Is there a summary somewhere of how highlighting in zotero does or doesn't play well with highlighting in other apps like Acrobat? I don't want to change my workflow until I understand clearly what I am doing.
The first thing I tried was adding a highlight in zotero reader, and it doesn't show up in the pdf if I open it in Acrobat. In the other direction, existing pdf highlights show up as some kind of note or comment that is different from a highlight in zotero reader.
For anyone else curious, I do like that there is a dropdown in the Preferences-->General page to set how to open pdfs, such that I can put it to "system default" until I learn more.
In the other direction, existing pdf highlights show up as some kind of note or comment that is different from a highlight in zotero reader.
Not sure what you mean by that. Zotero displays annotations embedded in the PDF file exactly the same as Zotero annotations — they're just not editable. If your PDF reader is duplicating the highlighted text into the comment, you'll see it in the comment too, but that's a setting you can disable in the external PDF reader. Zotero parses the highlighted text itself, so there's no need to extract that text in the external PDF reader.
Indeed, when I talk about the highlighting being different in zotero reader and Acrobat, I am referring to them, well, not being the same or somehow separate.
* So am I correct that you're saying that highlighting that's already done in the many pdfs that I already have -- that is totally separate from highlighting done in zotero?
All our existing pdf highlights will be displayed in zotero reader (possibly with a different appearance if there is also a comment such as echoed text, which I think is my case), * but existing pdf highlights are not part of the new system? * If we ever chose to, is there a way to convert all our existing pdf highlights into zotero highlights?
If we want to share a highlighted pdf with someone else, outside zotero, * is it possible to go the other way and convert zotero highlights into pdf highlights?
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I don't want to change my workflow until I understand clearly what I am doing.
The first thing I tried was adding a highlight in zotero reader, and it doesn't show up in the pdf if I open it in Acrobat.
In the other direction, existing pdf highlights show up as some kind of note or comment that is different from a highlight in zotero reader.
For anyone else curious, I do like that there is a dropdown in the Preferences-->General page to set how to open pdfs, such that I can put it to "system default" until I learn more.
https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/annotations_in_database Not sure what you mean by that. Zotero displays annotations embedded in the PDF file exactly the same as Zotero annotations — they're just not editable. If your PDF reader is duplicating the highlighted text into the comment, you'll see it in the comment too, but that's a setting you can disable in the external PDF reader. Zotero parses the highlighted text itself, so there's no need to extract that text in the external PDF reader.
Indeed, when I talk about the highlighting being different in zotero reader and Acrobat, I am referring to them, well, not being the same or somehow separate.
* So am I correct that you're saying that highlighting that's already done in the many pdfs that I already have -- that is totally separate from highlighting done in zotero?
All our existing pdf highlights will be displayed in zotero reader
(possibly with a different appearance if there is also a comment such as echoed text, which I think is my case),
* but existing pdf highlights are not part of the new system?
* If we ever chose to, is there a way to convert all our existing pdf highlights into zotero highlights?
If we want to share a highlighted pdf with someone else, outside zotero,
* is it possible to go the other way and convert zotero highlights into pdf highlights?