Include headings when extracting annotations

alexander_b

Hi everyone,

I use the "Add note from annotations" feature all the time and it's great.
For me, a really useful addition would be for the headings from the Document Outline (if available) to automatically be inserted into the note (e.g. formatted as "Heading 2"), thus structuring the annotations.

I don't think that's currently possible, so I'm intending this as a feature suggestion. If it is, I'd appreciate someone telling me how to do it.

dstillman

Not currently possible, but we'll think about how we might do that.

dstillman

@alexander_b: The biggest question would be…which headings? The outline could include quite a few levels. Do you want the entire outline, even if there are no annotations between them? Do you want to specify a minimum nesting level? (Each time? In a setting?)

alexander_b

Tough to say. I'd say as the default the entire outline should be extracted when using the feature (even if there are no annotations between headings), as it's quicker to delete unneeded headings than to add ones later. I guess there should be a setting for this, though.

Regarding the minimum nesting level, I'd probably not offer a choice for that, for the sake of simplicity. I think ZotFile also just always extracted the entire Table of Contents. Anyway, if people want to limit the amount of headings from a long document (i.e. a book), they may just choose to leave out headings without corresponding annotations.

alexander_b

Another question would be if the feature itself should be another option in the right-click menu, or just a setting that changes how "Add note from annotations..." works. I think a setting might be more elegant, as I don't see the need to change this on a file-by-file basis. So maybe in the settings there would be something like the following two checkboxes:

[ ] Include headings/outline when adding a note from annotations
----[ ] Leave out headings without corresponding annotations