Text selection with keyboard: issues in the Zotero PDF Reader

mjthoraval
edited November 17, 2022
I have noticed a few basic problems with the text selection in the Zotero PDF Reader.
Is it due to some of my keyboard settings, or is it a known problem?

A. Select one line down/up:
1) Select some text in the Zotero PDF Reader: It becomes highlighted in blue.
2) Press Shift+Down arrow.
3) The selection jumps "nearly" to the top of the page. The expected behaviour is simple to expand the text selection to the next line.
Replace step 2 by Shift+Up arrow and the selection jumps fully to the top of the page.

B. Select until the beginning/end of the line:
Replace step 2 with Shift+Home or Shift+End. Nothing happens.

C. Select text across pages:
1) Select the first few words at the beginning of the page.
2) Press Shift+Left arrow.
3) The text selection cannot cross to the previous page
  • dstillman
    That's sort of a bug, but it's more just undefined behavior. Shift + arrow keys is really mostly a thing in editable text fields — it's not a particularly standard feature for read-only text on screen. It works in some apps — webpages in browsers, Acrobat — but it doesn't work in, for example, macOS Preview, PDF Expert, or the Chrome or Firefox PDF readers. (In Firefox it's just buggy in the same way as Zotero, since pdf.js gets confused between selection and page navigation.) We'll see what we can do, but I wouldn't count on this working anytime soon.
  • martynas_b
    Actually the support for Shift+Up/Down arrows was implemented and definitely worked at some point. Seems like a regression in PDF reader.
  • mjthoraval
    Thank you for adding support for text selection though Shift + Arrow Keys.
    Is it possible to add support also for Shift + {Home, End, Page Down, Page Up}?
    These shortcuts are working in the original PDF.js version https://mozilla.github.io/pdf.js/web/viewer.html (except Shift + Page Down).

    Also, if the text selection goes out of the screen, it should scroll the PDF Reader so that the moving part of the text selection remains visible.

    Zotero 7.0.0-beta.96+4f780424e (64-bit)
    Windows 10
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