thumbs pressed. I’m off for the night, good luck - if I have any more ideas I’ll get back to you - otherwise keep posting, maybe we’ll figure something out
So, I tried it—I could see it “converting to image” and it updated the name and changed it to “PDF+Text”… but the exact same thing happened. Unable to select text in DT3. This is a totally different computer, so something else is off. I feel like it must be the ScanSnap settings—I will go through them and double-check, maybe also create a whole new Scan Profile for DT.
That didn’t help—but here’s what did…
Strangely enough, checking the DT3 settings box under Incoming Scans to “Enter metadata after text recognition” made the incoming scan’s text layer selectable. I really, really don’t understand that…
And even more oddly, even after unchecking the add metadata option, the incoming OCR is working once again, creating pdfs with a selectable text layer.
This has to be a bug of some sort, I assume?
Anyhow, thanks so much for your patience and help!
William
PS: Attaching files from immediately before selecting add metadata and after. Just out of curiosity—do you have the same issue in DT3 and/or Preview with being able to select text from the file with “meta” at the end, but not the other one?
2020-06-21-17-09-52 meta.pdf (589.4 KB) 2020-06-21-17-06-59.pdf (548.4 KB)
We believe that this is a bug in Apple’s PDF Kit library. Whilst the text layer is not selectable in either Preview or any application that uses PDF Kit, if you open the same file in Adobe Acrobat the text layer is selectable. For a PDF that has this issue, resaving the file will make the text layer selectable in DT and Preview. The “Enter metadata after text recognition” option will internally resave the file to add the metadata, hence why the text layer is selectable with this option selected.
Thanks for the reply! By resaving it, you mean just opening the file in DT3 and then pressing the “Save” button? The problem is that I’m unable to do that unless some change is made to the file. Is there an easy way to “resave” the file? A Smart Rule would be ideal, if possible.
What I was actually most worried about was that I wouldn’t be able to search for terms in the text layer—but that seems to be possible even when it’s not selectable.
I seem to recall other issues with your software and Apple’s PDF Kit—any idea when this one will be resolved?
Appreciatively,
William
By resaving it, you mean just opening the file in DT3 and then pressing the “Save” button? The problem is that I’m unable to do that unless some change is made to the file. Is there an easy way to “resave” the file?
In Preview, hold the Option key and choose File > Save As. Do NOT change the name. Just save and overwrite the existing version.
I seem to recall other issues with your software and Apple’s PDF Kit—any idea when this one will be resolved?
PDFKit is Apple’s framework. There are things they have to fix in it.
Okay, I wasn’t suggesting it was your responsibility to fix it—just asking when you thought it might be fixed. I take it that since it’s Apple’s fault, you have no idea.
In any case, both my installations of DT3 seem to be working normally again now—so maybe this thread will help someone else with a similar problem.
That said, do you have any idea why selecting and then unselecting the “Enter metadata after text recognition” in the DT3 “OCR” settings suddenly made it work again? That fixed the issue on both on my MacBook and my iMac, independently, so it seems unlikely to be coincidence. I have no idea what the issue is with Apple’s PDF Kit (or really what that is), but it seems like if the problem can be resolved by checking and unchecking a box in DT3 settings, you might not have to wait for Apple to fix it to resolve this particular issue.
Appreciatively,
W.
PS: If I start getting unselectable text layers again, I can try your work-around. But when I tried it by opening the file in Preview from DT3, I wasn’t sure where to “Save as” the file to—Preview defaults to the last used folder. It seems like DT3 files are somewhere within ~/Library/Application Support/DEVONthink 3/Inbox.dtBase2/Files.noindex/pdf inside a folder named with just a lowercase letter. I found I could choose the file in DT3 and “Reveal in Finder”, then open with Preview, then direct Preview to “Save as” and enter the path to that same folder—but that would be extraordinarily tedious when it comes to hundreds or thousands of scanned files. At that point, I would rather just add metadata to each scanned file. Is there no more efficient work-around?
No worries. Apple’s PDFKit has had continued issues for some time now, some dating back to Sierra.
I found I could choose the file in DT3 and “Reveal in Finder”, then open with Preview, then direct Preview to “Save as” and enter the path to that same folder—
This would be unnecessary if you opened the PDFs in Preview directly from DEVONthink, via Data > Open With.
If Preview is your default PDF application you can press Shift-Command-O to open a PDF in Preview.
You can also set Preferences > General > Double-click opens documents externally if you want this behavior.