Highlight Text by Outline

Blaine Wordly
Blaine Wordly Posts: 4
edited December 18 in Product Ideas & Feedback

The Select Text tool allows you to use Ctrl+Click to drag a rectangle for selecting text.
Is it possible to achieve this with the Highlighter tool? Or can we apply a highlight to the selected text?

qgis_setup_892.gif

I also note we can right click and apply highlight, however this will only apply the default and not the custom tool:

qgis_setup_894.gif


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  • Duane Gingras
    Duane Gingras Posts: 33

    That's a pretty specific nuance. At this point, exactly what you're asking for isn't possible. HOWEVER, a portion of what you ask for is. You can change the default behaviour of the highlighter tool. So if you want to hightlight text with the 'select text tool' you can have it highlight with your custom requirement. But it's only one custom at a time as you have to change the default of the highlighter tool itself each time if you want different outcomes. You maybe already know this:

    image.png

    Make at least one highlighter mark, then change all the items you want to change and set as default. Now when you select text and 'highlight selected text' the attributes you just updated will be applied.

    Otherwise I find the base behaviour of the highlighter tool adequate. When text is detected the highlighter locks the highlight to the text (you'll notice you can't copy those markups and i find this usefule when i review codes and standards then i can use th emarkup list to find the text that i highlight). Or you can use ctrl to unlock the highlighter to make it freeform over text (or you can turn the text highlight feature off completely in settings).

    I generally don't like having a markup locked to text when working with drawings as I can't select all markups and copy them if one markup is locked to text. So instead I use a polygon tool that is set to have highlight properties. This way i can always copy paste my markups if need be.

    image.png

  • Blaine Wordly
    Blaine Wordly Posts: 4

    Hi Duane,

    Thank you for your response. This is indeed what I’m currently doing. However, if you look at the GIF below and think of it more as data annotation rather than just highlighting, the use cases might not be as nuanced as they seem. A toolbox with predefined topics could allow users to markup data and extract those markups for processing.

    Make at least one highlighter mark, then change all the items you want to change and set as default. Now when you select text and 'highlight selected text' the attributes you just updated will be applied.

    This is how I have made my tool boxes & update the default when I need to perform multiple or just adjusting the subject in the Markups List.

     

    (you'll notice you can't copy those markups and i find this usefule when i review codes and standards then i can use th emarkup list to find the text that i highlight)

    This functionality but with the rectangle select tool shown earlier. I often need to highlight specific text precisely and add it to the markup list.

    qgis_setup_904.gif

    Could we move this thread to feature requests?


  • Marco M
    Marco M Posts: 160

    Moved this for you, @Blaine Wordly.

    For others in this thread, make sure to vote!

  • Duane Gingras
    Duane Gingras Posts: 33
    edited December 19

    Start a though here but need to rethink it more.

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