Future of PDF annotation tags

This discussion was created from comments split from: Available for beta testing: Note templates for PDF annotations.
  • I would like to ask a few questions, hope the place is right and please forgive me if it's not.

    About highlights and tags integration to our workflow: can we now (since a while to be more precise) tag our annotations with sort of a guarantee that we could use it in the future? I mean can we reasonably expect that the search-features that will come will not "reset" the tags we created for annotations in the pdf reader environment? Or is it better to wait a little more? For example, I feel like highlight x should tagged as "definition" (you finally found a bearable definition of Bourdieu's habitus). And then I would search for all my "definitions". Would you recommend to go along or will it be "lost work" with coming update and upgrades? I guess I could go along but to be sure.

    Also, a feature suggests related to the new toggling features (very nice btw): that one could toggle all highlighted annotations on/off in the displayed page to make it appear/disappear. Case is for when you want to do a fresh reading after very common case of "I highlighted everything and I don't remember this or that". Little extra would be to have a colored sign in the margins, at the line level, so we know we have highlighted something here.

    Thanks!
  • can we reasonably expect that the search-features that will come will not "reset" the tags we created for annotations in the pdf reader environment?
    Of course. We'll just be making the annotation tags available in more places — existing tags certainly aren't going to disappear.
    that one could toggle all highlighted annotations on/off in the displayed page to make it appear/disappear
    You're talking about the PDF view? So you mean the ability to hide all annotations so that you can just re-read the document without seeing all the annotations?
  • Nice! thank you for that confirmation. I actually did a search where item type is annotation and tag is "definition" but I couldn't get result, so I guessed it will come soon or later :)

    about toggling: Yes I am referring to the Pdf view, to perform a "hide everything" for a fresh re-read indeed. Maybe that's silly, it's true I could open it with another reader but...I would say it worth it.

    Extra feature as I write the above: to display highlights in pdf view but only when matching the colors that are toggled-in. So from clicking the green coloured box in the left-bottom side of the screen (annotation column in the current reader environment), you would only display green highlights in the pdf viewer. Red and green would only display red and green highlights, and so on.
  • I actually did a search where item type is annotation
    Oh, that's not supposed to be there yet. We'll remove that.
    to display highlights in pdf view but only when matching the colors that are toggled-in
    Yes, we've talked about dong something like that. Not sure about the exact mechanism, but we'll think about it.
  • Thanks for that feedback.
    Maybe one last thing would be to be able to bookmark a page. It' for skim reading case, or "first read". When you feel that you will have to go back to a certain sequence but yet do not want to dive in highlighting, or for some reason you know everything is important. As for my perception when you start to highlight it's already a longer read, another rhythm with more time given to highlight a finer grain information (even with the "highlight text" button on in the left of the reader bar, which already makes you feels going smoother in your workflow. That's also a very nice feature but still different from bookmarking).
  • Yes, please! Bookmarks would be very helpful, especially in long documents!
  • So the tag features upgraded recently and now enable to retrieve tags from pdf anotation from the general left hand tag panel. Amazing! Thanks for that.

    Announced the 30th of September : https://www.zotero.org/support/changelog#changes_in_6015_september_30_2022
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