topspace VS org-noter

topspace.el enables scrolling 1st line to e.g. center of screen https://github.com/trevorpogue/topspace

The most polished and useful program I've made for personal use is an emacs minor mode that lets you scroll down top lines in a file. I was tired of having to always look all the way at the top of the editor window to read the top lines of a file or small files.

https://github.com/trevorpogue/topspace

I also made a Python tree data structure library to easily parse and read tree structures which I actively use in other personal projects.

https://github.com/trevorpogue/sections

I use org-noter: Emacs document annotator, using Org-mode.

Well, for me personally, I get a lot out of org-noter. I like to write in org-mode but frequently find my editing skills are improved by exporting it to a more "readable" format. I then like to use the specific-note function to click on the exported pdf/whatever to add highly localized notes for myself, which are collected in a bidirectionally-linked org file for later review.

An alternative is to open PDFs, from Zotero or from anywhere else, with Emacs' pdf-tools (https://github.com/vedang/pdf-tools). If you annotate the pdf, those annotations are part of the pdf. And you can also use org-noter (https://github.com/weirdNox/org-noter) and org-noter-pdftools (https://github.com/fuxialexander/org-pdftools; but see https://github.com/fuxialexander/org-pdftools/issues/93#issuecomment-1493314118 if you use the new org-noter from https://github.com/org-noter/org-noter).

I created a new user, did a fresh git clone https://github.com/weirdNox/org-noter.gi and used use-package to install nov.el.

See the original repo, which links to a video demonstration.

There are some Emacs org-mode plugins (for example org-noter) that do exactly this. But this is just me pointing this out as something as exists, and not really a recommendation - Emacs is really intense to get into with a Steep learning curve.

Nothing special. Assuming you have org-noter installed, create your org-roam node. Then create a headline. Run M-x org-noter (or whatever shortcut you have bound this to) on the headline. Emacs will prompt you to fill in your /path/to/pdf. It creates a property to save the file and page location.

Moreover, no changes have been made for about 3 years in its github repo..

I use org-noter for emacs to do something similar to what you are wanting. But emacs isn’t for the faint hearted so probably not the best choice.