Dear Santa

[ravista]

Dear Santa,

I hope you’ll get my wish list for the next winter:

1. I would like to be able to export the marked text from a pdf. Something like a page number and the highlighted text. Eventually the ‘real’ page number of the book, which is different from the pdf page number. Eventually, I'd like to export this list as Excel or CSV.
2. Navigate to the real page number of a book, not only on the page number of the pdf file. In Adobe reader I can go to page 100 of a book by typing it in.
3. Reading help. It would be wonderful to have a reading help. For instance an automatic highlighting a certain number of words and moving at a certain variable rate. For instance 1000 words a minute, with automatic page scroll. The software AceReader can do that, but they are bad at displaying PDF-files.

I promise I will be a good child until the next release.

Thank you very much and kisses to the reindeer,

Ra

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Hi Ra,

yes I had a good chuckle at this. You must also leave biscuits (cookies) and milk (preferably with 'something grown up' in it...)

1. I would like to be able to export the marked text from a pdf. Something like a page number and the highlighted text. Eventually the ‘real’ page number of the book, which is different from the pdf page number. Eventually, I'd like to export this list as Excel or CSV.

While not exactly what you are asking we are planning on being able to export search results to file - probably a text file. This might give you what you want. Beyond that I can add this to the Wish List.

2. Navigate to the real page number of a book, not only on the page number of the pdf file. In Adobe reader I can go to page 100 of a book by typing it in.

This is to be in V3

3. Reading help. It would be wonderful to have a reading help. For instance an automatic highlighting a certain number of words and moving at a certain variable rate.

I think this might be an ideal candidate for a plugin - post V3.

[ravista]

Thanks.

Point 1 is handy for people that want to keep information, such as students, scientists, lawyers. I read scientific papers and want to remember things later, or to quote various parts of the stuff. If I could export the highlighted text I would have the most important stuff from a book/article, and the quotes I need to use later. I have googled and other people want this feature. The old Sony Reader PRS-650 could make such an export. The new one cannot even synchronize the highlights.

If I could export the highlighted text as CSV or other nice format, I could import it in my own software where I keep such text for future reference.

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

aaah - why not use the 'Summarize Comments' feature? It will allow you to do pretty much what you have suggested. I'm not sure why I missed that in the first place. I use it frequently. There are a lot of options on the final presentation but it will definitely collect all your comments and highlights are technically comments...

Consider adding the settings 'Copy selected Text into Highlight, Cross-Out, and Underline comment popups' and 'Copy encircled text into Drawing comment pop-ups' also:
Edit --> Preferences --> Commenting --> Making Comments Options.

hth

[ravista]

That is indeed handy. Stupid that I did not discover it in the first place. Still my wish for Santa remains:
(1) I'd like to know the page number of the book itself, (besides of the PDF), since quoting the author of the piece entails mentioning the page number of the paper book.
(2) I'd like to be able to export those quotes also in some database format, like CSV. It would make importing them in my software much easier.

Thanks for the suggestion.

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Hi ravista,

(1) I'd like to know the page number of the book itself, (besides of the PDF), since quoting the author of the piece entails mentioning the page number of the paper book.

Using 'page labels' - the term for these page numbers as presented in the book rather than the PDF 'page number' is to be supported in V3. I'm not sure on the detsilsd yet, we'll have to wait and see what Santa brings here.

(2) I'd like to be able to export those quotes also in some database format, like CSV. It would make importing them in my software much easier.

While we don't export to CSV you could export the summary as plain text or the comments themselves as an .fdf file then if you can parse the file you could pull the page number and contents from there. Do note that this is the PDF page number not the 'page labels'. This is specified by the PDF standards not our Viewer. Look for the items /Page and /Contents in the .fdf file.

hth

[Vasyl - PDF-XChange]

3. Reading help. It would be wonderful to have a reading help. For instance an automatic highlighting a certain number of words and moving at a certain variable rate. For instance 1000 words a minute, with automatic page scroll. The software AceReader can do that, but they are bad at displaying PDF-files.

You may use the autoscroll feature by mouse middle-click (like in inet browsers)..

[ravista]

3. Reading help. It would be wonderful to have a reading help. For instance an automatic highlighting a certain number of words and moving at a certain variable rate. For instance 1000 words a minute, with automatic page scroll. The software AceReader can do that, but they are bad at displaying PDF-files.

You may use the autoscroll feature by mouse middle-click (like in inet browsers)..

I will explain better what I mean. The software AceReader is made for two purposes, to train people to read faster and to actually help one read faster normal documents. You can download a free trial from their site and see what it does. Well in the read faster mode, one can load a document, also a PDF. The problem is that AceReader displays pdfs very badly, with weird characters. In read faster mode, AceReader has different ways to display the text, but I use a page mode where the whole page is displayed at once. AceReader highlights a number of words (I chose 3), then it highlights the next 3 words, then the next etc. This way it helps/forces the eyes to keep a certain reading speed. The speed is a setting, but can be changed with the arrow keys. I was reading yesterday a book with 800 words a minute. Another problem with AceReader is that one cannot copy text and the navigation is bad. So if PDF-XChange could do that, it would not only be the coolest reader on the block, like it is now, but it would have also the coolest feature amongst all other readers.

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Thanks for the added detail ravista,

I can't promise what will be done with this suggestion, I can tell you that it's been heard. It is unlikely to be looked into further until after the V3 release in September. I think this may make a great plugin.

thanks for the input.