Feature request: view references in PDF

Dear Zotero team, thank you for integrating a PDF viewer into the latest Zotero update! That's a major improvement.
Something that's often daunting when reading PDFs on screen is the back-and-forth between main text and references. Any solutions that enable to see the references in-line are helpful. Recently, I found one of the most pragmatic approaches is to have a split view, where two different regions of the same PDF can be seen side-by-side. A nice implementation of this is included in the Skim PDF viewer: https://skim-app.sourceforge.io/ . I would love to see such a feature in Zotero!
  • I guess the feature request should be something like "skip to references in pdf" or "allow split view of pdf", but I agree: this would be very useful. BTW: it's pertains not just to references but also endnotes.

    In the meantime, my workaround is to highlight the title of the reference section (I use green highlights for this as well as for other section headings). That way I can easily jump to the references while reading. - But how do I get back to where I was in the text? - well, that doesn't work quite as smoothly, but since I usually have some highlight on every page, I 'll just jump back to the last highlight and I'm pretty near to where I left off. (Sometimes I'd even create a temporary highlight just to have something to jump back to.)

    An alternative is to use the miniature pages shown at the bottom of the page when you tap the screen. But that's rather rough navigation.
  • edited April 12, 2022
    https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/93120/feature-request-preview-references-or-figures-in-build-in-pdf-reader

    Follow that thread for updates re: previewing references. There are also various other threads requesting a split view, but that's a more general request.
  • edited April 12, 2022
    @simon_brunner, @haug: As a current alternative to a split view, note that you can Shift-double-click a PDF to open it in a new window. In the next version that will also be available as context-menu option.

    [Edit: Actually, it sounds like @haug may be referring to the iOS app. This was about the desktop app.]
  • @dstillman and @haug: thank you for considering my feature request. I didn't know about the shift-double click feature. On this note, it would still be helpful to easily open a PDF in a system viewer.
    Also good to know about the other feature request re previewing references, but 100% agreed that it's quite complex to preview references and most PDFs lack the required annotations. I think a split view is a pragmatic option.
  • I agree that the shift-doubleclick (or shift-Enter) is worth noting here. I was not aware of it and it almost solves the issue on desktop (however: I would have expected the pdf to open in another Zotero reader tab, but on my Mac it opens in Preview (my default pdf viewer). So: "View PDF" opens it in Zotero, but opening it again (via the Shift modifier) opens it in default viewer. - Oh, I get it. That is what the modifier is actually meant to do and opening it in a new window is just a side-effect of that, right? So how about Cmd click to open another tab with the same pdf in Zotero?

    With all that said: I think it's more important to introduce split view on the iOS app, since that's where you're most likely to do your reading at the same time as it's not easy to open the same file in another app.

  • We've added a Duplicate Tab context-menu option in Zotero 6.0.6, available now.
  • Excellent! You guys rock!
This discussion has been closed.