A wonderfully comprehensive reply as ever Esther. As always, thanks. On 15 Jan 2010, at 20:08, Esther wrote:
> Hi Dónal, > > Skim has been described as "Preview on steroids". Functionally, it behaves > like Preview with a second sidebar for notes, and what you can do is add > annotations and notes to a PDF document that you are reading, navigate to > them in the second sidebar, separately print out your annotations, etc. As > far as working like a general PDF reader, it has been more stable in a number > of operations for operations like "Find", at least when I was using full > screen mode. I was trying to search through archives for some older posts, > but my detailed comments about this application were made off-list to Simon > and Eliza, and to the mac-access list. Yvonne Thompsen posted about this > application on the old macvisionaries list. Almost everything you're used to > doing in Preview works the same way, but there are more options. A lot of the > options that Skim introduces eventually show up as Preview options. Skim > also supports a number of image editing functions. You can find it at: > > http://skim-app.sourceforge.net/ > > Probably the most comprehensive description of the layout of Skim was in this > old post to the mac-access list. A lot of this is old stuff, though. > > <begin excerpt> > Date: June 17, 2009 > Subject: Finding text with Skim [was Re: Preview, Skim, Acrobat, or a > better solution] > > Hi , > > If you're using Skim, I'll focus my comments on that application, although it > behaves very much like Preview with an extra sidebar for making notes and > some extra features. Let me go over this from scratch and give a brief > overview of the layout of both Preview and Skim, since I don't recall ever > seeing a detailed description of the way Skim works on any of the lists I've > subscribed to. First of all, if you're not making annotations I would hide > the notes pane. Command-Shift-N (or going to the View menu options on the > menu bar and arrowing down to make the selection) will toggle this pane > between show and hide mode. (By default, both the Contents pane and the > Notes pane are displayed when you bring up Skim; the Contents pane is like a > left sidebar to the main text window and can be toggled between show and hide > with Command-Shift-T. In Preview under Tiger, this contents pane used to be > termed a "drawer" that could be pulled in or out to hide or show, and the > shortcut toggle is Command-Shift-D.) When you are reading an Apple manual in > Skim, the contents will be organized in a Table of Contents outline view in > the Contents pane. I think the document comes up in that display mode by > default in both Preview and Skim if it was constructed with a Table of > Contents. The alternative is to display thumbnail icons of each page. In > Preview, there is a menu button in the sidebar that allows you to select > between Table of Contents view and thumbnail view mode. You can find it with > item chooser menu and use VO-Shift-M to select the view. In Skim, there are > radio buttons for "View Thumbnails" and "View Table of Contents" on the > Contents pane. > > > If I tab from the "View Thumbnails" radio button (assuming the "View Table of > Contents" radio button that I would reach with VO-Right Arrow is selected), I > hear "search text field", I'll hear "Table 1 Row selected" and a number. > This is the Table of Contents outline view that David mentioned. If I > interact with the Table I can arrow up or down to the various chapters, > expand/collapse them with VO-backslash (or on a non-English keyboard, with > VO-H twice to bring up the Commands menu, where I can choose "Toggle > Disclosure Triangle"), and then arrow down to the specific subsections. If I > stop interacting and tab to the main text area, I'll be positioned at the > page where the corresponding section begins. Preview behaves in a similar > manner. > > Both Preview and Skim also support searching in the document, but Skim has a > slightly more robust way of doing this. If I run a search by typing a string > or phrase into the search text field of the contents pane, then results are > displayed in the pane where the Table of Contents appeared. I run these > tests with the "VoiceOver Getting Started Guide for Leopard" since I figure > most people will have this. So, if I type "NumPad" in to the search field, > and then tab to the contents pane table area, I'll get a list of the page and > context of matches. I'll be told there are 18 results, and I'll get an > ordered list of the page and brief context phrase in which the match appears. > If there are multiple matches to the phrase on a single page, each one will > be separately listed. Again, if I stop interacting with the table and tab to > the text area, I'll be at the page where the corresponding selected match in > the table was found. > > Just as there were two radio buttons for view mode of the pages in an Apple > manual (thumbnails and table of contents), there are two radio buttons for > the search results: you can either have "Separate search results", which is > the default, and gives 1 match for every matched string, or "Group search > results by page". When you choose the latter option, you'll see the matches > ordered by the most matches per page. So instead of showing the matches > starting with the lowest page numbers in the document, if you choose the > "Group search results by page" button, you'll start with the page that has > the most matches -- for example, 6 matches to "NumPad" on page 64. The next > result will have the page with the next most matches to your search term > (page 99), and so forth. Again, if you stop interacting with the table and > tab to the main text area you will be at the selected page. If you tab and > delete entries from the search text field (or use Command-Option-F to go > there, and delete), the Contents pane reverts to showing table of contents > outline view or thumbnails. > > In addition to using the search text field, if you are in the text area, you > can use Command-F (Find) or Command-G (Find next). This is where Skim behaves > more robustly than Preview, because you can do the search and have your focus > move to the next found string. If I'm reading in full screen mode > (Command-Shift-F to toggle on or off) and use Command-F, the Find window > comes up with the ability to choose previous or next. If I find again, and > use VO+A, reading really does move to the next instance of a match that is > found. You can also navigate to specific pages with the "Go to page" menu > option (I think the shortcut is Command-Option-G). > > In conclusion, you have a variety of ways to find and navigate through > documents. > > HTH > > Cheers, > > Esther > <end excerpt> > > I still use Preview extensively, but Skim does have nice features. If you > want a run-down of using the notes features I'll dig up my old off-list > correspondence. There are several types of notes, but I use the one > generated with Command-Option-N for most of my work. > > Cheers, > > Esther > > Donal Fitzpatrick wrote: >> Interesting Esther I had not heard of the Skim app before. Looks rather >> nice. Do you use it much? >> >> Donal >> On 15 Jan 2010, at 19:18, Esther wrote: >> >>> Hi Dónal, >>> >>> Since I'm late to this (and your earlier) thread on presentations, I'll >>> just mention that another option for displaying your PDF presentations from >>> Beamer or from Keynote (when you save them as PDF files) is to use Skim >>> instead of Preview. Check out the "View" options listed under Skim's menu >>> bar. You'll actually want to use "Presentation" (Command-Option-P) instead >>> of "Full Screen" (Command-Shift-F), and you can set up presentation options >>> such as the kind of transition, duration for page display, etc. with >>> "Presentation Options…" (Command-Control-T) under this same menu. If >>> you're asked for presentations as PDF output files (to avoid font >>> incompatibilities between Windows and Mac presentation programs), you can >>> also display such files with Skim this way (e.g., if you provided a Keynote >>> file as a PDF output in this format, such as by using the "Export…" option >>> under the "File" menu of Keynote and choosing "PDF" as your format, you can >>> run the output from Skim in presentation mode and just use the arrow keys >>> to advance slides). >>> >>> Cheers, >>> >>> Esther >>> >>> Donal Fitzpatrick wrote: >>>> Thanks Anne,. I can quite happily live with "buggy". It resembles my own >>>> efforts at software development so I won't complain... <smile> >>>> Anne Robertson wrote: >>>> >>>>> Hello Dónal, >>>>> >>>>> I've managed to translate slides using Keynote. This was a presentation >>>>> imported from PowerPoint. I found that VO crashed every time I moved to >>>>> the next slide, but it recovered quickly and I just carried on as though >>>>> nothing had happened. >>>>> >>>>> So, it's a bit buggy but it's manageable. >>>>> >>>>> Cheers, >>>>> >>>>> Anne >>> -- > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. > >
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