of things by adding all kinds of custom stuff to the PDF data that falls outside the official PDF specs, and moreover, it does not allow you to edit the text contents without first reasing it. Apple got a lot of flak for messing up their saved PDF this way.
Got it. Thanks for explaining. Sounds like Apple to do such a thing: prioritize UI consistency (with iBooks) over sticking to standards.
Last edit: Julio B 2017-03-02