Features request: colour quick switch, mpage print flatten

[paleywiener]

I like PDFXViewer but i don't actually use it much, and resort to print outs:
1. If you are studying on a Desktop, you need to be able to highlight stuff for later revision. Generally revision is in 2-3-4 passes but since this isn't a book it's harder to visually identify junk from important bits. What I do is: highlight in green, brown, blue all the general stuff for visual identification and important bits are in yellow, orange (again for visual identification).

It's a massive pain to manually switch styles every time!!

2. mpage is used for printing and you can crop white borders, set margins, and do 4 sheets/page etc. Unfortunately when i flatten the comments and convert to PS the text gets overlaid by the highlight. So all my underling is useless for printing.

3. I need to be able to jump to important bits (yellow, orange) sequentially during revision without clicking which is distracting (I read loudly :p) so if i get stuck i just need to raise my head to verify vs moving the mouse and scrolling.

4. It would be nice if I could extract the important bits without date/time/author info.. i mean grr! If this software has to be actually used for reading, memorizing and studying stuff.. does one really need the date when something was highlighted.

5. I really like the way I can add clarifications and notes(for difficult words) using the box tools - it's very elegant and visible right there on the page vs being buried up someones.. :p but resizing the boxes is a bit difficult and you generally need to do this because of cut/paste from the wiki, and then squeezing it into page margins or page header the little arrows don't always come up.. but overall it works quite nicely so this could wait.

6. ****IMPORTANT*** can one insert text right into the program as a arrow-type box straight from firefox? What I do is.. if i'm reading a page and I need to lookup a word.. i go to the wiki and select the text and Cc Cv then clicky at the word, then position the b0x, then click in box and Cv .. i run this in Linux and it works beautifully (thanks for Linux support which is awesome).. but you have to switch desktops and my rendering is slow.. can i therefore just shoot the text from FF into PDFXCV and then drag the box where-ever.. or better still shoot multiple chunks off text and then do the ordering.

7. After doing all this, one really needs a separate Notes program (PDF-Editor) which borks on Linux wine! I've never tried it but if i could export my comments and important bits - i could create a final set of notes.

Please! this stuff is really important for any app that students actually studying need.. Also, are you guys looking at an IPO issue :p (once this stuff is complete) I'd like to buy shares

[paleywiener]

One other (optional) request:
Could you shorten the "File" "Edit" "View" bar into a toggle button - then the "Properties Bar" has a lot of cruft like blend, opacity etc which wastes space.. for someone in read/study mode, once he has set blend/opacity for his tools why does he need to fiddle with that again and again? In read mode, you don't want any config options - because by then it's all configured. You just want to underline, higlight, jump to highlights and underline, find words, insert text from outside sources in the margins, go back to where you were previously.. I've never touched blend or opacity so far and i have no idea what blend does.. i selected some text on a dark blue background and highlighted it so that my highlight merged with the text-background and then fiddled with blend.. it didn't do much visually.. and the google/ask/yahoo search may not be useful because it opens a browser (which I'd do manually anyway before starting PDFXCV)

[paleywiener]

An example of what I'm trying to do:
"Abstract: Broadly speaking, an asset is any possession that has value in an exchange.
Assets can be classified as tangible or intangible. A tangible asset is one whose value
depends on particular physical properties--examples are buildings, land, and machin-
ery. Assets, by contrast, represent legal claims to some future benefit. Their value bears
no relation to the form, physical or otherwise, in which these claims are recorded.
Financial assets, also referred to as financial instruments, are intangible assets. For fi-
nancial assets, the typical benefit or value is a claim to future cash. Financial markets are
classified as cash/spot markets and derivatives markets. Financial markets play a key
role in the financial system of all economies. In most economies financial instruments
are created and subsequently traded in some type of financial market."

All that crud should reduce to:

asset : value in an exchange
|->tangible (value depends on particular physical properties buildings, land
|_intagible (legal claims to some future benefit no relation to the form in which these claims are recorded
Financial assets financial instruments are intangible assets, value is a claim to future cash, created - traded in some type of financial market.
Financial markets: classified as cash/spot market
derivatives markets

So that entire para is a small chunk of notes - right now I underline each chunk i want - then i should be able to export chunks into PDFEditor and arrange them along with chunks from the wiki.
Both have to happen or you wind up with repeat info, repeat underlines

Microsoft Notes but i'm on Linux working with Python so.. I've tried half a dozen apps (Zotero, Scrapbook) major pain in the rump.. I should be able to just drag and align each chunk like in a Image Editor (Photoshop, GIMP etc) and edit chunks by single clicking with a shortcut to change between "hand tool" and "edit chunk" mode.

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

HI paleywiener,

thanks for the comprehensive post.

1. If you are studying on a Desktop, you need to be able to highlight stuff for later revision. Generally revision is in 2-3-4 passes but since this isn't a book it's harder to visually identify junk from important bits. What I do is: highlight in green, brown, blue all the general stuff for visual identification and important bits are in yellow, orange (again for visual identification).

It's a massive pain to manually switch styles every time!!

Have you seen this? https://www.pdf-xchange.com/knowled ... cific-Tool I use it and keep the Comments Style Palette open to the Highlight category then drag the border between the category and Palette all the way to the left so I have a palette of highlighters always on hand.

2. mpage is used for printing and you can crop white borders, set margins, and do 4 sheets/page etc. Unfortunately when i flatten the comments and convert to PS the text gets overlaid by the highlight. So all my underling is useless for printing.

Sorry, what is mpage? PS does support transparency and we send transparency information to the print job so you should be able to do that. Similarly flattening the PDF should not change this. There are many variables when printing to PS printers via the GDI as we do. We are planning support for sending PS directly to PS printers later in the V3 development cycle.

3. I need to be able to jump to important bits (yellow, orange) sequentially during revision without clicking which is distracting (I read loudly :p) so if i get stuck i just need to raise my head to verify vs moving the mouse and scrolling.

I'm not sure what you are asking for here, how can one interface with the comments without clicking or scrolling? Not sure about the head raising thing...

4. It would be nice if I could extract the important bits without date/time/author info.. i mean grr! If this software has to be actually used for reading, memorizing and studying stuff.. does one really need the date when something was highlighted.

How are you doing it now? Are you using summarize comments?

6. ****IMPORTANT*** can one insert text right into the program as a arrow-type box straight from firefox? What I do is.. if i'm reading a page and I need to lookup a word.. i go to the wiki and select the text and Cc Cv then clicky at the word, then position the b0x, then click in box and Cv .. i run this in Linux and it works beautifully (thanks for Linux support which is awesome).. but you have to switch desktops and my rendering is slow.. can i therefore just shoot the text from FF into PDFXCV and then drag the box where-ever.. or better still shoot multiple chunks off text and then do the ordering.

I can't think of a shorter way of doing this. Why do you have to switch Desktops? I use the Viewer under Linux a lot and unless you are switching back and forth between Windows and Linux I'm not sure why you need to do this.

7. After doing all this, one really needs a separate Notes program (PDF-Editor) which borks on Linux wine! I've never tried it but if i could export my comments and important bits - i could create a final set of notes.

Indeed there is a problem with wine and how it handles the MSI components of the installer. Until wine is fixed we can't do much about that I'm afraid.

Please! this stuff is really important for any app that students actually studying need.. Also, are you guys looking at an IPO issue :p (once this stuff is complete) I'd like to buy shares

We understand the significance you place on these and appreciate your input. As always we will balance the needs of all the demographics of those who use the software and we cannot please all the people all the time, we will do our best however.

An IPO??? Nothing planned in the foreseeable future - sorry.

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Hi again,

I think that there may be some potential for a plugin here. In this way some of the very specific features you are looking for can be available to those who need them but reduce program bloat for other users. The Plugin API is not quite ready but when it is I'd like to revisit these suggestions.

thanks

[paleywiener]

Regarding:
1. I have enclosed an image of my desktop (cstylep.jpg) - I shrunk the "Comments Style Palette" - even so it obscures part of my page. Also, if i cycle windows on that virtual desktop (3) the CSP will also cycle instead of staying with PDFXCV (it'll go behind the PDFXCV window.

3. In that image you'll note the arrow boxes and the green highlighter used extensively.. now lets say am verbally narrating that stuff without looking at those pages except now and then, and now I want to jump to my important bits. I need to traverse all the boxed bits one by one, or all the yellow bits one by one (boxen.jpg). It's not going to be identifiable by date, or author but by color or boxes or underlines.. so how do i do that with a short cut key.. I could scroll the comment list and hunt around which would be a major pain to actually using this software to study for an exam.

4. Yes i use summarize comments and i get this:-
Why do i need Author and Date etc.. pg number should be inlined with the text like so:
# charac-ter denotes a comment that extends to the end of the line. (pg:31)
But I'd rather drop it entirely or intersperse numbers intermittently

**************
Page: 31
Author: root Subject: Highlight Date: 5/24/2013, 5:30:26 PM
# charac-
ter denotes a comment that extends to the end of the line.

Page: 31
Author: root Subject: Highlight Date: 5/24/2013, 5:29:30 PM
print statement turned into a function in Python 3


Page: 32
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Page: 32
Author: root Subject: Highlight Date: 11/29/2012, 8:18:38 PM
********************

6. ref that image.. if i'm in the browser and PDFXCV is open at pg:31, i'd like to shoot text with little boxes right into pg:31 (think named pipe. PDFCV reading from the pipe and inserting blobs of text within a rectangle/triangle/whatever (currently selected tool). The FF plugin just writes the selected text in the browser to the pipe. Once I'm done, I do Alt-F3 to switch to PDFXCV and arrange all the blobs in that page. For 2,3,4,x fragments of text being inserted per rectangle maybe the default should be to insert into a single rectangle and every time you shortcut key in the browser PDFXCV gets a special msg and creates a new rectangle-box.
(I get extension jpg, png not allowed)

[paleywiener]

not able to upload jpg or png..
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid= ... =1&theater
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid= ... =1&theater

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Hi again paleywiener,

thanks for the additional input. There is some interesting stuff there. I don't think it possible to do what you want with the highlights in the current version. About the best I can suggest is to use the comments pane (CTRL+M) and group your comments as best you can then mouse through them.

It may be that we can add a feature to customize what is shown in the summarize comments, beyond that most of this is pretty much academic at this point. We have no way to pipe from Firefox to a coordinate on a PDF page. As I suggested, the best place to think of adding these features is as a plugin and that API is not ready yet.

Your suggestions have been noted,

sincerely

[paleywiener]

Hi, I'm no programmer in Javascript but I've managed something like this using:
addon-sdk-1.14/myaddon

var file = require("sdk/io/file");
var fh = file.open('/tmp/foo', 'w');


function myListener() {
console.log(selection.text);
fh.write(selection.text);
fh.write(" ");
fh.flush();

};

var selection = require("sdk/selection");
eslection.on('select', function () { myListener(fh); });
------------
It basically writes all selected text in the browser, to a file (/tmp/foo). Now if only there was some easy way to have this read straight into whatever app! It didn't take me very long and i started from 0. It's a Firefox plugin so you can zip that into an xpi file and it'll work in FF. Just that tiny chunk of JS.

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Hi again paleywiener

Now if only there was some easy way to have this read straight into whatever app!

That's the crux of the issue as I see it. I personally am not one of the coders, but my understanding of things here suggests that this is not trivial, there are so many things to consider. I can ask one of the devs what he thinks but to be honest I don't think there is much that will come of it.

I can't get past the idea that this should be done as a plugin as you did for FF, and that means some months before the API is ever ready. This really isn't something that we would likely put in the End User version of the Viewer. This really is more of a customization that would require an SDK license for - probably not practical just to create a feature for yourself. Perhaps when the Plugins API is ready you might want to make this as a plugin and earn some revenue from it's sale...

hth

[paleywiener]

named pipes are available in Windows:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... s.85).aspx

i'm not dead keen on it becoming a plugin because:
1. what is the purpose of your software? as a pure reader - well there's adobe's free reader. then you have all that underline and highlight functionality - it's obviously a reader meant to replace paper (jotting notes in a page margin).
it's obviously not photoshop.. this is basic functionality and addresses the difficulty in mouse-fiddling.

2. the main app isn't like firefox which is open source - creating a plugin api is imho not very profitable. it'll be too little too late (like Opera or IE)

3. if you insist on creating a plugin API - how will users access it and what will they use it for? So i'll need to learn C++.. right away you have problems - Visual C++ and the Linux guys will howl. Python, and Perl will howl. what sort of plugins could i create - this is a reader not document editing per-se like (Word). If you merged the editor with the reader then yeah - maybe.. guys could write something to slurp web pages into the "Editor" or script to auto position stuff..

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Hi paleywiener,

I would say that the purpose of the software is to provide PDF Viewing, markup and now editing capabilities to PDF files. You touched on this when you mentioned the Editor. Indeed the Editor is slated to completely replace the Viewer when it is mature enough.

The Plugins API is not an 'if' but a 'when'. It is indeed intended for developers and will be available much like the SDK's we currently sell.

There are many possibilities for plugins to enhance the Viewer's capabilities. The point is that such things, like your piping suggestion, may not be something of great use to most users. Rather than bloat the product with many different features users can add the functionality based on how they want to use the software.

For example there are huge numbers of people using the Reader to View/Review/Mark Up CAD drawings. Many of these people have asked for extended markup capabilities with regards the Distance and Measuring Tools. Adding these would bloat the Viewer/Editor for most users with tools they will likely never use.

I would say the same it true here, we can add the functionality and keep it available by choice for those users that want it only. If there really was a market for this kind of feature we would probably look at making the plugin ourselves rather than partnering with a third party developer as we are planning for other plugins.

I hope that makes sense.