Add possibility to copy marked/colour-highlighted text on right mouse click

gerald
Thanks for the great inbuilt PDF reader in Zotero. I would like to request a small but very handy enhancement. Currently, it seems to be not possible to easily copy marked/colour-highlighted text in the inbuilt PDF reader. It would be great to have this feature.

Long description:
If I select text with the mouse, a right mouse click gives me the option "Copy". However, if I have marked/colour-highlighted text, a right mouse click does not offer this "Copy" option, but only the options to assign a different colour or to delete the marking.
It would be great to have the option to copy text, when I perform a right mouse click on a marked/colour-highlighted text. The lack of this feature means, that one always has to select the same text again (although the text is already marked/colour-highlighted) in order to be able to copy it. Other PDF readers such as Qoppa PDF Studio give the option to copy the text on a right mouse when clicking on a marked/colour-highlighted text area.
  • enozkan
    Hit shift when trying to highlight text already colored in the PDF reader.
  • gerald
    Thanks for your response. Hitting shift doesn't seem to change anything and it doesn't give an option to copy text. Did I oversee anything?
  • enozkan
    I should have explained better. If you drag your mouse over text (previously highlighted with a color) *while* hitting shift, it select the text, not the color highlight. Then you can ctrl-C/command-C (Win/Mac) or right-click on the selected text, which gives you the option to copy.
  • gerald
    Thanks for the detailed explanation, but holding shift does something different than what I suggested. Your solution does not solve my enhancement request. In fact, when hitting shift I can manually highlight text, but what I need is to exactly copy the entire previously colour-highlighted text with a mouse click.

    I suggest the following small enhancement: A simple method to copy the (exact and entire) text of a previously colour-highlighted text area. IMHO the easiest solution would be following: If the user performs a right mouse click on a previously colour-highlighted area, he/she gets the option "copy text" additionally to the current options (change colour and delete highlighting).

    Here the example of Qoppa PDF Studio (Screenshot: https://we.tl/t-aM4XKrQJMN) The text had a colour-highlighted area. I performed a right mouse click on it and got the option "Copy text (=Text kopieren)". This function copies exactly the text that was colour-highlighted.
  • enozkan
    When you left-click on the highlight and hit ctrl/cmd-C, it copies the text (with quotation marks around, as you would while citing scientific text). You can click and drag the annotation to an external editor to copy similarly. And as you discovered now, hitting shift while you drag across, let's you also ctrl/cmd-C any part of the highlight as plain text. So, all modes of copying are possible, and hopefully that's useful to know.

    The Edit drop-down menu has three modes of copying. The devs read the forums; it is up to them to choose to add/accept new features, such as adding lines to context menus, or adding a fourth mode of copying (with a matching shortcut, which is what I'd prefer).
  • gerald
    Thanks, that helps a lot. Due to the missing "Copy" on right mouse-click, I never just tried a left-click on the highlight and ctrl-c to copy the text. That works in fact!

    For better user experience, it would be good if the developers would still add the "copy" option (or all three options) to the menu that opens on right mouse click.

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