PDF reader — limited text selection?

dbrear

I've just found that I can only select a few pages of a book. CTRL-A won't select it all, and if I select a bit, then move down a few pages and select a bit more, I can only do this a few times before the selection disappears.

I can of course open the file in another reader which works properly, but ...?

martynas_b

This is how Zotero PDF reader currently works. It only renders pages that you are reading and a few more above and below. Therefore you can't copy text from other pages.

But if there is an interest in selecting and copying the whole PDF file text, we could consider implementing this. Although for large PDFs there would be a huge delay until the text is copied.

dbrear

I normally use Foxit Reader. CTRL-A to select all is pretty well instantaneous; CTRL-C to copy it all takes 12 seconds ('Late antique and early Medieval Hispania: landscapes without strategy?'; 99,000 words) which is entirely acceptable.

This is a 58,443KB file, available here — https://b-ok.cc/book/10991540/9ba79c or here — https://dokumen.pub/qdownload/late-antique-and-early-medieval-hispania-landscapes-without-strategy-1785709968-9781785709968.html

I use Zotero to tag pdfs (articles and books) so I can see what covers what. I copy the text and paste into Compare Suite Light to compare the content with my standard list of tags to see what the text contains, so I can tag the text in Zotero.

Thanks for your interest. It would certainly be useful to have this capability in Zotero. I don't imagine I'm alone in wanting to copy the whole of a text.