Feature Request: Improved PDF Preview
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Hello, just wanted to drop this feature request here for consideration. I’d assume that this is a feature that has likely already been open internally for man years, but I’d love to see it increased in priority. With the purchase by Automattic, I’m sure there has been a lot of internal reworking for general platform optimization. I feel like we are starting to see some feature work moving again. (For the record, I’m excited by the newer owners and they have a track record of supporting the open web and supporting their past purchases.)
Anyhow, on to my feature request… I’d like to see improvements in how the PDF display is rendered in an entry. Let’s take a look at the problem statements:
- The preview does not honor the orientation of the page if the page was rotated following the initial creation of the PDF.
- The preview does not give any good indicator that there is more than one page in the PDF. Sometimes the most important reason for capturing a PDF may never be seen again simply because I don’t think to open the attached PDF.
- The preview does not reflect any cropping on the PDF page.
Consider this example. A card my 5 year old daughter made for me when I was terribly ill for an extended period of time that actually caused nerve damage resulting in deafness and balance issues (yes, looking for a little sorrow to bump up the priority of this request 😂)
Here is the PDF as displayed in DEVONthink.
Now here is the exact same PDF imported in to an entry in Day One.
This hits all three of the problem statements I mentioned above. There are many different ways this could be handled. I’m not necessarily going to push in any direction other than say that I’d love for default behavior to automatically display all pages of an attached PDF OR at least support the ability to swipe through the pages without having to open the PDF in Preview (on macOS). No matter what, there must be a good visual indicator that there are additional pages. I’m sure some attach larger PDFs for reference rather than for sentimental reasons. I think it is reasonable to have two different preview modes where one displays the full content while the other is just a preview/icon acting as a link to open the document. The display preview could conditionally be selected by Day One based on # of pages on insert, then the user could override whichever direction is more appropriate for the attached document.
The issues of page orientation and display/indications of additional pages are the priority issues. The cropping item is likely more of an edge case and I’d rate it as lower priority.
Thank you!
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It seems my screenshots did not actually upload after hitting submit. Seems they never finish uploading (never ending spinner) and it will not let me edit the original post. I’ve uploaded the images I referenced on Flickr.
DEVONthink:
Thanks!
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Wow, what a wonderfully thorough feature request! Thank you taking the time to share everything out so clearly, and for the heart-breaking but adorable example PDF as well ❤️.
As you suspected, we have had other people write in about improving our PDF integration. I’ve added your problem statements and example to our on-going conversation on it.
Please, do let us know if you see anything else in the app that needs our attention. We’ll be here to help
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I’m sharing this here because this morning I discovered something that blew my whole mind and I know others could benefit from it. It’s a workaround but it works.
If you open the PDF on your computer, Select All and copy, then paste it into Day One, something magical happens. It will paste every page image and the text of each page after. Amazing! Try it. You end up with image, text, image, text. I LOVE THIS! It is such an amazing time saver and I will be using it all day today.
I was so excited I posted this find in the Day One Reddit group.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dayoneapp/comments/1cn5erm/imported_pdfs_convert_to_text_for_each_page/
Now, of course, this only works for typed pages, but it’s even nice for handwritten pages that you just would like to see, page after pages that you can scroll in a Day One entry.
There’s a hack for you. I even contacted Day One support about it. Bet they won’t even say thank you. 🤣
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Hi @misspnixon,
Thank you for sharing your workaround! We appreciate your effort in finding a solution. :)
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