Dear Adam, at first I must say that I am not at all a power user of Skim, so my usage only scratches on the surface of ist possibilities.
Nevertheless I think that what you want is too much for a PDF vieweing and annotating software. Some time ago, I had the same problem. I could not solve it finally in a really elegant way, as I was under high pressure and did not have the time to develop a completely new workflow and "system" to deal with notes, however I think I know what you want: I was doing a literature research for my Ph. D. thesis and I've evaluated more than 300 publications (mostly articles, conference proceedings and also many books) and tried to extract information from them, which was one of the most difficult tasks in the whole project. I think, you can not handle that information in Skim alone, you need at least one other app for sorting and commenting your extracted information. I use DevonThink Pro Office for managing this information, which has some very nice features and which supports tagging. With an AppleScript I could send (with a simple keyboard shortcut) the currently selected Skim Note to the Inbox of DevonThink. The note contained a hyperlink to the original PDF (but to page 1 and unfortunately not to the page where the note was created), the content of the node and it could be directly assigned one or several tags (keywords) and optionally directly moved to a subdirectory of my DevonThink database. I think that would be quite much of what you want. There are other ways to organize information from publications like PDFs. SciPloreMindmapping ( http://sciplore.org/software/sciplore_mindmapping/) can extract notes from PDFs, however I'm not sure if that is possible with Skim-Notes also (or which restrictions there are). It's free and they're currently working on a new version based on FreePlane (a fork of FreeMind which is the base of the current versions). You could give it a try. And, maybe the most sophisticated solution (but it also looks a little complicated at the beginning): John shows a Workflow for organizing excerpts and notes about PDF files in his blog http://organognosi.blogspot.com/: He takes the notes in Skim and makes heavy use of AppleScript to export them (and the bibliographic information) to a MediaWiki and to DevonThink Pro and also create bidirectional links to jump from one application to the other, so e. g. to really jump from the excerpt in the MediaWiki directly to the corresponding page of a pdf... It looks very powerful, as I did not have the time to change my entire system, I could not try it out, but it seems very well designed and you should definitely have a look at it. I hope that helps, Kind regards Martin > Von: Adam Cronkright <[email protected]> > Antworten an: For general discussion about using Skim > <[email protected]> > Datum: Fri, 3 Jun 2011 14:27:46 -0400 > An: For general discussion about using Skim > <[email protected]> > Betreff: Re: [Skim-app-users] Folders/Categories Within Notes Pane > > Hey Maurice, > > Yea, thanks, I've been trying to do that, but in an ebook you quickly run out > of colors (author's points i agree with, points i disagree with, which would > contain: the author's support for the status quo, the author's critique of > status quo, and within each critique the authors will make several points..... > I've got to keep track of their references I want to look up and terms they > define.... I'm sure everyone has run into this problem at times. I run into > it with each book. > > And not only does one run out of colours (well, distinguishably different > shades) but it is almost impossible to keep this all organized as you read. > Since you don't know sometimes where an author is going and how you are going > to end up categorizing those notes. To be able to go back at the end, create > folders, and drag and drop notes would save hours on each book. It's like the > difference between trying to make an outline for a book or paper in Word or > pages, and outlining in Scrivener. > > If this is not possible within skim, is there another annotation software that > can do it? > > Or, is there any way to make an app that is it's own notes pane? You create > folders and then drag the notes from the Skim notes pane over and it makes a > copy. Then, when you click on one, it opens it up in Skim? I'd pay for that > ability. Heck, even just the first part - an app that you could export Skim's > notes to and organize them in folders would be a great way to preview a > document you read a year ago. Is any of this possible? > > Thanks, > Adam > > > > > > > > On 2011-06-03, at 1:34 PM, Maurice Frankel wrote: > >> However, as the extract you quote from 2008 suggests, you can allocate each >> theme a different color (for highlighting or as the background color to a >> text note). You can then sort your notes by color in the Notes Pane (click on >> the 3rd column header from the left), which will group all notes on the same >> theme together . This sort function was presumably not available at the time >> the 2008 post was written. >> >> >> On 3 Jun 2011, at 14:44, Adam Cronkright wrote: >> >>> I desperately need the ability to group/categorize my notes (mostly labeled >>> highlights) into different folders and subfolders in the notes pane. In the >>> ebook I'm currently reading as part of my research, I'm up to 59 notes and >>> all I've finished is the Preface and the Introduction. Especially given >>> that it was an introduction - I know the author will touch on many of these >>> things in more detail later, but I don't want to miss anything of importance >>> or anything that is more clearly explained the first time around. So I need >>> to the ability to go back when I've finished a book, create folders and >>> subfolders for certain topics and sub-topics, and then drag and drop my >>> highlights and underlines into those folders. This is especially crucial >>> when reading ebooks/articles by authors who jump around a lot. I could give >>> my notes pane better organization than they gave their book/article. >>> >>> I found the following post that touches on this, but the guy is just told no >>> (I don't know what RFEs are). >>> >>> Is the feature there and I'm just not finding it? Is there a better feature >>> built into skim that I should use instead? >>> >>> This feature is a game-breaker for me. Any help is appreciated. >>> >>> Re: [Skim-app-users] Categories (Folders) of notes in the notes pane? >>> Christiaan Hofman >>> Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:15:24 -0800 >>> >>> On 26 Feb 2008, at 10:49 PM, Bill Mohler wrote: >>> >>>> Would it be possible or wise to add capability to group notes in the >>>> notes pane into "collections" or "folders" with a common theme? I do >>>> a bit of this by the tool with which I highlight and the color I >>>> choose, but in browsing the notes pane, there is no way to order the >>>> notes other than alphabetically, by tool, or by page. All of these >>>> are great, but I could make quicker sense of my multi-multi-annotated >>>> pdfs if I could arrange them a bit more logically and consider them >>>> as groups. >>>> >>> >>> No, you can search the RFEs for the more detailed answer. >>> >>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- >>> -- >>> Simplify data backup and recovery for your virtual environment with vRanger. >>> Installation's a snap, and flexible recovery options mean your data is safe, >>> secure and there when you need it. Discover what all the cheering's about. >>> Get your free trial download today. >>> http://p.sf.net/sfu/quest-dev2dev2 >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Skim-app-users mailing list >>> [email protected] >>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/skim-app-users >> >> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------->> - >> Simplify data backup and recovery for your virtual environment with vRanger. >> Installation's a snap, and flexible recovery options mean your data is safe, >> secure and there when you need it. Discover what all the cheering's about. >> Get your free trial download today. >> http://p.sf.net/sfu/quest-dev2dev2 >> _______________________________________________ >> Skim-app-users mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/skim-app-users > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Simplify data backup and recovery for your virtual environment with vRanger. > Installation's a snap, and flexible recovery options mean your data is safe, > secure and there when you need it. Discover what all the cheering's about. > Get your free trial download today. > http://p.sf.net/sfu/quest-dev2dev2 > _______________________________________________ > Skim-app-users mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/skim-app-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Simplify data backup and recovery for your virtual environment with vRanger. Installation's a snap, and flexible recovery options mean your data is safe, secure and there when you need it. Discover what all the cheering's about. Get your free trial download today. http://p.sf.net/sfu/quest-dev2dev2 _______________________________________________ Skim-app-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/skim-app-users
