Available in preview: Zotero PDF reader and new note editor

dstillman
edited March 4, 2021
We're incredibly excited to share something we've been working on for a long time: a completely new way of working with PDFs and notes in Zotero.

Details here: https://www.zotero.org/support/pdf_reader_preview

As mentioned there, this is an early preview, and we'll be adding more features and making many design, usability, and accessibility improvements before release, so please let us know about any problems you encounter or if there are features you'd like to see. (Best to start new threads for new issues, since there's likely to be a lot to cover!)
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  • enozkan
    edited March 4, 2021
    Fantastic! Loving the pdf reader and annotation tools and the seamless note generation. Thank you!

    I do not have a feature request or an issue, but a question: I saw that highlights I do in the new pdf reader are not saved in the file itself. Is that right? The annotations will not be written to the pdf and probably cannot be viewed outside Zotero? (Perfectly fine by me, but it would be good to know if I could share the annotated pdfs with non-Zotero people or read them on another pdf reader.)

    Edit: Never mind. Missed the Additional Info in the linked page, which explains this all.
  • gagarine
    Nice!
    On macOS, the text is a bit less readable that with Preview.app.
    1) the text seem a tiny bit less black (when zoomed a lot it is black)
    2) a bit blurry and at the same time less smoth

    I'm on a non-retina display. I tested multiple PDF. It's not a lot of difference, but enough to make me prefer reading on preview.
  • dstillman
    @gagarine: Yeah, I see the same. Issue created.
  • egm1b
    Very exciting news to have an integrated pdf reader! A very useful feature would be to have the ability to tag individual annotations so they are easier to search with multimarkdown integration if possible for export. It would be incredibly powerful to be able to export all annotations resulting from a specific tag query. Other than Citavi I don't think anyone else has really implemented it in an efficient manner. Anyway just an idea, I'm not a programmer/developer so have no idea how complicated this might be to do. Zotero Rocks! Thanks again for all you do!
  • dstillman
    @egm1b: Yep, we mention that on the linked page — individual annotations can already be tagged with Zotero tags. They're not searchable yet, but they will be.
  • persican
    Hi there. I just installed this beta version. However, the rendering is very bad as you can see here: https://ibb.co/2YTqbZt

    I am on Linux Mint 20.

    Any ideas?
  • wosk
    It's a very exciting feature which worked really well on Big Sur (11.2.2), thank you to every one involved in development. I've replaced the Mac OS preview with it since and I'll keep it because it's much more convenient. Also I appreciate the separate database for annotation, the tab layout and the fact I can see all notes from the sidebar (much less back and force with Zettlr).

    Things I didn't manage to do, but I'll search more so no need to answer is follow a (internal or external) link in a pdf. The render is really pretty, scrolling is smooth but zooming is slow.
    I'd love if (on Mac at least) the space bar open the pdf of a ref, or at least that this shortcut can be set :)

    This is a big gift for us users (and it makes me happy of my choice of going Zotero years ago :) Thank you so much.
  • erazlogo
    Sounds great! @dstillman does this feature work with linked files? i.e. if i use zotfile, is it worth for me to download the beta? will pdfs need to be stored via zotero for this feature to sync with the ios app?
  • adamsmith
    Also works with linked files, yes.
  • mschwarze
    This is great and already works very well, thank you!

    Two ideas:

    1) Since Zotero cannot replace all functions of an external reader such as OCR, it would be nice to have an easy option to open pdfs externally without having to change the setting back, e.g. as a context menu option ("View PDF with System Standard" or something like that).

    2) When highlighting/annotating text, I'd like to see a text cursor instead of the standard mouse symbol. This would be more precise. Also, it would be great to be able to double-click a word to highlight it or triple-click to highlight the whole line.
  • dstillman
    it would be nice to have an easy option to open pdfs externally without having to change the setting back
    For people using the built-in reader, I'm not sure an external reader would be used enough to merit taking up menu space, particularly since you can always do Show File and double-click. We could consider making it an option, but I suspect this would be fairly niche.
    I'd like to see a text cursor instead of the standard mouse symbol
    We'll fix that — thanks.
    Also, it would be great to be able to double-click a word to highlight it or triple-click to highlight the whole line.
    Yep, that's on our list.
  • mschwarze
    Thanks! Yes, Show File and double click isn't too much work either, that's true. Something else: It would be nice to be able to delete notes directly in the item notes panel, as is possible for annotations in the left panel.
  • aliruba
    Does it only work in iOS? I downloaded it for my Windows and doesn't look the same.
  • dstillman
    @mschwarze: Deleting from the notes pane will be possible soon.

    @aliruba: It works everywhere. You have to enable the preview features from the General pane of the preferences.
  • denlinkd
    edited March 4, 2021
    This is so great. Thanks, everyone.

    I've become quite accustomed to annotating PDFs with Hypothes.is, and one thing I really like with that is that I'm given options about what to do when I select text. Sometimes it's a text annotation, sometimes it's just a highlight. Sometimes it's just me, idly selecting text because it's a habit.

    I think a similar approach to selecting text would work well here. Select text > select what you want to do with it (copy, highlight, create annotation, create new page note, add related citation... other things I haven't thought of). That way, there's really only one default tool (just a cursor that selects text, which maybe switches to crosshair selection with +shift), eliminating the need to switch between tools at the top of the reader, which I found to be disruptive to my reading/annotating flow, especially when I've selected the highlight tool and all I really want to do is copy some text or idly highlight words.

    Another thing, on MacOS: Cmd+Z to undo a highlight would be really nice.

    At any rate, this is a really promising addition. Thank you!
  • denlinkd
    1) Since Zotero cannot replace all functions of an external reader such as OCR
    And speaking of Hypothes.is, another amazing open source project, perhaps there's a way to integrate their recent docdrop OCR tool: https://docdrop.org/ocr/
  • adamsmith
    (@denlinkd @mschwarze Better to take any further discussion of this to a different thread, but there's a well-maintained OCR add-on for Zotero using tesseract https://github.com/UB-Mannheim/zotero-ocr )
  • dstillman
    I think a similar approach to selecting text would work well here. Select text > select what you want to do with it (copy, highlight, create annotation, create new page note, add related citation... other things I haven't thought of).
    @denlinkd: To be clear, you can already select text and create a highlight without switching into highlighter mode. You only need to switch to the highlighter mode if you want every selection to create a highlight.

    A note annotation gets placed at a point on the page, not on specific text (which would be a highlight), so that wouldn't be appropriate on selection. (All annotations, including highlights, can have comments.)

    Some PDF readers put copy buttons in the selection popup, but that seems pointless and distracting to me — computers are full of text that you select, and people know how to copy it.

    (Also, semi-related, and since I haven't mentioned it elsewhere: Zotero lets you drag selected text directly into a note to create a cited quote. You don't actually need to create a highlight first if you don't want to.)
  • dstillman
    edited March 4, 2021
    Cmd+Z to undo a highlight would be really nice.
    Might not happen for a while, but we'll try to add some undo/redo in the PDF reader (though for undoing a highlight specifically, you can also just click it and press Delete on your keyboard).
  • peterpruitt
    This update is wonderful, and really adds a lot of neat functionality to the software.

    Can we have a right click option in the PDF viewer to copy text?

    Thanks!
  • dstillman
    Can we have a right click option in the PDF viewer to copy text?
    Ah, yeah, that should be there. We'll add that.
  • danieltomasz
    edited March 4, 2021
    > it would be nice to have an easy option to open pdfs externally without having to change the setting back

    >For people using the built-in reader, I'm not sure an external reader would be used enough to merit taking up menu space, particularly since you can always do Show File and double-click. We could consider making it an option, but I suspect this would be fairly niche.

    I am voting for this feature request. The option doesn't need to be on by default but It could be available as an option to tick in settings. Another option would be to relegate it to an officially supported plugin (right-click on the item and "Open with system pdf reader" could be available as another option in the menu when clicking on the item)

    Sometimes I need many pdfs open side by side to compare the content of some paragraphs of different articles. This behaviour is not possible to reproduce with an embedded pdf reader.

    Edit: The update is really wonderful, and even without this option is great!
  • dstillman
    @cdsouthan: What do you mean by that?

    This is currently limited to My Library, but it will be enabled for group libraries in a future beta.
  • denlinkd
    @dstillman sorry, I had COMPLETELY missed the actual annotations panel. I was looking only at the notes panel and was very confused. Now that I see it, and now that I've played around with it a little more, I see how highlighting is supposed to work. Thanks for the explanation.

    Also:
    Zotero lets you drag selected text directly into a note to create a cited quote. You don't actually need to create a highlight first if you don't want to.
    WHAT!!!!!!!!!!

    This is such an amazing gift. Thank you!!!
  • dstillman
    sorry, I had COMPLETELY missed the actual annotations panel. I was looking only at the notes panel and was very confused.
    Note that the sidebar is technically completely optional. When it's closed, you get the exact same annotation widget as a popup when you click the annotation. When the sidebar is open, those appear in order in the sidebar instead, and they're searchable (though search is currently fairly limited). They can be edited, deleted, and dragged to notes either way. It's designed to be usable both ways, depending on preference and workflow (and perhaps screen size).
  • sicahjes
    edited March 4, 2021
    I just came across this today after seeing a tweet from Sean Takats, guys this is brilliant!!

    Things I'm loving:

    1. The ability to update Parent Items in the Previewer.

    Often, a page will not have any/all of the meta data needed for the connector and I need to update the parent item. Or, the only option is to save the PDF without a parent item. This used to mean switching back and forth between my PDF reader and Zotero to update the info. Now, I can just go to the Previewer, click the Parent Item icon and view/update all in the one window!

    2. The ability to have multiple PDFs open and they are tabbed. Even if I'm not annotating, this is a great way to review documents. I hate a busy desktop, one less application I need to open now.

    3. Not needing to switch on the highlighter. When I select text with my cursor, a range of highlight options pop up.

    4. The ability to add comments and tags to highlighted text in the lefthand pane.

    A couple of things to note:

    1. I'd like to be able to disable the notes icon/section on the right hand side. It shows all notes saved, for all annotated PDFs, with some notes from the current item listed... but they are visible on the left hand pane anyway. I find myself accidentally clicking this instead of parent item. Given I can see the notes on the left hand side I don't need this or see the point to it.

    If the 'all notes' section was searchable then I would see why this is here... but maybe with a different icon location.

    2. My Zotfile annotations locked once I enabled this, I can no longer edit them. This may be beyond Zotero's control, but worth mentioning.

    Overall, this is a fantastic feature. Thank you!!

    ** I didn't experience any rendering issues - using a 2013 MacBook Air.
  • dstillman
    edited March 4, 2021
    @Jes.Mullins:

    Thanks for all that.

    I think your last two comments are just misunderstandings.
    1. I'd like to be able to disable the notes icon/section on the right hand side. It shows all notes saved, for all annotated PDFs, with some notes from the current item listed... but they are visible on the left hand pane anyway.
    The Notes pane exists for the note editor — that's the point of it, not the notes list. The note editor is where you take general notes on a PDF and where you collect your annotations and start writing around them.

    The list of notes is just to select a note to open in the editor. It shows the item's child notes as well as standalone/child notes from the rest of the library. It's not in any way the same as the left-hand pane, which shows annotations (highlights/sticky-notes/images) from the PDF. You can create a note from a PDF's annotations, but they're not the same thing.
    If the 'all notes' section was searchable then I would see why this is here
    It is searchable — in fact, that's part of why it's there. (The other reason is to let you quickly reopen a recently edited note.)
    2. My Zotfile annotations locked once I enabled this, I can no longer edit them. This may be beyond Zotero's control, but worth mentioning.
    Those aren't "ZotFile annotations" — those are just annotations that you saved to the file in whatever PDF reader you were using before, and now you're viewing the PDF in Zotero. Zotero shows external annotations as read-only, because editing external annotations or trying to sync between external and internal annotations would be very messy and error-prone. Nothing to do with ZotFile — ZotFile provided a way to extract annotations embedded in a PDF into Zotero notes, and Zotero can now do the same thing on its own, in addition to its native annotation functionality.

    If you want to open a PDF in your external reader, you can right-click on an attachment and choose Show File, and open it from there.
  • pro.mahatma
    yes!
    finally i can read more texts in a simple way.
  • alsaibie
    This is great. Thanks for providing this feature.

    I tested it quickly and compared the rendering to Adobe Acrobat and to the viewer in PDF.js. The text rendering quality still needs work. The PDF.js online viewer produces better text rendering (still less smooth than Adobe Acrobat).

    If it is possible to get the text smoothed more as it makes a big difference in reading comfort. And if possible, have a background color option? Light yellow makes it much more comfortable to read for me for instance.

    That's one big reason I switched from Mendeley to Zotero (which allows for tracking external reader highlights).

    Thanks again and good luck.
  • danieltomasz
    This is the thread for providing feedback about beta?
    https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/88089/zotero-beta-with-enabled-pdf-reader-not-fully-themed-on-linux#latest
This discussion has been closed.