PDF annotation in Logseq

Feedback Feature Requests
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5

I will move some of my suggestions from the Discord here to keep track.

Touchpoints

Primarily examples of possible workflows that seem to integrate well with key Logseq design decisions (text-based, web-native, etc.)

  • hypothes.is: appears to be a general web-page annotation tool, but it works with PDFs (local, even) just fine. They’re build on open web standards, and have a quite-active github organization with a wide variety of tools/users.

  • Polar Bookshelf: an web-native, cross-platform tool for storing/managing/annotating pdfs. Seem’s to have a similar ethos to LogSeq or Obsidian. Haven’t used it in a while since I kept needing Zotero-style bib management (and switching apps for annotation, note-taking, and archival is what pushed me to OrgMode and then to LogSeq in the first place). But looking quite polished lately.

  • org-noter is not web-native, but rather does a wonderful job at taking advantage of plain-text storage options (org). Used to use this a lot, along with org-noter-pdftools for pushing my notes back into the pdf file itself (to share with colleagues). But trying to merge this with org-roam and md-roam and org-roam-bibtex, etc… was becoming an ever-taller house of cards, even with Doom emacs as a base.

  • Highlights.app This is the one that almost made me get a mac haha. All annotations can be saved/synced to sidecar MD files, annotations can be saved to the pdf itself for sharing, etc. Nothing from the above has come close for me in terms of being able to capture this functionality w/ Open Source and Linux.

Needs

So, this will obviously be a personal needs thing. But they come from a long-time researcher, and a lot of delving into each of these communities.

  • Sidecar and/or plaintext syncing: huge believer in version control for notes and the ability to mine/hack your own notes with scripts a la @karlicoss and HPI. This IMO necessitates human-readable plain-text as the annotation “source of truth” (barring e.g. drawings on the page).
  • Access to relative PDF locations: We probably have existing PDF management systems like Zotero, Polar, or even just dropbox. I recommend the “graph” link to those as relative locations, and then cache the pdf in e.g. the database as needed. Try to not replace pdf storage solutions, but integrate with existing ones. Else, that way lies madnesss.
  • User control over annotation metadata: The most “pdf-crazy” group is likely the academia crowd (I could be biased). But this means that some annotations need to be highly identifiable/sharable (e.g. Sending a cool paper with my notes to a friend, or collaborating on annotations with colleagues). Other times the annotations have to have NO metadata (e.g. an anonymous paper review). The chance for accidentally including your name in the MD sync is huge in something like Org-noter where it grabs your username by default as the author. This is not really configurable on a per-file/folder/environment setting in org-noter, which means lots of manual tweaking, ALL THE TIME.

Ok, sorry for the wall of text. Hopefully there’s some useful food for thought here? Thanks for making the thread!

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