I read research documents before I start writing myself. In order to produce a result representing my thoughts I highlight various sections and words. I never want to return to the full text again and continue each next step with my selection only. What I need is a much smaller place to keep the essential highlights isolated in a place where I can relate them to more such information but from other sources.
Scrivener provices the colour-highlights. Index cards provide the isolated smaller place for essential document information. What is missing is a process to connect the two. A function to copy highlighted text, all of it in one document, to the index card’s synopsis-area.
PS: The PDF-reader skim comes quite close to this functionality. It stores highlighted text and notes outside the document. Skim provides an automator Finder-service that would display highlights and notes only if triggered from Finder.
I think this is already available; I don’t have my mac close to hand, but on Windows, you highlight however much text you want in the synopsis, and in the inspector, above the synopsis view, there’s a button to auto-generate the synopsis. If you press that little button with text highlighted in the Windows version, it seems to copy whatever is highlighted. There’s probably a menu item that corresponds to this, but on Windows, there’s no search function like there is on the Mac under Help. You could assign a keyboard shortcut to whatever that menu item is, if it doesn’t have one already.
Robert, thanks for your reply. I revisited the functionality you described. Scrivener will actually copy selected text into the index-card-synopsis.
However I want highlighted text, not selected text, to fill the index card. By highlighted I mean the equivalent of using a yellow text marker. That color would stay even if I leave the document. Scrivener does color-highlighting. Selection is quite different, for the selection disappears the instant one clicks elsewhere.
In short, I would like Scrivener to copy highlighted text the way it does already copy selected text.