biff VS remarks

I am currently reading many books and papers and use highlighting a lot. My life would be a lot better if I could automatically extract the highlighted text. I tried several (by now outdated) solutions like Biff (https://github.com/soulisalmed/biff ), RCU and https://remarkable-web.vercel.app/ . The first two are apparently outdated, and the last I can't connect to (and all my files are >4 MB, so manual select doesn't work).

How? Do you use https://github.com/soulisalmed/biff? Thanks!

I just want to spread awareness that an amazing tool first posted here (github here) is lying in destitution since the 2.7 real highlight update.

> For example, there's no direct switching between documents.

In case you haven't seen it already: https://github.com/ddvk/remarkable-hacks

The ddvk hacks are easy to apply and reversible. They add a bunch of gestures like instantly flipping between documents. One of my other favorites is a quick swipe gesture to switch to the last-used tool.

I don't want to annotate PDFs and then only save the annotations, but it sounds like biff would help with that if you don't mind another tool in the chain: https://github.com/soulisalmed/biff

I use mine quite a bit for annotating documents and presentations. Provided the screen size works for you (you have to be comfortable reading somewhat smaller font sizes than usual), it's quite good for how I work. As another poster pointed out, it follows a different model than most PDF readers, in that annotations are done just like on paper; you don't select text and highlight, you just highlight like you would on paper. My first reaction was that this was lame, but I've come around to feeling that it's probably the right approach for me, in that my mind is not constantly switching between reading and selection modes. Your annotations do sync back to the computer, but to get annotations out in a way that's reusable in other software, you have to use third-party software like "Biff": https://github.com/soulisalmed/biff (there are others too) Another positive thing about it is that because the interface is very sparse and you're working with it largely like paper, you don't have to devote mental load to worrying about accidentally pressing buttons onscreen or about whether palm rejection is going to work or not (at least if you're right-handed). I find that freeing.

In reMarkable's stock output, highlighted text is not textured with PDF annotations, and so its highlights are not readable by any PDF client. You would still need to use third-party software for that. The only two I know of are RCU and remarks.

Which firmware are you on? For 2.15 and below, there are a couple tools that will export real PDF highlight annotation. I use (and am the author of) RCU, which can export both PDF highlights and layers, but there is also remarks if you are comfortable with something more hacky.

But this is only half of the story, these files do not contain highlights or scribbles. That is where another open-source library comes into play, remarks see here.

I had the same problem and although there are tools like remarks the idea is to make it automatic and not waste any time fixing anything (or at least for me), for That's why I recommend you use annotator, the plugin is simple but it exports all metadata in plain text.

I use rsync, but not with a cron. Check out https://github.com/lucasrla/remarkable-utils for an easy implementation of rsync. If you want to mark up pdf files and then get your annotations, check out https://github.com/lucasrla/remarks

I use https://github.com/lucasrla/remarks, which OCRs your highlights to extract what exactly was highlighted, and also outputs screenshots of all pages on which I wrote notes.

This way I can go through my annotations sequentially, save highlights / their main ideas, and reformulate my notes into plaintext a bit more clearly.

With software that can insert/export PDF highlight annotations, like remarks or my own RCU, you may then use Zotero to extract these highlights. This used to be part of a plug-in called Zotfile, but IIRC this can now be done in Zotero directly.

On a side note, thank you for mentioning RMRL! I'd been using remarks, but it has a number of shortcomings, most of which are not present in RMRL.