Upgrade StorageFeature requests: add a "selection" button and "copy as" button to both annotation and note window
I just came back to Zotero after many many years. So glad to see developers are active again in improving it. I'm sure the developers are all brilliant, but I can't FTLOG why there isn't a selection button in the pdf annotation window.
Hear me out, this is how I use Zotero and after reading up on a lot of discussions, I do not believe I'm the weird one:
* I read each pdf and markup things important to me; (great that this is now saved as annotations)
* I also open up a (new) note window on the side and I plan to create a summary brief for a chapter of a book or a paper.
* I may want to even link multiple chapter notes or paper notes to a main note using (https://github.com/windingwind/zotero-better-notes)
* I DO NOT want to switch back and forth if possible between different tools, but eventually I want to copy the contents of a single note or multiple notes or main note to somewhere else (as Markdown, Html, or Word).
Here are the difficulties I encounter:
1. sometimes, I just want to copy a piece of plain text from the material I'm reading and paste them into the note window. I don't need them saved as annotations! With a selection mode, I can then just skip annotations, and directly paste them into the note.
2. I know I can drag annotations into the note window, but a "multi-select" of several annotations, followed up by a copy-as (plain text, markdown, or rich text) action would be a much clearer way for inserting snippets into other places.
Hear me out, this is how I use Zotero and after reading up on a lot of discussions, I do not believe I'm the weird one:
* I read each pdf and markup things important to me; (great that this is now saved as annotations)
* I also open up a (new) note window on the side and I plan to create a summary brief for a chapter of a book or a paper.
* I may want to even link multiple chapter notes or paper notes to a main note using (https://github.com/windingwind/zotero-better-notes)
* I DO NOT want to switch back and forth if possible between different tools, but eventually I want to copy the contents of a single note or multiple notes or main note to somewhere else (as Markdown, Html, or Word).
Here are the difficulties I encounter:
1. sometimes, I just want to copy a piece of plain text from the material I'm reading and paste them into the note window. I don't need them saved as annotations! With a selection mode, I can then just skip annotations, and directly paste them into the note.
2. I know I can drag annotations into the note window, but a "multi-select" of several annotations, followed up by a copy-as (plain text, markdown, or rich text) action would be a much clearer way for inserting snippets into other places.
1. when highlight mode is unselected, select a piece of text and then
ctrl+v text+citation
ctrl+shift+v plain text
2. when select a highlighted annotation, and after ctrl+c:
ctrl+v text+ citation
ctrl+shift+v text+citation+linkback
These just sound like some basic misunderstandings.
The highlight tool can be locked on, such that any selection automatically creates a highlight, or you can leave it off and select text normally, which lets you either copy with Cmd/Ctrl-C or create a highlight manually by picking a color from the popup. This is a totally standard modal approach used in various PDF readers. For regular selection mode, some PDF readers show popups, while others (e.g., macOS Preview) require some other action to create a highlight from the selected text. Some of the ones with popups include a Copy button in the popup, but that's redundant — using Cmd/Ctrl-C (or Edit → Copy, or right-click → Copy) to copy text is a universal mechanism. It's not like you see a popup with a Copy button if you select text on this webpage, but you can still copy it.
You can select multiple annotations using standard modifier keys (Cmd or Ctrl), both on the PDF page and in the sidebar, and then press Cmd/Ctrl-C to copy them either to Zotero notes as active annotations or as Markdown/HTML to a text editor.
If you copy unhighlighted text, the default paste into a Zotero note will give you an active Zotero quote and citation, to provide a lightweight way of creating those without needing to create a permanent annotation. For the plain-text paste, you'll get raw text, because obviously it needs to be possible to just copy raw text from a PDF.
If you copy a Zotero annotation, the default paste into a Zotero note will give you an active Zotero quote and citation. For a plain-text paste, you'll get the Markdown-with-backlinks format that you get if you drag or paste a Zotero annotation into a plain-text editor.
The plain-text modes are primarily for pasting into plain-text editors. The way clipboards work, apps put multiple flavors of data on the clipboard, and the format used depends on where you paste it. Ctrl-Shift-V will force use of the plain-text flavor, but that doesn't mean you're pasting it somewhere where that flavor makes sense. It's not particularly expected that you would use Ctrl-Shift-V to paste into a Zotero note, because the whole point of the new note editor is that it has embedded data and can provide automatic links back to the PDF page. But you can use Ctrl-Shift-V if you really want just the raw text for some selection.
Why do you think people are unlikely to Ctrl-Shift-V to paste plain text into a note?
Here is my use case. I would like to paste section headings for organizational purposes, but I do not need them to be highlighted annotations or cited.
Why do you think people do not need to copy plain text out of highlighted annotations? Here is another use case. I create study notes and flashcards, which are not for publications, so I do not need citations or backlinks.
To clarify my excitement about the recent development of Zotero, I didn't really leave the app either, as a matter of fact, I have been paying and using it for storing pdf papers and references for more than 12 years.
When I say I left it, I meant I had to move on to other applications outside the use cases of reference and citations. Active development and Active maintenance are 2 different things. My impression is only until very recently, zotero has finally started listening to user feedback and aspired to be more than a citation/reference tool but closer to a knowledge management tool. I still remember more than 10 years ago, people had already asked for various improvements on pdf annotations and web page annotations (which are still missing). Instead of listening to user feedback, developers at that time had decided to REMOVE those related (half-implemented, or accidentally working) features, with no judgment intended. After that also removed was the embedded plugin.
Anyway… Well as I say, there's more potential use for pasting raw text. There's essentially no reason to paste Markdown with backlinks into a Zotero note. For something like section headings, that's potentially something Zotero could handle automatically for you — adding section headings automatically when creating a note from a PDF's annotations has been requested before. We could also consider providing an option to only copy raw text for unhighlighted text, for people who would prefer to always have raw text pasted into Zotero notes for unhighlighted text without needing to use Ctrl-Shift-V. But we think being able to just select some text and drag or copy it to a note to get a quote and citation makes more sense as the default behavior. If you're using the Zotero note editor and you don't want the automatic annotation citations, you can just toggle them off from the note menu, while still getting the benefit of backlinks. Again, the point of the new note editor is that rich data is embedded and it can display things in dynamic, customizable ways.
If you're copying somewhere else, you can hold down Shift to select text separately from the annotation and copy the raw text normally.
And please stop with the accusatory framing here ("Why do you think people do not need to copy plain text out of highlighted annotations?"). As the developers of the software, we need to make opinionated decisions about default behaviors that we think will provide the best experience for the most people. That doesn't mean we don't try to make the software as flexible as possible for other uses (e.g., "hold down Shift"). It's OK just to ask how best to accomplish something.