Suggestions for Callout and Stamp Functions

[Bob Hartung]

I've just started to test PDF-XChange Viewer v1.0022 and I have some suggestions for the Call Out Tool function...

1. Allow the user to set default text properties. Currently when you create a callout, the system defaults to Arial 12. I would like to be able to set all attributes (bold, underline, italic, font, size, justification) as Viewer defaults. Additionally I'd like to see these as "sticky" settings. If I'm marking up something and I change to Times Roman, I want it to keep that setting for the duration of using Viewer or until I change it again.

2. I'd prefer that when you create a Call Out, the box would not default to a multiple character size. Right now if you type in one character, a 13 character-wide box is created. You can resize it but that's tedious. It would work better if the box was one character wide to begin with and dynamically kept getting wider with each additional character and continue to keep getting wider until the user hit <Enter> to start another line or clicks outside the box to end text entry.

3. I don't know if this would cause problems for Adobe Reader compatibility but having other shapes like circles, radiused rectangles, ellipses, and triangles would be handy. We're an engineering / manufacturing company and these kind of capabilities are used in marking up our customer's drawings for quality documents.

4. Related to the quality document markups, it would be nice to have sequential tagging. For instance, if I enter the number "1" in a callout, the next callout I create would default to the number "2" or "A" followed by "B".

Stamp Function...

I read in another post that custom stamps would be a feature in a future release. That's great.

1. I'd like to see the capability in Stamps where you could incorporate dates. For instance, a stamp like "Received: 08/20/07" or "Approved: 08/20/07" that would always put in today's date.

Keep up the good work. The viewer is a great product with a lot of potential.

[Ivan - Tracker Software]

1. It is possible now -- you can use Tool properties toolbar (press Ctrl + E; or select View -> Toolbar -> Properties Bar) and context menu when you edit the text and command "Make current properties as Default" from this menu.

2. We just made the similar behaviour as into Adobe Acrobat -- too many users say that the feature is bad when its behaviour is different than into Acrobat.

3. If you mean the shape of the text area - yes, it will cause problems with other PDF viewer/editors -- they can show such callouts, but when you start to edit it, they will reformat/recreate such 'non-standard' comments. By the way, using context menu you can change ending style of the callout line.

4. Such feature isn't planned to realization, because it is uncommon, and not so often used.

About stamps: yes, support of custom stamps will be added in the future, and dynamic stamps will be there too.

[MagnuM2K]

Do you have a date or timeframe when Custom Stamps or editing of stamps will be added?

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

MagnuM2K:

This is what Ivan said in another post:

As far as dates are concerned - we give our best 'guess' when asked persistently - some users prefer a best guess, some prefer none.

Its a case of being damned if you dont give a provisional date and damned if you do - we just cannot win - so we will use our best judgement and give a date when reasonable and not when we feel we cannot.

My advice is to wait and see. Ivan has already said, "About stamps: yes, support of custom stamps will be added in the future, and dynamic stamps will be there too." I guess he would have said if the improvement was already implemented and just needed testing.

Rest assured that the developers are working hard to improve this free program. Updates are released about every two weeks or once a month. Not every planned feature will be in the next release. Bug fixes usually get first prioirty.

Every post someone makes takes time to answer. If Ivan is busy answering forum posts, he cannot also be busy fixing bugs and adding new features.

[Ivan - Tracker Software]

Thanks Bhikkhu for good words
To be honest, custom stamps are almost ready (see attached screenshot), but not available in public release because some things still not finished.

[angusj]

To be honest, custom stamps are almost ready

Cool! Thanks.

[Dan.Rasch]

4. Related to the quality document markups, it would be nice to have sequential tagging. For instance, if I enter the number "1" in a callout, the next callout I create would default to the number "2" or "A" followed by "B".

I work at a small division of a 50,000 employee company and I have at least 10 people on site who would benefit from this feature. Below is an example of a completed PDF edit that we'd like to be automated. I used SnagIt's numbering icons to make this, but they aren't automatically sequenced, I had to select the number for each one. Also, SnagIt does not edit PDFs, only images and we don't want to lose the vector based format of PDFs (as opposed to pixel based images).

[rah]

Has it been 7 years already?!

Would anyone at Tracker be able to give an update on the status of custom stamps?

[Will - Tracker Supp]

Hi Guys,

Dan - sorry for the delayed response! The best way to do this, would be through a dynamic stamp. While we don't currently support the creation of these, we do support the use of existing dynamic stamp collections (i.e. those that Adobe offer as part of their standard collection). There are many that should be easily available online that should do as you need.

I'm not sure if this is something that could be possible to implement for any other type of annotation, I suspect that it may be restricted by the PDF Specification, but I'm not 100% on that and will need to check that with the Dev. Team.

Rah - the creation of custom stamps is already possible in both the Editor and Viewer. These can be created from an image or existing PDF.

Stamp1.zip

HTH!