Different shortcut keys for different highlighter colors

[dak49]

I like to highlight in 2 colors in documents, and frequently switch between these colors. I've set up a shortcut key for the highlighter, but in order to change the color, still need to right click on the highlight tool on the Comments and Markup toolbar and change the color manually. This might seem like an incredibly minor thing, but is actually quite cumbersome to the way I mark up documents and is my only complaint about this otherwise near-flawless software. Is there any way to duplicate the highlight tool on the comments and markup bar such that I could assign different shortcut keys to 2 different highlighter colors? Many thanks in advance.

[David.P]

Yes, this would be such an incredible killer feature. I have requested the same some years ago already.

I use a similar feature in Ad*be Acr*bat (actually a leg-around-neck workaround with Autohotkey) and in Microsoft Word.

In Word, my buttons for five different highlight colors look like this:



Cheers David.P

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello dak49 and David,

This has indeed been discussed already, and we are considering several options for ver3 of our Viewer.

I can assure you that there would be a better way to switch between these different styles.

Best,
Stefan

[David.P]

Here's my personal "best way" to do those highlights:

While reading a PDF document, simply select a text passage (if by double-clicking, automatically highlight the entire word, if double-clicking-and-dragging, automatically snap the current selection to word boundaries).

Then, if a word or some text has been selected like that, simply hit the "Y" key and have the selection highlighted in yellow. Or hit the "G" key, and have it highlighted in green. Or the "B" key for (you guessed it) – blue. And so on. If you select not text but an existing highlight, hitting one of those keys of course simply changes the color of the selected highlight according to what key has been pressed.

There is no better and faster way trust me.

Cheers David.P

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hi David,

And thanks for the suggestion.
I am afraid that such default keys are unlikely to be set, as first highlights can be created with custom colours - (what colour is e.g. #A0B030 ), and also there are quite a few commands with shortcut keys in our viewer, so dedicating even 5-6 to only colours is unlikely - you can always set some custom shortcuts later of course.

A more plausible solution would be shortcut keys allowing you to e.g. toggle next/prev style (as there are other tools with styles besides Highlight) for the currently selected tool, or a styles toolbar for which you can then assign some shortcuts like style1, style2 - but the actual implementation would be up to the development team, and I do not yet know the exact solution they have chosen.

Best,
Stefan

[David.P]

Yeah Stefan, of course this doesn't have to be so by default (e.g. like using up lots of keys just for the highlighter tool).

All I'm saying and proposing is that it should be POSSIBLE for the user to assign hotkeys that

a) highlight a selection with a certain color (or say, style), and that
b) change the color/style of a selected highlight, respectively.

...i.e. make it possible to highlight text and/or change an existing's highlight color (style) without having to click on buttons or style flyout palettes.

Cheers David.P

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello David,

I have turned this discussion into an official Feature Request to our dev team and they will review and consider this for a future build (If approved it would be in ver3 for sure, and probably not in the first build)

Best,
Stefan

[David.P]

Stefan thank you, that's amazing.

Btw, this feature is going to be an absolute KILLER for every attorney (or other heavily paperwork orientated people). Of course only if they already work paperless like I have been doing for ten years

Then again, those attorneys are rather infamous for NOT adopting up-to-date work methods for as long as possible

Thanks again for the great work,
Cheers David.P

[dak49]

Many thanks, David & Stefan - I (and presumably many others) eagerly await the implementation of this feature!

David

[dak49]

Incidentally, David, how did you set up the multiple highlighters in Word?

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hi All,

After discussing the FR David made with the dev guys, they told me that for now we will have to put this request on hold, and if realized such a feature would happen after the initial release of Viewer 2011.

Regards,
Stefan

p.s. dak49 I can not help you with your last question as I am using an older version of Word

[David.P]

For the different Word highlighters, see attachment



For every color, you need to place the respective included macro on a custom toolbar button. Button images are also included. Sorry, some of the macro text is in German. This however will not harm functionality (or can be changed).

In order to highlight, you either select text, or place the cursor inside a word -- then click on the respective button.

This should also work in older Word versions.

@Tracker team: thanks already for considering a similar feature (including hotkey assignment to the colors) also for PDF-XChange Viewer, in due time. I use this feature a zillion times a day in Word and Acr*bat (the latter using an AutoHotkey script workaround) and could not do my work with out this handy "paperless feature" anymore.

Cheers David.P

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Thanks for helping with the Word settings David,

And as for adding this to our Viewer - we do our best

Regards,
Stefan

[dak49]

Hi Stefan & David P.,

Returning to this FR after a long hiatus. Has there been any progress on implementing separate shortcut keys for different highlighter colors? This remains the missing feature I most need.

Also, David P. (if by chance you're still here), are you still using at Autohotkey workaround to set up multiple highlighters in Acrobat? If so, could you explain how this works? I occasionally need to use OSX and am searching for a satisfactory PDF markup tool (the feature I want most again being multiple highlighters with distinct shortcut keys).

Many thanks,

David

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Hi dak49

no there is nothing new to add here regards keyboard shortcuts for the different highlighters. For now you need to use the mouse to switch between colours using the palette:



See this article also: https://www.pdf-xchange.com/knowled ... cific-Tool

The problem is that the keyboard shortcut will always refer to the tool itself and the current style and we cannot have multiple instances of that tool with different properties. In fact making this happen is more complicated than it would appear. It may happen after V3 release but we really can't promise at this juncture.

hth

[David.P]

The way I do it in Acrobat with Autohotkey goes like this:

• Highlight a text passage using the highlighter tool, in any color (I use the default yellow) -- btw. the "auto-snap to words" feature of the Highlighter tool in Acr*bat is a great time-saver
• Then select the highlight and hit one of the letters y, g, p, b, r (for yellow, green, purple, blue, red highlighter)
• Then the autohotkey script quickly runs the context menu on the selected highlighter and changes its color according to the color selection

I use this about a zillion times a day and simply couldn't get any work done without it anymore.

I'll post the autohotkey code later here in the thread.

Regards David.P

[dak49]

Thanks, Paul & David P.

Paul--perhaps a shortcut key could be set to cycle between styles, then?

David P.--thanks so much, the autohotkey code would be most useful.

David
(PDF X-change Viewer Pro)

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Hi David,

it may be possible, I am not in a position to say. What ever does happen here it will likely be looked at after V3 is released.

regards

[David.P]

Hi everyone,

I was wondering whether there are any news on this feature request -- i.e. change highlight colors with a single key press like shown in this screencast video: Change PDF highlight colors with a single key press.

I have actually created an Autohotkey workaround that clicks on the color drop-down palette in PDF-XChange Editor and chooses the appropriate color when I press the respective buttons:

SetTitleMatchMode, 2 ; 2: A window's title can contain WinTitle anywhere inside it to be a match.
CoordMode, Mouse, Window ; set coordinates relative to active window

#IfWinActive, - PDF-XChange Editor
b:: ; make selected highlight blue when pressing "b" on keyboard
If (A_Cursor != "IBeam") ; only act where no text input is to be expected
{
BlockInput, On ; prevent user mouse movements
MouseGetPos, MousePosX, MousePosY ; get current mouse position
Click, 1062 38 ; click on the color palette button in toolbar
Click, 1278 316 ; click on appropriate color
MouseMove, %MousePosX%, %MousePosY% ; move mouse back to where it was
BlockInput, Off ; re-enable user input
}
Else
Send, b ; if text input is possible, send the respective letter instead
Return
; repeat the above as often as needed for different colors with the respective color palette coordinates

However, this workaround is sort of clumsy because it breaks down every time the toolbar buttons are changed or rearranged. Therefore, I'd of course prefer if this feature could be built into PDF-XChange Editor natively.

Alternatively, is there a way to programmatically access user interface controls like menus and toolbar buttons in PDF-XChange Editor?

(With other programs, I could usually send WM_COMMAND messages directly to the respective GUI controls using Autohotkey, which unfortunately does not seem to work with PDF-XChange Editor.)

Regards
David.P

[Will - Tracker Supp]

Hi David,

This can already be done in the Editor. For example, under View --> Toolbars --> Customize Toolbars --> Commands, I added the shortcuts "Num 1" - "Num - 6" for different highlighter styles and they worked flawlessly, using build 312.1.

Please give that a try and let me know if that works for you.

Cheers,

[David.P]

Thanks Will -- as I recall, it was already possible in earlier builds to assign keyboard shortcuts to styles, e.g. highlighter colors, which is great.

However, this does not yet solve the purpose of quickly changing the color of an existing highlight.

For example, I use different color highlighters all the time when working my way through new documents. In the beginning, there's always lots of red, orange and purple highlights for different degrees of uncertainty or missing information, regarding the respective contents. As I get to know the subject of the document better, a lot of these early highlighters will be changed to colors like blue, yellow and green, meaning that the respective questions have been answered.

Therefore, it would be fantastic if the same shortcuts that have been defined for different highlighter styles, simply also could be applied to existing highlights, as discussed previously:

Did you know that you can assign shortcuts for comment styles?

Whoa, just tried that, works great. Now I can simply press R, G, B, P, Y, O etc. on the keyboard and instantly get the highlight color tool that I am after.

For now, applying style using shortcuts changes only tool's default style, but not the style of selected annotation, if any. It will be changed, maybe optionally, in future build.

Probabably this is not even hard to implement because everything is already there: color change of highlights & style shortcuts -- that only have to be linked to function together.

Imagine: you select a highlight (with any tool, especially hand or highlight tool), press your shortcut key (e.g. R for red), and instantly the selected highlight turns red.

Additionally, this feature would be even more of a "killer" if you could also create highlights of the desired color, for example when reading your document, like this:

• Browse your document -- seeing something that you want to highlight in (say) red,
• Press "V" (or whatever key you use) in order to change from the mouse hand tool to the "Select" tool (if the "Select" tool is not already active),
• Select your text (auto-snapping to words would be an amazing little addition here), and
• Now simply press R, and your selected text gets highlighted in red.

I get along with my above workaround using Autohotkey, however I think this would be a feature that would also be valuable to others.

Best Regards
David.P

[dbarton]

Hi David,

This can already be done in the Editor. For example, under View --> Toolbars --> Customize Toolbars --> Commands, I added the shortcuts "Num 1" - "Num - 6" for different highlighter styles and they worked flawlessly, using build 312.1.

Please give that a try and let me know if that works for you.

Cheers,

Greetings,
How do I create multiple shortcuts for different highlighter styles. The "New" button is ghosted on the Command tab. Is that where I would create a new Command (shortcut?). I have the free version. Do I need a paid version in order to do this? I've created 3 highlight styles already (Yel, Black, Green). The black is for removing sensitive information from the document. This is a work environment and I am willing to pay for this functionality if not available for the free version.

[Will - Tracker Supp]

Hi dbarton,

This is found under the Commands tab, by searching for the name given to the custom highlighter styles, in the search field:


Shortcuts can be assigned as per the instructions in the latter part of this KB article:
https://www.pdf-xchange.com/knowled ... he-Editor-

HTH!

[David.P]

Again a friendly reminder for the (oldish) feature request to use Style keyboard shortcuts not only to

1. choose the respective tool (here: highlighter with certain color), but also to:
2. apply that respective same style to an existing highlight
   (when the highlight is selected, and then the Style keyboard shortcut is pressed),
   and also to directly
3. create a new highlight
   (when plain text is selected, and then the Style keyboard shortcut is pressed)

Video of this (IMHO) killer feature here!

Best Regards
David.P

[Will - Tracker Supp]

Hi David,

This can already be done by simply setting up i.e. 'G' as the custom short cut for the green highlight:


This has been possible since we first implemented the ability to create custom keyboard shortcuts in the Editor.

Cheers,

[David.P]

Hello Will,

thank you for your reply.

What you are saying of course is correct for the first option 1.) above (choosing the tool including style).

However unfortunately, it still does not seem possible to use above option 2. (changing the style/color of an existing highlight via the same keyboard shortcut), and/or option 3. (creating a new highlight on selected text via the same keyboard shortcut).

In your example -- imagine the magic when the key "G", if pressed, would do the following:

1. choose the green highlighter -- when nothing was selected (already available), or
2. change any existing highlight to green -- if a highlight was selected beforehand (future killer feature) or
3. create a new green highlight on a text selection-- if any text was selected before (future killer feature addition).

Cheers
David

[Will - Tracker Supp]

Hi David,

I understand now, sorry about that. I'll have to bring this up with the Dev. Team again and will see what they say, but even were they to agree to it, I suspect that I won't be prioritized, at this time.

Cheers,

[David.P]

Thank you very much for you reply, Will.

I still have high hopes for the implementation of this feature, because a) it should not be too difficult to implement, and because b) it gives working with highlights a whole new dimension (I have been using parts of it for years based on a AutoHotkey scripted solution that can be seen from the video mentioned above).



Cheers
David

[Will - Tracker Supp]

Hi David,

Sorry to come back to this so late - I've created a feature request ticket at the Dev. Team's request, so it's looks like this is now going to be added (RT-3309).

Just a note - it's unlikely to be considered a priority, as it's a feature request and we already have a number if items on the list and it also very likely will not make it into build 316, as it's far too late in the release cycle. However, if the feature is easy for the Devs. to implement (programmatically speaking), then it may be implemented for build 317.

Cheers,

[David.P]

Thank you very much Will -- sounds good to me!

Cheers
David

[Will - Tracker Supp]