Bug Report and Suggestion for Improvement: Highlight Function

[kasim]

Hello,

I am writing to report several issues I've encountered with the highlight function in the Reader.

Bug Report: Highlight Function Issues

1. Inconsistent Highlighting Behavior:
- The highlight function does not consistently react as expected. Sometimes it takes multiple attempts to successfully highlight a word.
- In some cases, the function fails to highlight the word entirely, while at other times, it works correctly on the first attempt.
- From my observations, it takes around 2-4 seconds for a word to be highlighted after selecting it. If I click somewhere else immediately after attempting to highlight, the chances of the word being highlighted decrease significantly.
- Although it doesn't happen often, there are instances where the word fails to highlight even after waiting. I wanted to raise this issue in case other users are experiencing similar problems.

I have included a video to demonstrate these issues for better understanding.

Suggestion for Improvement (Previously Posted)

To provide a comprehensive overview, I am also including the history of my previous post where I suggested improvements for the highlight function(since it also related to the highlight function I will keep it here so it would all be in one thread):

Previous Suggestion Post:

Highlight Management

The new highlight feature is absolutely fantastic addition, especially for users who frequently highlight key words or phrases. However, the process to manage them (like changing colors, editing categories or deleting) is quite cumbersome to the point that after 1 hour of using it and constantly going through the same steps made me not want to use it so much anymore. Introducing a more streamlined way to manage bookmarks directly from the main interface—perhaps a dedicated bookmark button on the top next to the + icon to save words to flashcards—would make this feature even more beneficial (i.e. user selects the word, then clicks the shortcut button and it highlights word, by clicking second time user can either change color or delete highlight)

Best regards,
Kasim

 

[mikelove]

Thanks. Will investigate these bugs, though in general since PDF reading is running through a library we don't control (Apple's PDFKit) it's the place we have the hardest time making everything run smoothly.

As far as the highlight UI, perhaps on iPad where there's plenty of space it would make sense to have a highlight button in the reader toolbar rather than only in the share menu.

 

[kasim]

As far as the highlight UI, perhaps on iPad where there's plenty of space it would make sense to have a highlight button in the reader toolbar rather than only in the share menu.

Yes, definitely. The highlight management would also be more convenient to use, especially if the user wants to highlight a certain word in a different color than the default red or edit it in any way to distinguish between different highlighted words.

Currently, the user has to:

1. Select the word
2. Click Share
3. Click Add Highlight (highlight done)

If the user wants to edit it:

4. Reselect the word
5. Click Share
6. Click Edit Highlight
7. User makes changes
8. Save (highlight edited)

A more streamlined approach might be:

1. The user selects the word
2. Clicks the shortcut button, and the word is highlighted (highlight done)

If the user wants to edit it:
3. Clicks the shortcut button second time to edit highlight (assuming it is possible for the word to stay selected)
4. User makes changes
5. Save (highlight edited)

This approach is more direct and convenient for the end-user. If you find this idea useful, you may consider adding it.

 

[kasim]

Just an idea to consider:
Another thought I had is that the highlight menu could be much more user friendly and intuitive if it looked for example like this (See the attached photo) + it would take much less effort to manage the highlights. I do not know if this would help, but this is already implemented in the apple ipad PDF reader, not sure if it would be possible to connect it somehow.

 

[mikelove]

Could you send me a copy of this PDF as well? I'm not able to reproduce your issues with the other one you sent.

 

[kasim]

Absolutely! I have sent u an e-mail.

 

[mikelove]

Highlight menu: I don't think we'd ever want to make it quite this prominent since the primary function of the reader is still text lookups. We could maybe consider an option for a highlight button right in the reader bubble - something that would maybe pop up a menu of different highlight colors.

I'm actually a little unsure if we're going to see much use of highlights in PDFs, because we don't support drag selection of arbitrary text ranges - doing that would be complicated enough (and conflict with other things enough) that it's unlikely to happen until a later 4.x release, if ever - and for individual words, if there's a particular word you want to draw attention to, you can add it to flashcards and configure Pleco to highlight words in specific flashcard categories.

 

[kasim]

and for individual words, if there's a particular word you want to draw attention to, you can add it to flashcards and configure Pleco to highlight words in specific flashcard categories.

Great idea! Do you think it would be feasible to allow users to apply multiple flashcard formatting settings within the same document, rather than just one?(sort of multiply the block that is on the screenshot in attachment) For instance, flashcards in one category could be highlighted in yellow, while another category could use green. Other settings might include hiding Ruby text for certain categories. Additionally, if a user were to accidentally create a setting that conflicts with a previous one, the most recent setting would take precedence.

Another suggestion—would it be possible for users to set a default highlight color? For example, changing the default from dark red to yellow could enhance readability, especially when the text is black and the current dark color makes the highlighted words difficult to distinguish.

 

[mikelove]

There's an option under 'highlight color' for 'first tag color' - if you select that then it'll color them based on category tags. Adding a second 'flashcard formatting' block might make sense though, yes.

And yes, we should probably make the highlight color options more pastel-y in general.