[okfn-discuss] Mendely: beyond PDF, annotations in general, other thoughts (some OT)

Fri Dec 4 17:44:13 GMT 2009

Does not fit your imemdiate needs of annotating PDF, but in our new 
version of the co-ment annotation system, we took a strong orientation 
of using simple structured text formats such as markdown. For PDFs 
containing text, it is relatively easy to go PDF to markdown. Of course 
for PDF containing images of texts, this is another story.

See www.co-ment.net for existing co-ment
www.co-ment.org for future version

Main lesson: authors should publish (p)reprints in latex or other 
structured text formats rather than as PDF.

Philippe Aigrain

grahamperrin a écrit :
> 
> Mr. Puneet Kishor wrote:
>> - HTML attachments are now indexed for full text search
>>    (note that this will not apply to existing attachments)
>>
> 
> 0.9.5 was released yesterday but that feature doesn't work for me, it's
> amongst the issues gathered at
> <http://twitter.com/grahamperrin/status/6311051506>. 
> 
> 
> 
>> As far as I understand, for now there is no across the board standard way
>> of annotating PDFs. 
>>
> 
> I gathered some information back in March,
> <http://groups.diigo.com/group/Diigo_HQ/content/549987> but I don't know
> whether it is (or was) up-to-date. Certainly not comprehensive. 
> 
> (Very OT from bibliographic indexes:
> <http://groups.diigo.com/group/Diigo_HQ/content/587312> looked at
> annotations from a Diigo perspective.)
> 
> 
> 
>> Apple Preview's annotations are not visible in … 
>>
> 
> When that happens: in Preview, try Save As… 
> — that usually does the trick. I assumed that the problem was on my machine
> (it's a bit hacked) … but if other people see the bug we should report it to
> Apple. 
> 
> 
> 
>> <http://shebanator.com/2009/11/02/open-government-and-pdf/>
>>
> 
> Thanks for that … I can see both sides of the argument (and I often see
> people using PDF in amusing ways) but predictions such as 
> 
>>> The end result would be that most people would 
>>> only be able to view government documentation 
>>> through the website of some sort of “trusted” intermediary
> 
> are not very visionary ;)
> 
> Back to Mendeley: it's promising, thanks for the tip. Good that they're no
> longer limited to PDF. 
> 
> If you're using Mac, or Windows with Safari, it should be interesting to
> share files in WebArchive format but first: I'm not sure whether
> <http://feedback.mendeley.com/pages/4941/suggestions/405656> is a blocker to
> sharing files in general…
> 
> Regards
> Graham