Bookmarks incorrectly highlighted

[plasticassius]

As I add and move pages and bookmarks in Xchange 2.5.193, the highlight is put on the wrong bookmark. I can still click on bookmarks, and it does jump to the correct page; however, when I page up and down the highlight moves incorrectly. Saving the document doesn't correct the situation; however, saving, closing, and reopening does. It seems that the page a bookmark refers to is cached somewhere; the cache gets out of sink during insert and delete, and then is corrected by a reload. This problem makes it confusing while paging up and down since it looks like the bookmark destinations are incorrect, even though they really aren't.

I would really appreciate an option that would enforce bookmarks to be in the same order as the pages they refer to. I can't think of a situation where I would want to have a bookmark refer to some completely out of order page in a document. Yet, I'm allowed to create this situation by mistake, and it leads to confusion.

[Ivan - Tracker Software]

Can you send us the document where problem is reproduced, and some screenshots where it is shown to reduce the time required to fix the problem ?

[plasticassius]

To reproduce:

Open document test and test1: Shot 1 shows page 1 causes bookmark 1 to be highlighted and shot 2 shows paging to page 2 causes bookmark 2 to be highlighted. This is correct.

Insert document test1 before page 1: Shot 3 shows page 3 causes bookmark 2 to be highlighted and shot 4 shows page 4 causes bookmark 2 to be highlighted also. However, page 3 should cause bookmark 2 to be highlighted.

Save as test2, close document and reload: Shot 5 shows page 3 causes bookmark 1 to be highlighted as it should be.

[Ivan - Tracker Software]

Thanks for samples and clear description. The issue is fixed and fix will be available in the next build.

[plasticassius]

That's great! Thanks.

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

[plasticassius]

I've been using 194 today, and it does indeed highlight bookmarks correctly. Thanks, that makes it much easier to work with.

To return to something in my post, I haven't been using PDFX for long, but I've assembled a lot of PDFs over the years. And, one feature I've always longed for was the ability to restrict bookmarks to always be in the same order as the pages in a document. I like to be able to indent them variously, as is normal, but I can't think of a situation in which I'd like to have the second bookmark point to some page that is towards the end of the document. As it stands now, after I insert some new pages and hit insert, the new bookmark in general gets created as the second one.

Ideally, I'd like to hit insert, and have the bookmark be placed between the two bookmarks that refer to the closest pages on either side of the new bookmark. If the bookmarks were guaranteed to be in the same order as the pages, this would be straightforward. Currently, to create the new bookmark, I need to right click on the bookmark I want the new one to follow, and select insert. Although this works, it is error prone. I end up with transposed bookmarks frequently. Not a big deal, but it takes time to fix.

Of course, I don't know what's coming in the new version. But this is a feature I'd vote for in some future version.

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello plasticassius,

Glad to hear that the highlighting issue is fixed.
As for the suggestion for inserting bookmarks - I am not quite sure this could easily be implemented as the bookmark tree is not a straight structure, and quite a complicated logic will be required, and still such logic will not be able to cover most cases.

I will speak with the devs and see whether they have considered such logic, but please do not be disappointed if this request gets turned down.

Best,
Stefan

[plasticassius]

I can understand why it would be difficult to enforce bookmarks to be in page order. Perhaps something simpler would be nearly as good. I think that if new bookmarks were created by default in the right order, it would go a long way toward solving this confusion. I imagine that when a new bookmark is created, PPDFX could scan backward from the current page until it found a bookmarked page, then it could create the new bookmark immediately after the one corresponding to the page it found. This way, bookmarks would be in the right order absent other manipulation.

I think that having the bookmarks created in page order would be extremely helpful. But a tool that would highlight "out of order bookmarks" would also help.

best, Peter

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello Peter,

I made a ticket with a FR for the things we are discussing here:
#972: FR: Bookmark Auto Insertion
So that the devs could consider it and decide whether it's possible and practical to be implemented.

I will update this forum topic as soon as I get any news from them.

Best,
Stefan