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sumatrapdfreader / sumatrapdf

SumatraPDF reader
http://www.sumatrapdfreader.org
GNU General Public License v3.0
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Bookmarks: navigating like in a real book #545

Open bensoibj opened 8 years ago

bensoibj commented 8 years ago

First of all Sumatra is a really nice and handy small reader. Thanks! Nevertheless, I often miss one feature which would make it behave like reading a real book.

Reading a real book, one has the ability to put a finger between the current pages whenever you want to quickly jump to another or between two or more positions in the book. This is handy when reading for instance technical documents where you often want to switch between the text part and the reference list at the end of a chapter or compare formulas on different pages, etc. Though one could "abuse" Sumatra's Favorites feature, this is not very comfortable, since too many keystrokes are necessary and no shortcut exist for jumping to a saved position.

What would be nice is if there were some, lets say 10, bookmark places, which are directly accessible through shortcuts (e.g. 1, 2, ..., 0). This would allow to easily jump across different position in the document. Whether a bookmark place is free or "engaged" could be indicated in the status or menu bar. What would be even nicer is if one of these bookmarks automatically tracked the current reading position. So if one forgets to put a finger between the current pages before jumping to another position, one could still jump back to the current reading position thanks to the automatic finger (=bookmark).

Related issues:

sbridger commented 8 years ago

Nice idea. I don't know if table of contents is identifyable in a pdf, but that would be a great predefined one...

calvin-young commented 7 years ago

This is an excellent idea and I would personally use it daily.

Example case: I am reading a textbook and want to make a quick glance at an appendix in the back of the book. Currently I must take note of which page I am on, and then manually punch that page number back in once I am done referencing the appendix. It would be lovely to be able to simply flip back and forth.

nod5 commented 7 years ago

Years ago I made the helper tool sumatra_earmarks that does exactly what OP requests.

Another tool sumatra_highlight_helper similarly allows for quick jumps between pages with highlighted text on them.

Kevin-Mok commented 7 years ago

@nod5 How hard would that be to implement directly into the code?

nod5 commented 7 years ago

@Kevin-Mok I don't know C++ or the SumatraPDF code so can't say how hard.

sumatra_highlight_helper is only ~500 lines. Note that only SumatraPDF prerelease version has highlighting. So any work on native highlighting should probably start with whatever is needed to get the prerelease features into the main version.

See also #103 , especially my suggestions 1 and 9 that would make sumatra_highlight_helper work more seamlessly with SumatraPDF.

bensoibj commented 7 years ago

some new related issues:

GitHubRulesOK commented 4 years ago

@bensoibj Ben can you please try latest pre-release and try out the recent improvements in "favorites"

Right click allows to easily add and remove many favourites as placeholders (locations to jump back to) very much like the memory store and recall on a calculator

@kjk above account has no visible activity for 2 years so confirmation may not be forthcoming ? the final part of OP request is the desire to keep an auto history of last location prior to a favorite jump so that one can "back-track" AFAIK this is addressed by the native GOTO BACK/Forward (ALT LEFT/Right)?

bensoibj commented 4 years ago

@GitHubRulesOK Thanks for the notification. I quickly tried the pre-release; it seems the only favorites improvement is that you can use right click to add/remove favorites? Well, I prefer to do it via shortcuts, without mouse clicks, it is faster. Anyhow, Sumatra’s favorites feature may be useful, but I think it is not intended for efficiently navigating within complex documents as described in the beginning or by other . A very good reference for such navigation are, for example, even though not a document reader, the code editors from JetBrains, e.g., PyCharm. There one can toggle a bookmark (corresponding to Sumatra’s favorites), toggle bookmarks with mnemonic, show bookmarks – all with only one or a few shortcuts. Very convenient.

Yes, the native GOTO BACK/Forward (ALT LEFT/Right) feature already keeps an auto history of the last location prior to a favorite jump. I probably was not aware of it in the moment of writing the original comment 3.5 years ago, I don’t remember.

GitHubRulesOK commented 4 years ago

@bensoibj Thanks for your feedback, SumatraPDF prides itself on using shortcuts (all be it fixed rather than custom) so favorites is ALT A Enter to add and now context F will show favorites etc.

The residual issues are down to other user preferences such as choice of shortcut mmnemonic

GitHubRulesOK commented 4 years ago

In an almost identical request to bookmark pages as A through Z #1527 I describe how to store and recall favourites so the are recalled (languages may vary) via AltACA etc For numbers that becomes AltAC1 which whilst it matches "too many keys" comment (it is four keys each to store and recall) it addresses the most basic request to use keys to recall.

It would help to have something similar to the method used in HighlightJumper whereby holding numeric keys down it adds the location (and like favourites allows the select text to be used as a tag / label for showing in reminder list) then tapping a key jumps to that location (sweet, short and neat?) I found it fairly easy to expand from 4 to 9 keys and replace 5 with 0 thus meeting the desire for more locations see https://github.com/nod5/HighlightJump/issues/4

GitHubRulesOK commented 4 years ago

Whilst still no progress towards a permanent solution, some more recent annotation developments may provide better "workarounds" Unfortunately using highlight jumper as intended is no longer possible in current pre-releases as smx functionality was retired. However the ahk code Nod5 developed could still be adapted to provide 9 numbered temporary "bookmarks" with index on 0 and even include the desired turned corner indicator.

In current pre-release it is possible to temporarily select unlimited highlighted locations using the A key and if they contain selectable text the contents are even easier to spot and can be navigated pagewise within a document using the highlight list much like favorites. For temporary bookmarking simply dont save them. image

Personally I prefer favorites as showing the stored page names whereas highlights need to be selected to show "contents" so that could be "improved" I have requested the positioning be more refined than pages in https://github.com/sumatrapdfreader/sumatrapdf/issues/1688 and also the ability to add fresh links to destinations in https://github.com/sumatrapdfreader/sumatrapdf/issues/1706 also beware open issue https://github.com/sumatrapdfreader/sumatrapdf/issues/1705