Highlights v1.2.1 is up on the Mac App Store with a few fixes.
A problem with Highlights. When you annotate a PDF, Highlights creates a sidecar markdown file (<name of pdf file>.md) stored in the same folder as the PDF. If the PDF is stored in a database, the annotations file is also stored there. DEVONthink doesn’t sense files created by apps in this manner. You’ll find the file(s) by doing Verify & Repair, where they will show up as “orphans”.
I’ve mentioned this to the Highlights developer.
The same scenario occurs with Skim.
To avoid this situation, index the PDFs you’ll want to annotate with Highlights. Or do lots of V&R and regularly fix the problem.
Agreed. It would also be great if such links would open the PDFs in DTP instead of Highlights. And it would be better still if users could do that and if the links were Text links (instead of Page links) that highlighted the annotated section, and brought users right to that section(s) in the PDF. But hey, I love what I’m seeing, and the developer is definitely making serious improvements!
Hi,
For those who do most of their reading and annotations on the iPad, the excellent PDF Expert by Readdle (for iPhone and iPad) allows to export annotations as an email attachment. True, this requires an extra step to import the attachment into DevonThink Pro. However, since I understand that Highlight seems not very stable yet, that may be worth the effort. Personally, I’ve been using PDF Expert for many months and I think it’s one of the best applications to annotate files.
A new release of Highlights came along today (1.2.2) – unfortunately the stability is deteriorating. I’m not able to work with my annotations in Highlights without the app randomly deleting other annotations. Not sure what’s going on here.
@korm, have the stability problems just emerged since the most recent version of Highlights…? I ask because if that’s the case, I’ll avoid downloading it and wait for the kinks to be worked out - hopefully soon. Thanks!
The use case seems to be: use Highlights to add highlighted text and/or sticky notes. The highlighted text and the content of the sticky notes will be automatically added to the annotation panel (the markdown text). Don’t type anything of your own in the markdown panel – it will be deleted by Highlights after awhile. Export the markdown text to DEVONthink (or wherever) and finish it off, if you need, with your own observations. It would be more useful if the text panel was a real text-entry panel, but it doesn’t seem to work that way.
Ok, thanks. Haven’t been using Markdown w/ it yet, so maybe that’ll mitigate some of the instability you’re experience. For now, however, I’ll hold back on using it until the developer has worked out the kinks. Thanks for the heads up…
I might be the only one, but I’m having problems exporting my annotation summary directly to DEVONthink. I like to edit my annotations in Highlights, particularly to include the correct page numbers for citation purposes, but whenever I export my annotations, all of my edits are lost. The notes in Highlights also revert back to their original un-edited state. Does anyone else have this issue? Is there an easy solution? Thanks!
I wonder if somebody has the script used by Highlights to replace page numbers with DT uri links handy? It is call FetchDEVONthinkUUID.scpt
Unfortunately when I try to install it through Highlights itself I get an error below (which is wrong) and the software author does not seem reply anymore to emails.
The DEVONthink script is already installed. If you want to remove it, delete FetchDEVONthinkUUID.scpt in ~Library/Application Scripts/net.highlightsapp/).
I had pasted the path from the message box without noticing the fact that the ‘/’ was missing after the ‘~’ and that was the reason why finder couldn’t find the path… duh.
Anyone else with problems with the last version and the script?
it promises, in the tab export of the preferences to “install an apple script which look for the PDF in your DEVONthink library and replace page links with DEVONthink links when exporting”, but it actually do not do any of it. It export the html/md to DEVONthink, but the links are always to the highlights app and never to DT.
I tried to check the script in the ~/Library/Application Scripts/net.highlightsapp/ folder, but it gives me an error.
Anyone else managed to overcome such issue?
Alternatively, how can you link the exported notes to the PDF in DT? at least the note itself (such as it would results as if it was an annotation of the PDF)
So, I have a PDF in DT and I open it with Highlights. Using that application I make an annotation and I export it on DT in form of HTML or MD. Each annotation presents some link to a specific page in Highlights (ex: highlights://vrshort#page=3). That’s great, but what I miss is the link to the original PDF in DT, like the one between PDF and Annotation (from annotation template)
When I have a PDF in DT, and I create an annotation from the Annotation template I connect the PDF to the Annotation and the other way around, creating a link such as that if I click on the PDF it suggests me to “Go to folder > pdf_name.pdf (Annotation)”
What I would like to achieve is exactly the same but for the already created HTML/MD that contains the annotation exported from highlights. This would allow me to bind the two together and easily navigate/export them. EDIT: it would be nice to be able to do the same with a file and a folder/group
Would that be doable?
Please, let me know if it is still unclear
You can only have one URL for a document, but you can manually right-click the PDF in DEVONthink and choose Copy Item Link. You can then replace the URL in the Highlights-exported document in the Tools > Show Info window. This would link the exported document back to the PDF. And yes, you can get the item link of a group as well.
