Select Text Tool - Palm rejection issue SOLVED

[Loki@99]

Hi,

There's an issue with Select Text tool

Steps to reproduce
1. In Preferences, uncheck Allow draw with finger touch

2. Open a PDF with some text and multiple pages
3. Click on Select Text tool
4. Swipe with your finger on touchscreen to scroll pages

Issue
Unintentional text selection
GIF - Swipe gesture action with touchscreen

Expected behavior
Page scroll

Additional info
I can't recall having this bug in build 388 so maybe it's related to changes made in build 389 for this

Thanks for investigating,

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, Loki@99

If you have the select text tool active, than this should be expected. Selecting text is not a "drawing" action, and so should not be disabled in this way. We have fixed that improper handling.

If you need to pan/scroll through the pages, but wish to still retain a way of selecting text, you can use the Hand tool, and enable its "select text" mode, which allows for a mouse hover, or finger "tap" on text content to temporarily swap to the selection mode, without manually changing tools, allowing for easy "flick" scrolling, as desired.

Kind regards,

[Loki@99]

Hello, Loki@99

If you have the select text tool active, than this should be expected. Selecting text is not a "drawing" action, and so should not be disabled in this way. We have fixed that improper handling.

Hi Daniel,

Well, I'm aware that Selecting text is not a "drawing" action but I don't think the current behavior is the one expected in the report post.

If I disable "Allow draw with a Mouse", I cannot select text with mouse even if I'm in Text Select tool and the mouse shows as hand.

It is related to mouse but the one I'm talking about is about finger touchscreen palm rejection which has deteriorated.

If you need to pan/scroll through the pages, but wish to still retain a way of selecting text, you can use the Hand tool, and enable its "select text" mode, which allows for a mouse hover, or finger "tap" on text content to temporarily swap to the selection mode, without manually changing tools, allowing for easy "flick" scrolling, as desired.

The issue with your suggestion is that it's impossible to perform a drag to select action with stylus

GIF - Such action isn't possible with the hand tool selected even if Select Text/Images is enabled
Select Text tool selected - Action performed with stylus

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, Loki@99

I don't understand how this relates to palm rejection, both finger and stylus operations seem to be working as expected here. You also mention that use of the select text mode is not possible with the stylus, but this is incorrect. The stylus operated either as a mouse object or a finger touch, depending on the type of stylus, and your touchscreen devices capabilities.

Most specialized styluses, such as the surface pro pen, would operate as a mouse at their core, meaning hovering the stylus near the screen leads to the switch I mentioned before. Others, like gum-tipped stylus bought from the dollar store, would operate as a finger touch, and in turn should switch on a tap action. Both of which, after the switch occurs, allows for a press/hold text selection, but not a "marqee box" selection area effect. If you need that specific action, you will need to switch to the Select text tool specifically.

As an aside, on further testing, Finger touch specifically is still able to scroll when interacting with blank space, even while the select text tool is enabled and allow draw with touch is disabled. The change made here was specific to mouse/advanced stylus devices which are classified as a mouse.

Kind regards,

[Loki@99]

I don't understand how this relates to palm rejection, both finger and stylus operations seem to be working as expected here. You also mention that use of the select text mode is not possible with the stylus, but this is incorrect. The stylus operated either as a mouse object or a finger touch, depending on the type of stylus, and your touchscreen devices capabilities.

Most specialized styluses, such as the surface pro pen, would operate as a mouse at their core, meaning hovering the stylus near the screen leads to the switch I mentioned before. Others, like gum-tipped stylus bought from the dollar store, would operate as a finger touch, and in turn should switch on a tap action. Both of which, after the switch occurs, allows for a press/hold text selection, but not a "marqee box" selection area effect. If you need that specific action, you will need to switch to the Select text tool specifically.

There is certainly a misunderstanding. I don't expect the hand tool to be able to perform a drag to select action cause it is indeed an intended behavior for this tool.

My issue here is that using the Select Text tool for drag to select a text area with stylus while scrolling the page with finger on touchscreen isn't possible anymore in build 389.

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, Loki@99

My issue here is that using the Select Text tool for drag to select a text area with stylus while scrolling the page with finger on touchscreen isn't possible anymore in build 389.

In this case, I am truly not sure what to tell you. I have tested quite extensively now. Finger touch most certainly does work for page navigation, if you have disabled the "allow draw with finger touch" option, even with the select text tool enabled for use with the pen. This seems to be fully function regardless of the state of my palm on the screen, or otherwise the content on the page. So I do not see where the problem lies.

Perhaps you have not performed the installation on your new device properly. Can you please uninstall the software entirely, restart the device (a full shutdown, not just sleep mode), and then reinstall and try again?

Kind regards,

[Loki@99]

Clean install doesn't change the behavior.

The following behavior was recorded in portable version.

Issue_video.zip

(27.74 MiB) Downloaded 89 times

[Vasyl - PDF-XChange]

I see you have disabled 'Allow draw by finger touch' option. This is causing an issue, and it looks like a bug. We will try to solve it in the next build.
As a workaround, you may turn that option back (turned ON by default).

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, Loki@99

Terribly sorry for my blunder, it seems that I was the one with a poor installation. After performing the same reinstall steps I advised you to take, surely enough, I can reproduce this now. I do not know why it was working normally before, but as you see Vasyl has spotted it as well, so now we have multiple devices where it is reproducible.

Kind regards,

[Vasyl - PDF-XChange]

My issue here is that using the Select Text tool for drag to select a text area with stylus while scrolling the page with finger on touchscreen isn't possible anymore in build 389.

Hold on... What if user has touch screen and has NO stylus and want to select text? So he naturally enabled the Select Text tool and by finger (obviously!) tries to select text? How surprised he will be when it will be just scrolled? "Why scroll?? I NEED select text!" he may think...

You were right there:

viewtopic.php?t=43808

- because when the user needs to select text and activates the SelectText tool correspondently, the disabled option 'Allow draw by Mouse/Fingers' should not affect such tool. These options are not for the SelectText tool but only for commenting and content editing tools. So, since the 389 build, those options don't affect the SelectText tool at all...

You still can scroll by two fingers even SelectText tool is activated OR by one finger by tapping outside of page...

[Loki@99]

Hi Vasyl,

I see you have disabled 'Allow draw by finger touch' option. This is causing an issue, and it looks like a bug. We will try to solve it in the next build.
As a workaround, you may turn that option back (turned ON by default).

Turning that option back doesn't fix that issue though.

My issue here is that using the Select Text tool for drag to select a text area with stylus while scrolling the page with finger on touchscreen isn't possible anymore in build 389.

Hold on... What if user has touch screen and has NO stylus and want to select text? So he naturally enabled the Select Text tool and by finger (obviously!) tries to select text? How surprised he will be when it will be just scrolled? "Why scroll?? I NEED select text!" he may think...

I don't think that an user will perform a drag to select action with his finger. I mean, it's not the way a software would operate in most touchscreen apps. You can check Microsoft OneNote behavior for e.g. It has Drag to select with stylus and single finger drag action is for page scrolling.

You were right there:

viewtopic.php?t=43808

- because when the user needs to select text and activates the SelectText tool correspondently, the disabled option 'Allow draw by Mouse/Fingers' should not affect such tool. These options are not for the SelectText tool but only for commenting and content editing tools. So, since the 389 build, those options don't affect the SelectText tool at all...

Well, I didn't expect that it will deteriorate the touchscreen experience like in 389 build.

You still can scroll by two fingers even SelectText tool is activated OR by one finger by tapping outside of page...

The issue with that solution is that :
1. Scroll by two fingers changes page zoom unintentionally sometimes. Maybe I'm not precise enough cause I never use two finger to scroll on touchscreen. As I said, most touchscreen apps will only need one finger action for scrolling. Moreover, it will make the unintentional horizontal motion detection reported here worse.
2. Tapping outside of the page isn't a solution when using Fit visible view. Which is what I do when having my device in portrait orientation for a more immersive experience.

I really hope that you can fix it in the next build.

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, Loki@99

It looks like Vasyl is considering an option for the select text tool, which could be toggled on, to give the behaviour you are looking for. At the moment, you are the only user who has raised any issues with this change, so I am afraid it is not a high priority item. If we see more demand, it may be given a high priority.

As before, using the hand tool, with the "select text" option on its format tab, will allow you to find a good middle ground for the time being, although you will need to be a bit more precise with your selection, since the selection in this mode is based on stylus proximity to text content.

Kind regards,

[Loki@99]

It looks like Vasyl is considering an option for the select text tool, which could be toggled on, to give the behaviour you are looking for. At the moment, you are the only user who has raised any issues with this change, so I am afraid it is not a high priority item. If we see more demand, it may be given a high priority

Hi Daniel,

That's great news.

Kind regards,

[JimmyD]

It looks like Vasyl is considering an option for the select text tool, which could be toggled on, to give the behaviour you are looking for. At the moment, you are the only user who has raised any issues with this change, so I am afraid it is not a high priority item. If we see more demand, it may be given a high priority.

As before, using the hand tool, with the "select text" option on its format tab, will allow you to find a good middle ground for the time being, although you will need to be a bit more precise with your selection, since the selection in this mode is based on stylus proximity to text content.

I have the same issue. Scrolling through documents while selecting text is a basic feature which I heavy rely on every time I use PDFX. Having to toggle the hand tool every time basically kills my entire workflow.
IMO, issues in basic features like these should be highest priority, if tablet usage is to be taken seriously.

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, JimmyD

Thank you Jimmy, more voices will make the wheels spin, I will add your support to this improvement.

As before, though, there is no need to manually switch between the hand and select text tool. The hand tool has a text selection mode, which can be enabled from the format tab. This allows you to either hover for a brief half second, or tap on text to being a text selection action. To begin scrolling again, just tap anywhere there is not text content present before the flick.

Kind regards,

[Vasyl - PDF-XChange]

Scroll by two fingers changes page zoom unintentionally sometimes

In the next build we will reduce the chance to get unintentional zoom when 2-finger scroll is started.

[JimmyD]

Hello, JimmyD

Thank you Jimmy, more voices will make the wheels spin, I will add your support to this improvement.

Many thanks.

As before, though, there is no need to manually switch between the hand and select text tool. The hand tool has a text selection mode, which can be enabled from the format tab. This allows you to either hover for a brief half second, or tap on text to being a text selection action. To begin scrolling again, just tap anywhere there is not text content present before the flick.

You are right. This seems to work.

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

[wdw]

Hello, JimmyD

Thank you Jimmy, more voices will make the wheels spin, I will add your support to this improvement.

As before, though, there is no need to manually switch between the hand and select text tool. The hand tool has a text selection mode, which can be enabled from the format tab. This allows you to either hover for a brief half second, or tap on text to being a text selection action. To begin scrolling again, just tap anywhere there is not text content present before the flick.

Kind regards,

Hand tools with "Select Text/Images" enabled worked for me, didn't know that before, thank you! But the delay is kind of too long, can I adjust it?

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, wdw

There is no way to adjust the delay, but in practice it is short enough that sometimes I found myself accidentally enabling it, so I dont know we could make it any shorter without being inconvenient for more people. I will ask if we could consider some delay configuration options in the future. I do not expect that request to see a high priority however.. Fair warning.

Kind regards,

[Loki@99]

Hi,

Thanks a lot for fixing this and other improvements in 10.4.2.390

Kind regards,

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]