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How to Add a Table of Contents (TOC) to Scanned PDFs

4/30/2014

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It's a good idea to run OCR on the scanned PDF BEFORE you start adding a table of contents (TOC) to the PDF. This is because OCR apps usually create a new PDF, and may not know how to preserve the table of contents from the original PDF when writing out the new PDF. Your hard work in creating the TOC would then be wasted. Moreover, PDFs with OCR text allow text to be selected which can be used to build the TOC quickly as described below.

Note that PDFOutliner comes with an automatic TOC feature which parses the fonts used in a PDF - such as larger fonts used for chapter headings - to build a TOC hierarchy. However this "AutoTOC" feature doesn't work on a scanned PDF (which contain no text) or even an OCR PDF (which do not assign different fonts to chapters/body text etc.) In such cases, you have to "walk" through the PDF page by page, and add TOC entries. Here's how:
  • In PDFOutliner, right click on the PDF and select "Single Page" view.
  • Make the TOC editor active by clicking on it.
  • Use CMD + up/down arrows to move to previous or next page.
  • To insert a TOC entry, hit CMD enter. To insert a child TOC entry, hit SHFT CMD enter. These commands insert a TOC entry pointing to top of the current page.
  • If your scanned PDF has OCR text, then you can select text on page and hit CMD T to insert a TOC entry with that selected text. This TOC entry will point precisely to where the text occurs on page.
  • Use Option + up/down/left/right arrow keys to move around selected TOC entries in the TOC hierarchy.
Save your TOC edits to PDF (CMD S) or hit "Preview" button on PDFOutliner toolbar to create a new PDF.
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Visual Note-taking with Curio and PDFoo

4/21/2014

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When you want to read and digest the content in a PDF thoroughly, PDFoo provides an efficient way to do so. The PDFoo app makes it possible to create a link to a specific location in the PDF, which allows you to focus on understanding the big picture while the details are just a click away.

Zengobi's Curio app has an amazing "lists" feature which allows you to position several list boxes on an infinite canvas (known as "idea space" in Curio.) If you select such a list box, and hit CMD+V to paste the clipboard contents, it gets automatically appended to the list. This makes it very convenient to use Curio with PDFoo: copy text from PDFoo, select a list box in Curio, and paste the content with a PDFoo URL appended to the text. The figure below shows a Curio idea space used to work through the OmniGraffle 6 user manual, and includes several "see also" links to detailed content in the PDF. In a similar manner, you can efficiently work through any important PDF using idea spaces in Curio and PDFoo copy-paste.
Zengobi Curio 8 list boxes arranged on idea space and copy-paste content from PDF in PDFoo into these boxes
Show list boxes in Zengobi Curio 8 arranged on an idea space, and content from OmniGraffle 6 User Manual has been copy-pasted from PDFoo into these boxes to quickly work through the PDF.
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PDFCombo update adds Print to PDF support 

4/21/2014

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PDFCombo app version 1.0.2
Hold down Option key when clicking on "Save Combined PDF..." button to bypass the save dialog.
PDFCombo version 1.0.2 adds two new features:
  • Now you can print to PDFCombo from any app by including it as a target in the Print > PDF dialog. See the section "To add an item to the PDF pop-up menu" in this Apple Guide on how to print PDFs directly to applications like Evernote and PDFCombo. Use this technique to collect several printouts into one PDF such as when collating a web article split over multiple pages into one PDF, or to pack several related web articles into a PDF.
  • Hold down Option and click on "Save Combined PDF" button to bypass the save dialog and create a PDF in the temporary directory.
PDFCombo is a free app for Mac OS X 10.6 and later, available from the Downloads page.
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Annotate PDFs in Evernote for Mac

4/21/2014

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Evernote for Mac supports embedding and annotating PDFs.
Evernote Premium subscribers can insert and annotate PDFs in notes.
Evernote allows you to conveniently insert PDFs into notes with drag-and-drop, and recently added support for annotating PDFs. Currently, this feature is only available for premium subscribers of Evernote. 

The advantages of keeping your PDFs in Evernote are: 
  • you can search across all your PDFs and annotations using the search box; 
  • you can organize your PDFs using Evernote's notebooks and tags; and 
  • you can keep PDF content together with text and audio in the same note, which is useful for attaching a short summary of the PDF.
Evernote provides a handy "annotation summary" option which pulls out all your annotations from the PDF and attaches it visually to the beginning of the PDF. This feature can be turned off at any point.

Text annotations in Evernote (shown as red text with white outlines in the screenshot) have more visual weight than text annotations made in Preview or other PDF editing apps, which makes it easier to review.

Unfortunately, Evernote doesn't support table of contents (TOC) in PDFs so you have to scroll through long PDFs. To work around this problem, you may prefer to embed shorter PDFs of 20-40 pages at a time. You can select a range of pages in Preview's thumbnail pane and drag it into Evernote, or use PDFExplode to separate a long PDF into logical chapters based on the TOC.
Annotation Summary feature in Evernote for Mac shows list of annotations in embedded PDFs
Evernote provides an annotation summary for the PDF and also shows useful context around the annotation.
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Autosave Microsoft Word and Review Version History

4/15/2014

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Microsoft Word for Mac icon
Microsoft Word on Mac OS X doesn't support autosave or versions. It does support AppleScript though, so you can have a script run periodically to force a save. While you could save every X minutes, I prefer to schedule the save after I've stopped typing for a few seconds. This way, the save operation doesn't interrupt while I work.

I use a clever utility app, Scenario ($5, Mac App Store) to schedule AppleScripts which should be run whenever the Mac goes idle for 10 seconds. The following AppleScript snippet will save all open Microsoft Word documents, and should be placed in the ~/Library/Scenario folder used by the Scenario app.

Scenario app for Mac OS X allows executing AppleScripts at specified events
Scenario app can be used to schedule AppleScripts to run at specific events such as login, logout or when your Mac goes idle. Click icon to see app on Mac App Store.

tell application "Microsoft Word"
    if it is running then
        set alldocs to documents
        repeat with i from 1 to count of alldocs
             set adoc to item i of alldocs
             save adoc
        end repeat
    end if
end tell

I use such scripts to automatically save all open documents in OmniGraffle, OmniOutliner and other document-based apps. If you're familiar with Keyboard Maestro, the powerful automation utility on Mac OS X, you may prefer the approach described on TUAW.com to autosave Microsoft Word documents.

Draft Control app
Draft Control keeps track of every save and shows you differences between any two versions. Click icon to see app on Mac App Store.
For access to past versions, I'm using a new app, Draft Control, which keeps a history of every document you want it to track. It has a convenient text-comparison feature where you can focus on the specific content changes between versions. It works with both Microsoft Word and Apple Pages. Using this app makes it possible to boldly delete "dead content" in my documents, knowing that I can retrieve or review it from past versions, if so required.

Alternatively, you can tap into version history by keeping your Microsoft Word documents in folders synced by Dropbox or OneDrive. You need to log onto the website to access past versions of your synced files.
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Writing for Visual Thinkers

4/9/2014

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Curio 8 app icon
Curio 8 provides a virtual whiteboard on which you can position text, lists, mind maps, images, audio & video. The app is great for visual thinking, allowing you to position related ideas together and see gaps in your analysis, or uncover new connections. 

Curio also allows you to attach rich text notes to any object on the canvas, using the Notes inspector. The notes icon on the toolbar opens a floating window where you can add notes to any object. It's contents changes as your selection changes.

Unfortunately, when you copy an object to the clipboard, these notes are NOT copied. Only in a special case, when you've attached notes to items in a list or a mind map, are the notes also copied to the clipboard. If you're a visual thinker, or the idea of laying out your ideas on a virtual canvas appeals to you, try out the following: create new list objects in Curio (shortcut CTRL CMD L), attach notes to list items as seems fit, play around with reorganization of ideas within lists and across lists, and when you're ready, select and copy the lists for pasting into email or your favorite word processing app for further development. 

Bonus: use the free WordCounter app to see word count of all text copied to the clipboard. If you've been fleshing out your ideas in Curio's floating notes pane, this is a quick way to know your progress in terms of word count.

Notes inspector in Curio 8
Curio 8 allows you to attach notes to any object on the virtual whiteboard. If you attach notes to list items, these notes are also copied to clipboard when you copy the list. You can use this feature to visually map out your writing projects.
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