Text Highlight Homogenization

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


    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):

  • martynas_b
    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
    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.

    Is there a way to normalize the values once opened with the client?
  • FlorianRenziehausen
    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
    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
    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
    Thank you
  • FlorianRenziehausen
    Awesome! Looking forward to it :)
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