Bug report: iOS PDF reader line-level linking broken

devonwt
edited July 5, 2022
Unlike the desktop app, the PDF reader in Zotero for iOS does not jump directly to in-PDF links (e.g. references) but instead only jumps to the top of the corresponding page. This means that one has to search through all the references in the linked-to page to find the right one when clicking citations, which slows reading down significantly. [The issue also exists when jumping back to the page one was previously on; that is, the jump back button at the bottom left takes one back to the top of the linked-from page, not the particular linked-from line.]

Do others have this issue? Would it be difficult to fix?

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The above is an edited version. The original text was…

Feature request: PDF reader line-level linking

With other PDF readers I have used, clicking a citation in a PDF jumps the reader directly to the line of the references that contain the full citation. With the Zotero reader, it only jumps to the page containing the full citation. I then have to search through all the references on that page to find the right one. This slows reading down a lot when I am clicking on many citations. [Also, when I jump back to the page I was previously on, it goes to the top of the page, not the line I was on.]

Would it be difficult to update the reader to operate at the line-level instead of the page-level in these instances?
  • martynas_b
    It should scroll precisely to the exact point, except in those cases when scrolling is impossible — it's the last page or zoomed out too much.
  • devonwt
    @martynas_b Do you mean that the application as it exists should do this already? Or do you mean to say that the future feature should work as specified in your comment?
  • martynas_b
    I mean PDF reader already tries to scroll to specific page and point, but it "physically" can't scroll more than the scrollbars allow.

    Can you manually scroll to the point you want?
  • adamsmith
    that it should do this already -- works for me.
  • devonwt
    edited July 5, 2022
    Hm so it looks like it does already do this on the desktop app. However, when I use the iPad iOS app (where I have been doing most all reading of PDFs on Zotero), it does *not* do this. Maybe I should make a bug report for the iOS app?
  • devonwt
    The same lack of line-level linking seems to be present on the iPhone iOS app as well.
  • adamsmith
    Reporting here is fine, but yes, you should always be clear about what exact tool you're talking. Absent any clear indication, people are going to assume you're talking about the Desktop tool.
  • devonwt
    I see, makes sense. Is making a new post on this forum the best place to report? The GitHub README says to post on the forums, so I am guessing that’s better than creating an issue on GitHub.
  • adamsmith
    Right, don't post to github with feature requests or bug reports -- just edit your first post and add iOS to the subject and the description, so it's clear what this thread is about.
  • devonwt
    Bumping this. This bug is still present and I think is the primary bottleneck for productively using Zotero on iOS. Right now I often read articles in PDF Expert instead because the broken linking in Zotero is so limiting.
  • dstillman
    We're not able to fix this on iOS at the moment for technical reasons.
  • devonwt
    Oh no... that's sad to hear. Thanks for the info though. Would be curious if there's any more information people in the know could provide about what the problems are or the timescale on which they might be fixed. Otherwise thanks for the work on Zotero!
  • suqs
    Th pdf expert and maginnote don’t have the problem,
  • suqs
    Plain text pdf does not have this problem，or example, the pdf converted from word to pdf does not have this problem, Double-layer PDFS come from images, and the text layer underneath is particularly prone to this problem，
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