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Show HN: Sioyek – PDF viewer for reading research papers and technical documents

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Re: Show HN: Sioyek – PDF viewer for reading research papers and technical documents

#41

Post by IlliOnato »

hexomancer wrote: post #12
jnurmine wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Annotations are super useful. Please consider storing the annotations external to the PDF. For example, Okular wants to save these to the PDF itself. This doesn't work very well with a read-only network drive (read: corporate environment).

What do you mean exactly by annotations? Sioyek currently does have a bookmark support which is external to the PDF (you can bookmark locations in PDF file and you can later quickly search in those bookmarks). But I assume you mean some sort of visual annotation that is drawn on top of the PDF?

I assume something like comments in Word, i.e. highlighting a fragment of document and "attaching" to it a piece of text.

Not sure what is the good presentation for it: clicking or hovering, overlaying or pop-up or a separate window... I suppose to figure the best UX is not trivial, but even mediocre UX would be really great.

And as others say, ideally keep the annotations outside of the document itself.

Re: Show HN: Sioyek – PDF viewer for reading research papers and technical documents

#42

Post by gwittel »

hexomancer wrote: post #12
jnurmine wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Annotations are super useful. Please consider storing the annotations external to the PDF. For example, Okular wants to save these to the PDF itself. This doesn't work very well with a read-only network drive (read: corporate environment).

What do you mean exactly by annotations? Sioyek currently does have a bookmark support which is external to the PDF (you can bookmark locations in PDF file and you can later quickly search in those bookmarks). But I assume you mean some sort of visual annotation that is drawn on top of the PDF?

Not the OP, but a related feature -- I could also see use in tying notes to a document or sentence.

Sometimes I "translate" a difficult passage to something I can understand (on paper I might write this in margins). At other times, I end up accumulating definitions of terms (or letters) while reading a paper. Today I write those on a separate piece of paper so I can have my definitions table viewable at all times. It would be really nice to have that sort of thing stored and available while I'm working my way through a paper (perhaps similar to the portal feature).

Re: Show HN: Sioyek – PDF viewer for reading research papers and technical documents

#43

Post by soferio »

hexomancer wrote: post #2

Some of the features: * You can middle click on a reference/figure to go to the reference/figure (even if the PDF doesn't have links) * You can middle click on a paper name in references to directly search it on google scholar * Searchable table of contents * You can mark locations by character symbols (vim style) Currently only the Windows build is available. Mac and Linux builds coming soon.

Liquidtext is a commercial multiplatform app with some similar and interesting functionality.

Re: Show HN: Sioyek – PDF viewer for reading research papers and technical documents

#44

Post by hexomancer »

ableal wrote: post #29
hexomancer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean exactly by annotations? Sioyek currently does have a bookmark support which is external to the PDF (you can bookmark locations in PDF file and you can later quickly search in those bookmarks). But I assume you mean some sort of visual annotation that is drawn on top of the PDF?

One possibility is the "highlighting" that e-readers like the Kobo perform - I've used it for proofreading. No typing, just selecting a few words or lines. It's all collected in a notes page/doc, you later look at that and hopefully see or remember what was wrong and fix the original. Limited, but helpful.

We do currently have something like this feature. If you select a piece of text and then press the bookmark button, then the bookmark text will be automatically filled with the selected text. Later, the bookmarks can be searched by pressing `gb' (search the bookmarks in the current document) or `gB' (search all the bookmarks).

Re: Show HN: Sioyek – PDF viewer for reading research papers and technical documents

#46

Post by liketochill »

dfdz wrote: post #3

I really like the idea of building a PDF viewer for research papers. One feature that I don’t see mentioned that would convince me to use the product is fast search (possibly after some pre computation) When I’m reading a long technical document I often search for words/phrases to remember the definition For some reason, this process is very slow for longer documents and take a couple seconds (various depending on pd…

Check out qiqqa or mendeley

Re: Show HN: Sioyek – PDF viewer for reading research papers and technical documents

#47

Post by jpeloquin »

hexomancer wrote: post #7
billconan wrote: post #5

I hope it can have annotation

Unfortunately it currently can't. But I do plan to add it eventually.

Just to add another viewpoint on annotations: I tend to severely edit a PDF while I'm reading it. For example: crop the top and bottom margins off, expand the left and right margins and use them for text boxes with notes to myself, draw on figures, rearrange figures and text (like a collage) so they're in more convenient places, and add color-coded highlights depending on whether the highlighted text is fact, opinion, an open question, etc. I edit the PDF directly so my notes are available even if I have to use another PDF viewer/editor. If I need to preserve the original PDF I archive it separately. I think one of the key advantages of digital medial is that the user can rearrange and edit it to suit their needs (the other advantage being search / automated indexing). Not sure how many people take this approach, and you're of course free to make the feature work however you think best. Just sharing as a counterpoint to the general consensus for a standalone annotation file.

Re: Show HN: Sioyek – PDF viewer for reading research papers and technical documents

#48

Post by metahost »

I would like to plug the open source macOS PDF reading/annotations application Skim. It is the most proficient scientific document viewer I have ever used.

Here is a link to it, I have no affiliations to the application: https://skim-app.sourceforge.io/

Re: Show HN: Sioyek – PDF viewer for reading research papers and technical documents

#49

Post by jnurmine »

hexomancer wrote: post #12
jnurmine wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Annotations are super useful. Please consider storing the annotations external to the PDF. For example, Okular wants to save these to the PDF itself. This doesn't work very well with a read-only network drive (read: corporate environment).

What do you mean exactly by annotations? Sioyek currently does have a bookmark support which is external to the PDF (you can bookmark locations in PDF file and you can later quickly search in those bookmarks). But I assume you mean some sort of visual annotation that is drawn on top of the PDF?

Yes, exactly, visual things drawn on top of the PDF.

I mean things like Okular has: highlighting text (like with a yellow highlighter on paper books), freeform draw tool (like scribbling with a pen), adding short text comments and longer notes, etc.

To illustrate, the annotations in an old Okular version looked like this: https://docs.kde.org/stable5/en/okular/okular/annotations.ht... (the yellow note box, the green lines and so on).

There's a small picture at https://okular.kde.org/ too, it shows a newer version.

DISCLAIMER: Not saying that Okular is THE reference to follow, I'm pointing it out because I've experience with it, and for example their decision to save annotations into the PDF itself is in my opinion a lousy one. But the idea that one can free-form annotate and add even longer comments to the pages is a great one. The annotations are like scribblings in a book margin, very useful both when studying and when referring [ * ]. And this is something Okular has done much better than e.g. Evince.

[ * ] Of course, one could use a more elaborate tool to keep references, notes and quotes etc., like Zotero.

Edit: typofix

Re: Show HN: Sioyek – PDF viewer for reading research papers and technical documents

#50

Post by anon_tor_12345 »

one thing i wish for in a paper reader: hover (or click) on a reference and get a preview of the cite or fig. that way i don't lose my place in what i'm reading before landing on a cite that's just an authors self cite of their 14th paper on the topic.
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