Zotero 7 Beta: Keep annotation tools selected during use

kwtaylor

Some of the pdf annotation tools stay selected after use: "Highlight Text", "Underline Text", "Draw" and "Select Area".

Two tools do not exhibit this behaviour however: "Add Text" and "Add Note".

It is frustrating when using these tools repeatedly as it immediately deselects after each use and must be clicked again.

I'm unclear if this is intended or just an oversight. It seems odd it doesn't match the behaviour of the other tools.

martynas_b

Yes, it's intentional. In the past, we tried a different approach, but many users preferred the current method because it prevents the accidental addition of notes or text annotations if you forget to disable the tool. However, we are open to suggestions for improvement.

kwtaylor

How would this be different than leaving the other tools accidently selected? They do not disable when used.

If I were to reframe this as a feature request or improvement, perhaps something like *ctrl+click* or *double-click* would "lock" the tool on for those of us that use it repeatedly?

This would increase the functionality for users that need this feature, but not cause other users to accidently leave it on and become frustrated. What do you think?

dstillman

Because the other tools — at least highlighting, underlining, and drawing — you're likely to be making many separate marks with across a page. At least for most people, a note annotation seems more likely to be something you add occasionally, perhaps interspersed with highlights or underlines. Text annotations could maybe go either way.

But people obviously work in different ways, so we'll think about how best to address this. We could possibly just make this a per-tool setting.

kwtaylor

Yes, I agree. I used these tools much less frequently as well until I started importing academic lectures (slides) into Zotero. Here, taking notes with a text box or a single sticky note for each page is more relevant than highlighting, since most information on a slide is "important" and semantically compressed.

I think this is just Z7 being a victim of it's own success! I have started to use it for all note taking because the new viewer is so good. My research sources are all in the same collection with annotated slides from lectures.

Z7 is really impressive and I can't imagine using anything else.

I thank you folks for your amazing work :)