The Find capability in Skim currently has several limitations:

1. In single-column text, Skim does not find phrases when they wrap  
across lines, or words that are hyphenated between lines. However, if  
the wrapped phrases or hyphenated words are copied from the document  
and pasted into the find box, they are found (but the non-wrapped or - 
hyphenated versions are not). Thus it appears that Skim's Find  
algorithm doesn't include the possibility of different types of white  
space between words and that it doesn't deal with the possibility of  
hyphenation. Preview addresses this issue by searching on single words  
only (if a phrase is entered, it finds all instances of each word  
individually). This is less desirable than true phrase searching, but  
missing instances of a phrase when a line wrap occurs somewhere in the  
phrase is problematic.

2. In multi-column text, Skim does not find wrapped phrases or  
hyphenated words even when they are copied and pasted into its find  
box. Presumably this is related to the known problem in targeting  
columns as individual text containers on a PDF page. Preview's single  
word approach also mitigates this a bit.

If it's not possible to improve the situation, particularly for phrase  
searching, users should be alerted to the fact that Find may fail to  
work as they anticipate, particularly for multi-column documents, so  
that they can drop back to single-word searching when necessary.

Jim Harrison
UVa





-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft
Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008.
http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/
_______________________________________________
Skim-app-users mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/skim-app-users

Reply via email to