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Google Scholar PDF Reader

scholar.googleblog.com

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Re: Google Scholar PDF Reader

#111

Post by felipefar »

ukuina wrote: post #88
felipefar wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was also unhappy with how reference managers handle annotations. So I rolled my own app ( https://getcahier.com ), with highlight management integrated in the application. This enables me to extract highlights according to topics, organize them in notes using document elements (like collapsible notes and outlines) and use them to plan more complex arguments. This makes it much easier to read actively. On the paper…

Cahier looks great! Any plans to add backup/sync? Also, is the data store encrypted at rest even when the app is actively being used?

Thanks! I'm considering that. We might first implement P2P or external services (dropbox, iCloud) sync, but we'll see.

The data is all local, so there's no need for encryption yet. But when we implement sync it'll be end to end encrypted.

Re: Google Scholar PDF Reader

#112

Post by felipefar »

oldandtired wrote: post #91
felipefar wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was also unhappy with how reference managers handle annotations. So I rolled my own app ( https://getcahier.com ), with highlight management integrated in the application. This enables me to extract highlights according to topics, organize them in notes using document elements (like collapsible notes and outlines) and use them to plan more complex arguments. This makes it much easier to read actively. On the paper…

Doesn't support Linux though or any of the unixes. Looks good though.

Thank you for your interest! I've received that request more than I thought I would. It's high on the priority list now, and will arrive soon.

Re: Google Scholar PDF Reader

#113

Post by Kwpolska »

gnicholas wrote: post #62

I've never seen so many light/dark modes before. There's Device Mode, Light Mode, Dark Mode, and Night Mode. AFAICT Device Mode follows the browser/device's current setting, Dark Mode makes the sidebar dark but doesn't change the PDF, and Night Mode darkens both the sidebar and the PDF. I wonder how they decided to have so many modes?

Automatically applying dark mode to documents tends to have poor results, especially when images are involved, but some people are masochists and/or can't be bothered to turn on the light, so they made a separate setting for them. Although I think a toggle would be better instead of dark mode/night mode.

Re: Google Scholar PDF Reader

#118

Post by KingMob »

chipdart wrote: post #93
cygnion wrote: post #42

Capturing and visualizing research knowledge is personally an exciting space. I feel that deep reading and absorbing content continues to be challenging, due to the ever-increasing amount of published research, rudimentary reading apps (Google PDF reader finally addressing issue with easily looking up references), and due to somewhat disconnected tools for reading and note-taking. Similar to the readers piggy-backing…

Zotero does a good job at it, doesn't it?

As a daily Zotero user, not really. The nicest thing I can say about it is, it has plugins and is FOSS. Maybe the new 7.0 release will blow me away, but I've been waiting for it to get out of beta forever.

More fundamentally, we need to stop disseminating scholarly work as PDFs, a format primarily designed for print. Plain HTML would be an improvement. Even better than HTML would be an extended variant with scholarly-specific semantic markup and universal, animated, explorable figures. Embedded notebooks would be cool, too, but disseminating data would still be a major challenge. (And I don't just mean storage/transfer; a lot of researchers are reluctant to share source data to the world.)

Re: Google Scholar PDF Reader

#119

Post by AlotOfReading »

serial_dev wrote: post #108
ykonstant wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no way I can perceive reading on an expensive device as more comfortable than paper. Paper is fairly cheap, lightweight and resilient; I can carry it around, fold it, toss it aside, sit on it by accident while thinking, annotate it with scribbles, and pour coffee on it with aplomb and finesse. I can flip it, half-tear it in anger, drool on it when I reach my brain capacity. I can take it hiking with me witho…

"But did you think about the environment? Why don't you by a new device every 2 years with Lithium battery and full of non recyclable plastic in it" ... is what I get told all the time.

With the typical reading volume of an academic and the amount of plastic in my toner cartridges, I'm not sure paper comes out ahead in that comparison.

Re: Google Scholar PDF Reader

#120

Post by occamrazor »

jwr wrote: post #101

Already counting the days until this inevitably gets killed. I've been burned too many times to rely on Google for anything, except tracking me and pushing ads, which they indeed do better every day.

Scholar is heavily used internally, it’s unlikely to be discontinued even if it has never brought any money to Google.
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