Text Highlight Homogenization

poettli · July 17, 2024

Is it possible to homogenize the shape of text highlight between Zotero desktop and Zotero iOS? Highlights made on desktop app don't overlap, while they overlap when made on iOS.
(Edit: It seems to depend on the PDF)

dstillman · July 17, 2024

Can you provide examples, here or to support@zotero.org with a link to this thread?

poettli · July 17, 2024

For example with this article: https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/sola/6/0/6_0_73/_article

The red highlight is made with Zotero iOS (v1.0.40). The blue one on Zotero 7 beta 101:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u2119014/iy3ykv8qqe2s4sgogmev.png

This seems to happen with all the articles from SOLA.

With a bigger line spacing (like in https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-77978-0_10), the overlapping doesn't occur (red iOS, blue desktop):
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u2119014/6yi8m8tj6pqmwga0u2w3.png

martynas_b · July 17, 2024

That depends on font properties like ascent and descent. At least on the Zotero client, we are normalizing those values if they are too small or large.

Do you always prefer the Zotero client line heights, or are there cases when the iOS app does a better job?

poettli · July 17, 2024

In my experience, desktop app does a better job. And it's also visible on iOS. The screenshot in the post above is from the client. Here is a screenshot from the iOS app. The difference is also visible.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u2119014/httnmq4xoilctlvz7m7x.jpg
Is there a way to normalize the values once opened with the client?

FlorianRenziehausen · August 13, 2024

Im experiencing the same problem and its actually keeping me from using Zotero as my primary reader for papers because the overlapping highlights are really distracting. Apart from that Zotero rocks :)

Adding Highlights via Zotero 7 for Mac (final release) works a lot better (but then again, white spacing might also be distracting)

Maybe it would be possible to add customization to the way highlights are displayed? I think it has a lot to do with personal preference... In my case, i would love to see muliple lines of highlighted text displayed as a solid color (i.e. if you look at the example above without the darker red or white spacing inbetween).

Peng_XoYa · August 13, 2024

In fact, I prefer to use underline to make notes on large paragraphs of text, so that the whole PDF is not colorful.But it can only be used on the desktop at the moment. Mobile doesn't have this feature yet. Look forward to it!

mvasilak · August 20, 2024

Hey all, we have a fix that will remove the overlap of consecutive highlighted lines, for those PDFs where this happens. It'll be available in an upcoming version.

poettli · August 20, 2024

Thank you

FlorianRenziehausen · August 21, 2024

Awesome! Looking forward to it :)