[tool] 'Nudge' rotations by an arbitrary increment

[Mathew]

When trying to align markup with scans, I'm often moving it by very small increments until it aligns. This works fine horizontally and vertically with the keyboard, but to rotate it, I don't know a built in easy way to incrementally do it.

RotationNudge v0.1.zip

This tool adds a toolbar button:

image.png

First select the annotation(s) you want to rotate, then press the toolbar button. It opens a dialog:

image(1).png

You can enter an arbitrary amount, and the buttons on the right and left rotate the markup by that amount clockwise or counter-clockwise. It's also useful just for rotating things like dimension lines (ie by 90 or 180 degrees). If you select multiple items it should rotate them as a group.

Because the add-in toolbar is getting a bit cluttered for me, I left the label off, but if you prefer to have a label, you can uncomment line 12 thus:

Code: Select all

    cLabel: "rNudge",

[KD952]

Hello Mathew!

Thank you for the tool!

I have been thinking for a while now that the PDF-XChange 2D drawing suite is almost complete.
All the major tasks are already covered.

The perfect way to align markup with scans would be to use the same handling like in your "Scale annotations by two reference lengths" tool viewtopic.php?p=175879&hilit=tool#p175879

The tool would take the rotation from a line the user draws and then apply this rotation to the selected markups.

I tried looking through your "Scale annotations by two reference lengths" tool to understand it but it is too complex for me I still need a few more years to understand it all.

If you find the time, I would be very grateful if you could implement a tool like this.

Kind regards,
Daniel

[Mathew]

I have been thinking for a while now that the PDF-XChange 2D drawing suite is almost complete.
All the major tasks are already covered.

The perfect way to align markup with scans would be to use the same handling like in your "Scale annotations by two reference lengths" tool viewtopic.php?p=175879&hilit=tool#p175879

The tool would take the rotation from a line the user draws and then apply this rotation to the selected markups.

I agree. That will be relatively easy, so I may do that soon (would just need to save the line angle in getLengthData, and then add the difference of the two angles to the annotation angle). I've also been fiddling with a way to make the tool work better.

I think one big omission in the tools is the ability to redact part of a markup without flattening it... But that's a bigger project than I have time right now for.

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, Mathew

Thank you for the nudge tool there. We do still have some plans for improvements to the "2d plane" editing functions, including allowing snapping to work with the temporary guides we now show during drag operations, and possible allowing the same during scaling operations, so you can adjust multiple images in a row to be the same scale. We also have also considered the possibility of a "2.5D" transform tool function (Mathew I think you saw the post I am referencing), but these items are all still "considerations and hopes" not necessarily guaranteed items.

As for the redaction note there, Due to the restrictions on how a comment must be presented in a PDF, I do not know that will be possible to redact a comment without flattening. Though I could see some benefit in allowing the reaction tool to "automatically flatten affected comments before redaction". I will bring the idea up with the team.

Kind regards,

[Mathew]

As for the redaction note there, Due to the restrictions on how a comment must be presented in a PDF, I do not know that will be possible to redact a comment without flattening. Though I could see some benefit in allowing the reaction tool to "automatically flatten affected comments before redaction". I will bring the idea up with the team.

I think it's something that can be mostly accomplished with javascript, except for stamps (and text boxes would be challenging because it's hard to figure out how the text flows). I'd want to keep it as a comment - I realize it could be done with the built-in tool by flattening.

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, Mathew

Even with JavaScript, there are some commenting rules that cannot be broken in a PDF.

As an example, Rectangle objects have an X/Y start position, and record the length of their two sides. Those sides need to use a number of pre-defined patterns. If redaction was to "cut out" a section of that edge, the patter would be broken and so the comment could not exist as a rectangle anymore. Perhaps changing to to a poly line would help, but that could cause issues with any customization/intentional naming that has been done using those comments.

With items like textboxes, you have the same issue with the border, but then the text content is another question, Redaction for base content is able to remove the bottom half of a base content text object/letter. In a comment, it is not possible to flag only some of the text as "partially invisible" (and of course, even it if was, invisible is not the purpose of redaction, so opting to leave that would cause other issues.

With these examples, redaction should by all accounts, either completely delete any comment it touches, as the name "redact" implies, or it should flatten the comment, so you can redact only a small section of it when needed. As this time we do not offer the latter as an option, and so manually flattening before applying redaction is the only option, but perhaps we can change that in the future.

Kind regards,

[Mathew]

Daniel,

Agreed on all points. I'm not using the correct terminology: I'm thinking of it more as a 'subtract' tool: In 2d editing software there's frequently a tool to do Union, Subtract, and Intersect. I'm thinking more in terms of "subtract" for the purposes of working on markup, not as a means of redacting content:

image.png

This case would not matter if the rectangle or oval changes to a polygon (or polyline) because that would be the purpose of the tool: To chop sections off a shape and make a different shape.

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, Mathew

So essentially what you want in relation to redact, is an eraser tool for "line like comment types" only, which could potentially be destructive to comment data items like popup and comment name? with no relation to removal of text? This sounds like the eraser tool request that has been toted by a few others, whereby people want the eraser to work on more than just pencil lines. I cannot promise any changes will come, but we shall see.

Kind regards,