Zengobi Forums

drnkusv · Joined: 27 May 2009 Posts: 2

I am new to Curio, and I am trying to use it to work with PDFs. I have read that Curio can annotate and highlight PDFs. If I understand it correctly, the only way to use Curio this way is to paste a preview image of a page of the PDF onto a workspace (I understand that I could "spread" the PDF so that a preview of each page appears in a separate workspace), and then use the highlight tools to draw on the preview image.

Two questions:

(1) Is this what people mean when they say they annotate and highlight PDFs in Curio?

(2) The problem seems to be that if I (accidentally or on purpose) move the image of the page, the highlight and annotations do not move along. It also seems like you cannot "group" highlighting with the PDF page image. Am I missing something? The only way I can see to solve this problem is to check the option that "locks" the PDF image in place, underneath the highlighting. Is that the intended method?

Many thanks, in advance, for any help.

george · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2007 Posts: 1987

I'll let others reply here as well but, from what I've seen, yes, using the Spread PDF features is how many customers are annotating PDFs within Curio.

However, many are also making their annotations to the side of the PDF page using a text block or list object positioned next to the PDF figure before spreading the PDF. That way they can have a collection of notes alongside the PDF without marking up the image itself.

A workaround for grouping PDF figures with scribbles: if you hold down Option and Command while dragging out a selection rectangle you will select only scribbles (brush and pen markings). Then you can choose Edit > Convert Selection to Image Figure. Then you can select both the PDF figure and the new scribble image figure and choose Arrange > Group to group them together.

drnkusv · Joined: 27 May 2009 Posts: 2

Thanks for the quick and helpful reply. If I may follow up with one additional question: when I open up a PDF in Preview, I can add annotations and highlighting, but for some reason those annotations and highlighting do not appear in the images of the PDF pages that appear in Curio. Is there any way to get them to show up?

george · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2007 Posts: 1987

Hmm... we're relying on the Mac's built-in image handling functionality to render the PDF images and I guess they aren't handling annotations. I'm not sure if there's an easy workaround but I'll look into it.

zmember · Joined: 20 May 2009 Posts: 42

I'd like to be able to highlight certain words/phrases in the PDF and then take notes off to the side. What did the fellow above mean by "text block or list object positioned next to the PDF figure"?

george · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2007 Posts: 1987

You could create a text figure (or list figure) placed directly on the Curio idea space positioned next to the PDF image figure.

The Spread PDF video tutorial on the main Curio page shows that kind of example: http://www.zengobi.com/curio

zmember · Joined: 20 May 2009 Posts: 42

How did I miss that? I just went to the Tutorial and there it was. I'm going to try that, because it's a very good way to see the PDF and take notes right beside the pages. Thank you!

ingvy · Joined: 03 Jun 2011 Posts: 1

george · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2007 Posts: 1987

It doesn't look like Apple changed the image classes in Snow Leopard to support rendering the highlighting either, unfortunately. I'll have to see what Lion does.

mnmcook · Joined: 31 May 2009 Posts: 196 Location: Pennsylvania

I just tested two paths for this. I took a PDF and added a note, annotation, and highlighting using GoodReader on my iPad. I sent this marked up PDF as it was saved and also a version that was "flattened" by GoodReader. I imported both into Curio. The original one does not show the annotations with the normal "preview" of the PDF on the idea space, but if I open it, using Preview all the annotations are there. The flattened one has all the annotations showing even in the "preview" method of viewing PDFs.

Flattening in graphics applications typically refer to a mapping of all graphic layers onto a single image. I can only infer flattening in GoodReader is similar.

Per the prior question on this thread, I typically spread the PDF and add annotations to the graphics as they appear in the previews across idea spaces as that's how I'm used to working with them similarly in OneNote. Text notes are often to the side of the doc and remember if you put an arrow from the block to the pdf preview, you can have it anchor to a point in the graphic. This is nice in case for some reason you need to move around blocks or the page later.

george · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2007 Posts: 1987

Very interesting news about the "flattening" feature of GoodReader.

I just did some tests in Lion. Their image class still doesn't render annotations and there doesn't seem to be a new API call to enable those renderings through the normal image classes.

Quick Look'ing a PDF does reveal the annotations so I tried a test. Right-click and tell Curio to show the PDF figure as an icon, then go to the Asset Figure inspector and increase the Icon Size up the the max (256x256). We show the default icon for less than 128x128 but then we show a Quick Look thumbnail for larger icon sizes. Ta da: annotations!

The catch is that Quick Look generally returns pretty small thumbnails or previews so this might not be a useful workaround.

jjweimer · Posted: Fri Jul 15, 2011 2:13 am Post subject:

jsg · Joined: 09 Jul 2012 Posts: 4

This is related to this now 1 year old discussion.

When PDFs documents are annotated in Adobe Acrobat Pro (and compatible) software not just with highlighter but with text, that ASCII text is stored with a PDF file. Does Curio extract this text so that it could be placed automatically into curio notes/index cards on PDF file import? If not, could it do it?

And, when an idea space with PDF(s) is exported into PDF, could Curio save notes into PDF (in a Adobe Acrobat compatible way)?

thanks
- Jacek