Importing skim annotations and highlights

mtl_zack · March 17, 2022

Love the new update, looks great!

I have been using skim to annotate all my pdfs until this point, which I realize uses a relatively uncommon / nonstandard way of marking up the pdf. Are there any plans to make it possible to import skim annotations and highlights so that they will be visible within the new zotero pdf viewer?

adamsmith · March 17, 2022

Don't know about Zotero's plans for this, but you could consider batch converting the Skim annotations to standard PDF ones? https://github.com/alexandergogl/SkimPDF looks promising, e.g.

mtl_zack · March 21, 2022

Thanks for this transparency about your plans.

lovetheland · August 28, 2022

Thanks, at a simpler level, would it be possible to import a pdf without stripping the Skim annotations? (So at least they would still appear when opened in Skim, but perhaps not the Zotero reader)

As it stands, an imported pdf is copied into the Zotero file system, which looks identical the original with the exception of the lost Skim data. My workaround is to open the folder location and swap the copy with the original, which works just fine, but is a hassle and has resulted in lost data if I'm not careful.

The menu checkbox to include notes and annotations, etc. when copying items between libraries does not preserve the Skim notes. Would it be possible to extend this to include the Skim data?

dstillman · August 28, 2022

@lovetheland: No, we don't have any (reasonable) way of preserving Skim annotations, which are stored in a fairly obscure technical manner that's not preserved by many standard tools.