Why can’t I highlight some context in a pdf?
PDF text is not directly editable in DT Pro (including highlighting). Ac†ual text editing, e.g., changing text content and markups can be done in Adobe Acrobat. Preview can add limited markups to a PDF file, but only as graphics, not searchable text.
UPDATE 060423: Time marches on. See my post later in this thread.
Christian, any hope of seeing highlighting in DTpro in the future? Or is there a monopoly on this by Acrobat on the Mac?
Since one of the main usages of DT is a storage of database of PDF’s, note-taking, etc., this really would be a wonderful feature for the Pro version.
Any hope for an upcoming version?
Since my previous post in December 05 there have been advances in the OS, Preview and DT Pro.
Using DT Pro 1.1.1, either Import or Index a PDF. Now select that new content and select the Actions button > Launch Path. The PDF will open under it’s parent application (in my case, Preview). If, in the Finder, you have specified Acrobat Pro 7 as the parent application, the PDF will open under Acrobat and you can markup the PDF and save it.
In Preview, add a text annotation or other markup. Save the changed document.
Select the PDF anew in DT Pro. You will see the annotation.
Note: This won’t work for PDFs that had previously been imported and copied into the ‘body’ of the database instead of to the Files folder. Nor will it work for PDFs previously imported as plain or rich text.
Christian has also mentioned the possibility of direct markup of PDFs inside DT Pro, in a future revision. But not yet.
This is what I was getting at. The thought is rather to have a unified PDF database and note-taking environment, so that one’s archival and notetaking could all be done withinDT.
The idea is that by being able to highlight texts within DT, one would be able to search for highlighted text within the PDFs throughout the database. This is something that would require that DT allow for manipulation highlighting and commenting of PDFs from within, not from an external program such as Acrobat.
V2 will probably introduce improved support for PDF documents.