I’ve added a couple more tweaks to my pdf-tools configuration.
First, I’ve found that CUA mode interferes with the ability to copy text from the pdf, so let’s turn it off in pdf-view-mode
;; turn off cua so copy works (add-hook 'pdf-view-mode-hook (lambda () (cua-mode 0)))
Next, I want more fine grained zooming with + and - than the default 25%, so I’ll set it to 10%
;; more fine-grained zooming (setq pdf-view-resize-factor 1.1)
Finally, for my most commonly used annotation tools (adding a highlight, adding a text note and deleting an annotation), I want quicker shortcuts. With the following I just hit h, t or D respectively for those tools (instead of e.g. C-c C-a h to highlight).
;; keyboard shortcuts (define-key pdf-view-mode-map (kbd "h") 'pdf-annot-add-highlight-markup-annotation) (define-key pdf-view-mode-map (kbd "t") 'pdf-annot-add-text-annotation) (define-key pdf-view-mode-map (kbd "D") 'pdf-annot-delete)
Putting it all together, my current setup looks like this:
(use-package pdf-tools :pin manual ;; manually update :config ;; initialise (pdf-tools-install) ;; open pdfs scaled to fit page (setq-default pdf-view-display-size 'fit-page) ;; automatically annotate highlights (setq pdf-annot-activate-created-annotations t) ;; use normal isearch (define-key pdf-view-mode-map (kbd "C-s") 'isearch-forward) ;; turn off cua so copy works (add-hook 'pdf-view-mode-hook (lambda () (cua-mode 0))) ;; more fine-grained zooming (setq pdf-view-resize-factor 1.1) ;; keyboard shortcuts (define-key pdf-view-mode-map (kbd "h") 'pdf-annot-add-highlight-markup-annotation) (define-key pdf-view-mode-map (kbd "t") 'pdf-annot-add-text-annotation) (define-key pdf-view-mode-map (kbd "D") 'pdf-annot-delete))
