Modal highlighting, as in most pdf readers

[notuntoward]

I like the highlighting function of this plugin, but I'm noticing that each highlight takes more clicks than I am used to on other tools, like Adobe Acrobat, pdfXchangeEditor, Drawboard, OneNote, Evernote Web Clipper, etc.

In those tools, you click once on a highlight color picking palette, and then you are in "highlight mode": anything you select or drag over with a mouse or a keyboard (implementations vary) gets highlighted in whatever color is currently active on the palette. The pallet stays open for as long as you're in highlight mode -- and you stay in highlight mode until you turn it off.

Modal highlighting seems very possible for obsidian-editing-toolbar, since it already does modal highlight erasing. Once you've clicked the "clear text formatting" icon, then you're in "erase mode." In this state, highlights and other formatting are removed from any text you drag the mouse over. You don't need to repeatedly click an icon, as the plugin stays in erase mode until you click it off.

It seems like actually making highlighting could work the same way; you could reuse "clear text formatting" code.

[cumany]

Background color and font color have been implemented using the format brush, but the built-in Markdown syntax is not supported. I find keyboard shortcuts to be easily achievable.

[notuntoward]

Hi @cumany , yes I see that highlights are already implemented for the format brush using html. About shortcuts, I also see that markdown syntax highlights could be mapped to a shortcut.

But what I was talking about was not needing so many shortcuts or mouse clicks, as in most pdf annotators, where once you turn on highlighting mode it stays on, so that you can highlight many things and then turn it off.

But it sounds like you like it the way it is now, which is fine. Thanks for the reply.