Andy Matuschak experiments with annotation 'fusion': ink markup on paper becomes structured data re-imposed on PDFs

andy_matuschak · x · 2026-09-08

Researcher Andy Matuschak tinkered with an annotation "fusion" workflow: annotate a paper in ink, take a photo, have the markup segmented into structured data, then re-superimposed on the clean original PDF.

He finds it stimulating and technically cool, but conceptually wrong: it encourages a "write-only" stance, with no good way yet to continue "working with" the markup in context. He'll keep noodling. The work elaborates on earlier papers by Nakai et al. and Mazzei et al.

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