[Zotero 7.0.11] Odd annotation behavior

signsinthedust · 2025-02-05T17:31:26+00:00

Occasionally, I notice that annotations appear in the Sidebar in an incorrect order. Take a look at the following screenshots and compare the green highlights:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u11045196/7a0p6ifk6zhgnibnzg0y.png

vs.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u11045196/zhc39rnp0eg9c6yhd4et.png

This behavior does not repeat in other PDF viewers and editors, such as DEVONthink's.

signsinthedust · 2025-02-05T17:33:24+00:00

This happens in quite a few of my PDFs. Here's a link to the PDF in the OP:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XznSJlBWusAH3mQAUrFg8mLc4eao2DSd/view?usp=sharing

(The author gives out this book for free, so don't worry about downloading it)

martynas_b · 2025-02-06T12:04:53+00:00

Because the OCR software created an unnatural text flow, try selecting text from top to bottom. Some PDF viewers attempt to fix this, but it can cause side effects. For example Acrobat Reader doesn't do that. The best option is to re-OCR the book.

signsinthedust · 2025-02-06T19:12:54+00:00

Fair enough. I wonder what would cause my OCR tools to produce such oddly formatted text layers. I'll look into it

signsinthedust · 2025-02-07T17:57:17+00:00

I can confirm that the problem was caused by the OCR layer on the PDF. Thanks, martynas_b :)