Suggestions for a new built-in Zotero PDF reader

auster
When I create an item note from annotations or add quotations to a note, it would be nice to have my comments more visible and separate from quotations somehow. In its present state, they blur with the quotations. Thanks.
  • dstillman
    edited September 18, 2021
    (Please use new, more specific thread titles when creating new threads, and create separate threads for separate feature requests. It makes it much easier for us to keep track of threads. I've split off your second post.)
    it would be nice to have my comments more visible and separate from quotations somehow
    You can enable annotation colors from the note menu in the top-right corner.
  • auster
    That's a great feature and I will certainly use it, but what I want is for Zotero to automatically make comments visually distinct from quotations WHEN I generate a new note 'from annotations'.

    I can of course do it manually, but if I have read a long text, highlighted many of its parts, and wrote many comments, then manual change of the colour of the comments might be a bit tedious.
  • dstillman
    Do you just mean you want to be able to set a default for that option?
  • claude70
    Would having the option to import annotations as blockquotes rather than as paragraph text with quotation marks be an option? (I'm guessing it might mess up the ways in which people get quotes out of notes and into their documents, though.)

    My personal preference would be to allow for styles (preferably user-editable) that could then be applied to elements (essentially applying a CSS class to the element). I've always done that manually using creating styles in notes.css and then editing the source code to add a class name. But with the new ProseMirror based editor, neither notes.css nor show source code work anymore.

    I'm not sure whether user styles would be possible with the new editor, but if they were AND it were possible to assign a style to extracted annotations, that would be the bees knees.
  • dstillman
    I'm guessing it might mess up the ways in which people get quotes out of notes and into their documents, though.
    Yeah, it likely would, and it would also complicate automatic citation inclusion. The annotation/note workflow is based largely around the idea that these notes become part of your draft, with the annotations becoming quotes with citations. That's not the only possible workflow, of course, but it's a primary one.

    @martynas_b could comment more on CSS override in the new editor.
  • martynas_b
    The new editor can't support any custom classes or other custom HTML modifications.

    Regarding the CSS, while, in theory, it would be possible to override it, it might interfere with Zotero note editor in various unexpected ways, especially for highlights and citations. We probably won't be able to provide support for note editor issues for those users who are using custom CSS.
  • auster
    @dstillman, what I had in mind is what @claude70 suggested, but I also understand the obstacle it could create for those who want to get quotations as plain text.

    @dstillman, I understand your idea about the standard workflow. This type of results usually come in my work at a later stage. First, I read a text, highlight its parts, and comment 'haha', 'not so sure', 'compare with X.' It is only later that I am able to come up with extended thoughts for which quotations will be subordinate. During the first reading, the comments are subordinate.

    I am afraid, I am not qualified to suggest a technical solution. Thanks for listening.
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