Hello all,
Will appreciate some clarification, since I am unclear on whether this is supposed to be like this, or is possibly a UI bug.
Below are two screengrabs from my highlighting text inside a PDF in DTP3.
The first in its ‘natural’ state, the 2nd once text has been selected, and highlighted.
That tiny little disclosure triangle – is this not supposed to be selected to have a dropdown appear, to change the highlighting colour?
Once selected/activated, note the blue block that now covers the entire button.
Are both of the above, the expected behaviour?
Lastly, is there a possibility of bringing back the two toolbar buttons from DTPO2, as below?
As someone who does
plenty of annotating/highlighting inside DTPO, these were
very useful to me.
All that said, well done on the release – fantastic features that have been introduced!
The dropdown appears after a long click, otherwise the last used color is applied.
Just a glitch, the next beta will fix this.
Long click!! Live and learn! Thanks!
PS: You do a lot of highlighting? Get Shift-Command-L under your fingers. This will toggle highlighting selected text.
Also, see…
With this tip you can assign keyboard shortcuts in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts.
Yes, plenty of highlighting!
But I prefer to use the trackpad, and BTT, to get it done. The gif below appears a bit odd, since I am selecting small chunks of text in the example, but in the context of lengthy paragraphs within a journal article, this works a charm.
I am aware of Shift-Command-L, and were I to be using primarily a single colour to annotate, it would be useful. But I jump between several colours all the way through each of my pages, so it’s basically useless then, since it only re-applies the last used colour. Hence my little BTT-hack, for the floating palette.
But my request for a larger highlight button, similar to that in DTPO2 – stems mostly from my using it to remove a highlight colour. I frequently highlight text I don’t want to, and being able to quickly hit the button to ‘undo’, was a massive help. It’s quite small now, and makes things a bit trickier.
I realise I am an outlier in this regard, but no harm in asking!! 
As another user that does a lot of highlighting, I find the long press very slow and inefficient. Any chance it can be replaced with a traditional drop down? Or, better yet, some sort of quick access to a few colors in the main bar itself? I’m picturing something like the quick colors in GoodNotes:
And while on the subject of highlighting, a feature that would be REALLY nice is the ability to change the color of an existing highlight by right-clicking and selecting a different color. Preview does this wonderfully. To change colors in DT, one has to re-select the highlighted text and re-apply highlighting, which is not as quick.
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But I jump between several colours all the way through each of my pages,
This is what my blog post refers to. In fact, I can highlight in multiple colors much faster than you with my method. 
Toolbar access to colours etc would be first-prize - there is plenty of space on the PDF toolbar (as opposed to the more cluttered main tooldbar)!
Yes. And just to be clear, I meant the “pdf editing bar” when I said “main bar.”
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there is plenty of space on the PDF toolbar (as opposed to the more cluttered main tooldbar)!
The space available is relative to the toolbar buttons and size of the screen. A 12” MacBook will obviously have less space than a 27” iMac.
How?? 
I’m presumably missing something – are you able to cycle through the highlighting colours, and have them applied to selected text, all from your keyboard??
Yes. Per my blog post…
And…
I actually use these four colors in internal work. The unused ones are just for consistency.
Ah - I see! Sorry, yes, I have had shortcuts for the highlighting set-up from the get-go as well – but then I wouldn’t have had a reason to nerd out on a BTT floating palette!!
But thinking about it, maybe I need to rethink my shortcuts…
Mine are all longer than simply two key-combinations, which makes it more difficult to do using a single hand…
And since the one hand is resting on the trackpad, my needing to switch over to the keyboard to assist in entering the ‘shortcut’, wasn’t making anything ‘shorter’, so to speak…
Yeah, BTT is doing something sexy, but in this case not more productive IMHO.
And yeah, hotkeys can get hard to define. I find Control a little awkward with the pinky curled under, but soon enough it gets pretty fast to use.
(OTOH, BTT can overcome some of the lack of available hotkey combinations too.)
That’s it really – I have plenty of shortcuts as well.
I just gave them a re-look. Simply running Ctrl+key in DT3, has me 80% of the way, but then two are used elsewhere – ruining the attempt at finding a ‘closely-spaced’ group of them on the keyboard, to trigger (only) with the right hand.
So I need to start wading into the realm of Ctrl+Shift+key, and then things start becoming tricky, one-handed, as you mentioned.
Regardless, if it’s not too difficult, allowing a user to ‘customize the toolbar’ by adding the buttons with highlight colour selections, would be fantastic!
I’ve had my capslock key function as Ctrl key for as long as I can remember. This solves the pinky curl problem and has the added benefit of making it harder to yell at people. 
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Just reading the thread - you can combine the best of both worlds - BTT plus the hotkey combinations. Have BTT gestures fire off the Control+Key as you desire. That will work like a charm!
My suggest is still cheaper… 
Thanks for all the suggestions - might give future users some ideas.
I spent the past morning/afternoon highlighting again - and despite the re-worked shortcuts, soon came to appreciate my “floating palette” approach for what it helps with most directly: laziness. 
My left hand is on the Magic Trackpad in any event event, selecting text - using the “floating palette” means I can select text, and highlight it in different colours, without ever having to use my other hand… So it can be left to its own devices, like pottery, doodling, driving etc., without needing to touch the keyboard.
It’s the little things in life…
How do you go about producing the floating palette? I purchased a BTT license a while back but haven’t had time to crack into it yet. This looks like it might be useful—or at least sexy, as Jim rightly says.
