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How to Annotate Everything

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Re: How to Annotate Everything

#21

Post by aussiesnack »

The complexity and medium-specificity of all this just shows that computer-based annotations (considered as semi-permanent artifacts) aren't worth the trouble. Our systems aren't ready for them, and will only become so when we have some kind of interoperable standardised protocols or data formats. Possibly never, but certainly not now.

Until our systems have reached some sort of maturity (not guaranteed of course), consider annotations as transient, and if an ongoing artifact is needed, incorporate them into notes or papers or whatever in your long-term format of choice.

Re: How to Annotate Everything

#22

Post by rafram »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #5

A missing one I use is zotero. You can take a snapshot of the webpage and add notes and link related content. For pdfs, you can use a zotfile addon where you can highlight, add notes, etc. using your favourite pdf veiwer and zotfile will then grab those highlights and notes and put them into the zotero entry for that file. You can then view these without having to open the pdf and search through them. This is particu…

Zotero 6 also has built-in PDF annotation support with a pdf.js-based reader.

Re: How to Annotate Everything

#23

Post by echelon »

quijoteuniv wrote: post #19
Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #5

A missing one I use is zotero. You can take a snapshot of the webpage and add notes and link related content. For pdfs, you can use a zotfile addon where you can highlight, add notes, etc. using your favourite pdf veiwer and zotfile will then grab those highlights and notes and put them into the zotero entry for that file. You can then view these without having to open the pdf and search through them. This is particu…

Anki is great for saving notes on specific subjects

I would love for reMarkable to become a powerful ebook reader that supports sharable annotations. Couple this with excerpts and the ability to sync / cross-link with Obsidian.md and it would be a game changer.

If Anki cards could be generated from reMarkable or Obsidian, we'd have a full knowledge graph system with SRS. Powerful.

Re: How to Annotate Everything

#24

Post by towelpluswater »

Readwise Reader has completely changed the way I consume articles/PDFs/ebooks and annotate, especially with the Ghostreader (AI/LLM) feature. Easily my favorite app of the year - will be even better if/when an offline mode comes out.

Also Explainpaper and Elicit for research papers - hard to go back to the 'old' days after using all 3 of these.

Re: How to Annotate Everything

#26

Post by CiceroCiceronis »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #5

A missing one I use is zotero. You can take a snapshot of the webpage and add notes and link related content. For pdfs, you can use a zotfile addon where you can highlight, add notes, etc. using your favourite pdf veiwer and zotfile will then grab those highlights and notes and put them into the zotero entry for that file. You can then view these without having to open the pdf and search through them. This is particu…

Zotero is great, but the current versions don't actually support web annotation. That's a shame not only because web annotation is useful, but because given its excellent support for PDF annotation, it feels like it could become a one-stop shop for annotation/organisation of documents of all kinds, something which I've been looking for in vain for some time.

Re: How to Annotate Everything

#27

Post by karlicoss »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #5

A missing one I use is zotero. You can take a snapshot of the webpage and add notes and link related content. For pdfs, you can use a zotfile addon where you can highlight, add notes, etc. using your favourite pdf veiwer and zotfile will then grab those highlights and notes and put them into the zotero entry for that file. You can then view these without having to open the pdf and search through them. This is particu…

Yep, thanks! I really need to update the post with zotero

Re: How to Annotate Everything

#28

Post by karlicoss »

disqard wrote: post #18

Several useful tips in here, but I was expecting to see some strategies for using a ReMarkable with this workflow and it's a glaring omission... perhaps this site is a bit dated now?

Hey, it's a bit dated, I've been meaning to update the post for a while, but haven't had time.

I actually bought a remarkable 2 since, but I didn't really end up using it much. IIRC main reason was that annotations are a custom format, and they are basically drawings with highlighter (as opposed to plaintext). I think there were some projects to match them against books and try to extract text, but it didn't work reliably for me. I may be wrong though, maybe things changed since.

That said if you install Koreader on it, then you get proper annotations, and I've been meaning to try to incorporate them in my flow.

Re: How to Annotate Everything

#29

Post by infogulch »

Another intriguing project from the same author is Promnesia, a browser history enhancement extension, which surfaces context like previous visits (including referrer etc) and annotations whenever you visit a page.

Re: How to Annotate Everything

#30

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

CiceroCiceronis wrote: post #26
Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #5

A missing one I use is zotero. You can take a snapshot of the webpage and add notes and link related content. For pdfs, you can use a zotfile addon where you can highlight, add notes, etc. using your favourite pdf veiwer and zotfile will then grab those highlights and notes and put them into the zotero entry for that file. You can then view these without having to open the pdf and search through them. This is particu…

Zotero is great, but the current versions don't actually support web annotation. That's a shame not only because web annotation is useful, but because given its excellent support for PDF annotation, it feels like it could become a one-stop shop for annotation/organisation of documents of all kinds, something which I've been looking for in vain for some time.

Maybe someone out there in HN land will read this and make a web annotation add-on to zotero. One can hope at least. You're right hat it is the missing piece of an already very capable tool.
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