Reader to DT - importing files to DT, summarising, etc

Hi all, as Reader now permits downloads of PDFs with annotations, and printing of content within the app, I thought I’d record how that works with DT in case anyone was wondering and hadn’t got around to testing it yet. (Obviously this is as of 2023-04-02 - Reader is still in beta and with changes occurring regularly, so this functionality may change.)

Comments relate to web version of Reader on MacOS - unless I’ve missed something I couldn’t see either the export functionality or the print function in the iPadOS yet.

Print to PDF of web articles

If you already have hotkeys set up to print web content straight to your DT inbox, this continues to work in Reader (no reason why it wouldn’t since you do this in browser, but I’m just noting it).

You cannot summarise highlights made in Reader from the printed PDF imported to DT. Again, this makes sense, as this is an article that has been printed. However, it’s something to bear in mind. (I suspect this could be resolved with an “export to PDF” function so maybe Reader will address it in a future update.)

Downloading PDFs with annotations

The good stuff rubs hands with glee

It’s working perfectly. Downloading a PDF from Reader creates a proper PDF with standardised annotations :heart_eyes: Once the PDF is in DT, you can summarise highlights and it works as you’d expect, with both highlights and notes from Reader being “read” by DT. One little formatting blip (on the Reader side I assume): notes appear on the same line as the highlight they’re attached to in Markdown, rather than as a separate line (in the markdown they’re separated by only 1 return instead of 2, so when rendered they appear on the same line). Whether you care about this is down to personal preference and aesthetic (I prefer my highlights to stand alone, but I always edit my summary markdown so it doesn’t inconvenience me at all).

This means you can now read and annotate a PDF in Reader, safe in the knowledge that you can get your annotations back into DT to work with.

Annotations in the Inspector

I don’t use this function so I don’t know how people use it, but I know some DT people do so thought I should show it.

The annotation function in the second field of the Inspector in DT doesn’t populate (I don’t know if it’s meant to, I don’t know what it’s for!):

Annotations

The annotations function in the fourth field of the Inspector populates with annotations (highlights and notes):

Screenshot 2023-04-02 at 12.16.06

I haven’t tested any other workflows as these are the two that affect me, but if anyone has other things they do, feel free to post details here!

Although these are changes made to Reader, I think a thank you goes to both app teams for encouraging a standardisation in how PDFs are handled so that moving between apps is seamless :clap:

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Thanks for sharing your findings. I’m sure it will be helpful to other using the Reader app.

Nope. That’s for annotation files, as described in the Inspectors > Annotations & Reminders section of the built-in Help and manual.

Only one question: what Reader App? :sweat_smile: :sweat_smile: :sweat_smile: :sweat_smile: :sweat_smile: :sweat_smile: :sweat_smile:

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:joy: I do wonder if they have realised the folly of that name, since you can’t google anything about the app without getting millions of hits for other things. (It also means troubleshooting is hard since you can’t google your question!)

Even just talking about Reader and Reeder (I use both, as do others in this forum) is confusing, despite the different spellings.

Anyway I’m referring to Readwise’s Reader, which despite the confusing name is an excellent app.

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Sounds an interesting App, I will test, but it will depend how the ePub and PDF treatment is done. BTW, I will pay an extra in-app to have good DTTG support for ePub.

Well, I have a theory about this related to managers or heads of department. I’m going to soft the phrase I use to say in my podcast, but put in spoiler anyway:

Great Ideas (read this under your own scatologic responsibility):"

A manager, while doing his morning poop, has the “greatest of the f*cking universe idea, destinated to revolution the entire world”, then he picks some of his poo, runs to the office, and drops in the table, telling all people his great idea that they must implement ASAP.

Like, well, call your flagship application “Reader”