Summarize highlights appears to output the direction of my annotation?

Just looking to confirm that this is expected behaviour, because I find it rather bizarre.

I annotate PDFs in DTTG on my iPad and run “Summarize highlights as markdown” in DT3 afterwards. Most of the time the highlights read exactly as they do in the original PDF, but occasionally all the lines will be backwards. For example, the original text reads:

The work’s multiformity, its improvisatory sampling or juggling of different discourses, genres and forms, involved me in a practice of discrepant en- gagement spurred or inspired by characteristics of the music it sought, so to speak, to be in concert with. Art Lange and I, in the editors’ note to our anthology Moment’s Notice: Jazz in Poetry and Prose, wrote, among other things, of “writings which blur the line between genres, bending genre in ways which are analogous to a musician bending notes.”4 From a Broken Bottle increasingly declared itself, early on, to be of that order. The music’s origins among people policed by racial categorization suggest that it bends notes in an effort, as Ralph Ellison puts it, to hear and see around corners, outmaneuver the rigidities of a taxonomic grid. Think, in this regard, of writing that similarly bends genre while indicting racial taxonomy, such multiform, mixed-genre writing as W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk, Jean Toomer’s Cane, or Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo, and of the insistency with which it invokes African American music.

But my summarized markdown highlights read:

insistency with which it invokes African American music. Folk, Jean Toomer’s Cane, or Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo, and of the multiform, mixed-genre writing as W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black writing that similarly bends genre while indicting racial taxonomy, such outmaneuver the rigidities of a taxonomic grid. Think, in this regard, of notes in an effort, as Ralph Ellison puts it, to hear and see around corners, origins among people policed by racial categorization suggest that it bends Bottle increasingly declared itself, early on, to be of that order. The music’s ways which are analogous to a musician bending notes.”4 From a Broken things, of “writings which blur the line between genres, bending genre in anthology Moment’s Notice: Jazz in Poetry and Prose, wrote, among other to speak, to be in concert with. Art Lange and I, in the editors’ note to our gagement spurred or inspired by characteristics of the music it sought, so discourses, genres and forms, involved me in a practice of discrepant en- work’s multiformity, its improvisatory sampling or juggling of different The

The only reason I can think of for this inconsistent behaviour is that I might have highlighted the text from the end to the beginning (or bottom up), rather than from beginning to end (or top down). The lines breaks occur in the same places as the original document, but are output as 987654321 rather than 123456789. This behaviour seems very strange to me and not at all helpful.

DEVONthink doesn’t change the direction or order on its own, it might be an issue of the PDF and its text layer (or of the PDFkit). Therefore you might want to check a conversion of the PDF document to plain text or select the highlights in e.g. Preview.app, copy them and paste them in a plain text document. Is the result the expected one?

1 Like

The quickest way to test if this is what’s happening would be to open a PDF, highlight a paragraph backwards, then summarise it and see what happens…

However, I do recall @ryanjamurphy finding a directional quirk with the summarise function in PDFs, the conclusion to which was that it’s best to read in “the correct” direction and not to go back and add highlights later, etc., as the summary goes weird. Darned if I can find the whole conversation about it though, do you remember Ryan?

An example document would be appreciated, by the way. Maybe it’s possible to fix this if it’s an issue of the PDF document and/or PDFkit framework.