Touch questions (Asus T91MT)

[chowirun]

Hi,

seems like PDF-XChange Viewer is the best viewer for touch-enabled, atom-based devices since it's customizable options and amazingly fast speed. I use it on Asus T91MT in tablet mode and everything looks and works very great.

There are some questions regarding touch interface:
- Looks like from time to time dragging in full-screen stops working. I noticed it happens when two documents opened and I switch between them and full-screen/non-full screen mode. In full screen the touch dragging still works, but in full mode cursor changes from hand to point and nothing happens. If I reopen the document everything is find for some time.

- As a developer I learned touch api on Windows 7 some time ago and it looks like general mode in the viewer uses it since I can feel some inertia when scrolling, but in full-screen mode most of the time there is no inertia feeling so looks like the text scrolls exactly the amount of pixels my finger moved.

- Page thumbnail mode seems to not use any dragging at all, it's not so convenient when one wants to do some fast navigation

I know that there are not so many touch-enabled windows devices currently, but it seems they're coming and looks like I know the winner for comfortable pdf reading and it really is comfortable (only some minor issues I described

chowirun

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Hi chowirun,

I expect you are using build 193 (current)? We disabled gestures in the Viewer a few builds ago because it was causing problems for many users. We had a lot of complaints about the usability of commenting features in particular. Since then we have, at further requests from customers, re-enabled gesture but only for when the Hand Tool in active. Would this explain what you are seeing?

[chowirun]

Hi chowirun,

I expect you are using build 193 (current)? We disabled gestures in the Viewer a few builds ago because it was causing problems for many users. We had a lot of complaints about the usability of commenting features in particular. Since then we have, at further requests from customers, re-enabled gesture but only for when the Hand Tool in active. Would this explain what you are seeing?

Paul, thanks for such a quick reply.
Yes, it's build 193. I will try to explain in other word, just in case

In the general mode (when the window contains all the toolbars and caption) everything works fine including the scrolling with inertia that continues scrolling if I moved finger fast enough. Also two fingers zoom also work (Asus T91MT is a multi-touch device).

The full mode I prefer more is the same layout, but no toolbars. In this mode unfortunately there's no inertia and sometimes no finger moving works (but two fingers zoom does). To answer your question about the hand tool, when this happened, I tried to switch different modes with right click (to text select, back to hand) and this switching didn't help, only closing the tab with this document and reopening. So there were times when the hand tool was active in the full mode but text dragging didn't work.

I suppose that it may be related to the way the full mode works (maybe it's a different window handle and it wasn't registered with RegisterTouchWindow) and I understand if the touch is not high priority for you. I can live with general mode, but full screen is just much better experience.

Thanks

chowirun

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Hi chowirun,

thanks for the clarification. Indeed this is something that the development team will need to comment on as I am not privy to how that works. I've made a note to one of them to take a look and provide his thoughts.

regards

[Corwin - Tracker Sup]

Hi chowirun,

The reason that inertia scrolling is not working under Fullscreen mode is that in this mode there is no scrollbars, so Windows is not sending pan gesture messages. We will change this behavior in next version (V3).
Also I was not able to reproduce your problem with hand tool. Maybe you can give us detailed description, of how to reproduce this problem.

Best regards

[chowirun]

Hi chowirun,

The reason that inertia scrolling is not working under Fullscreen mode is that in this mode there is no scrollbars, so Windows is not sending pan gesture messages. We will change this behavior in next version (V3).
Also I was not able to reproduce your problem with hand tool. Maybe you can give us detailed description, of how to reproduce this problem.

Best regards

Corwin, thanks. It makes sense with the scrollers. I'm sure you will find a way finally, but also found that semi-full mode (F11) is also great

As for the hand problem, I managed to reproduce it several times, and one of the sequence is reproducible although looks a bit strange (but as a developer I know that it's better to have one strange always working than several simple but vague

Run PDF-XChange,
- open a pdf file (let's call it #1)
- open another pdf file (#2). Now we have two tabs with files.
- close #2, now we again have our first #1 (no tabs visible)
- open another pdf file (it can be #2 or any other). Now we again have two tabs with files.
- now switch to #1 and go full-screen mode, no touch dragging is working.
This sequence always lead to the same result on my Asus T91MT with Windows 7 Home Premium

What I also noticed when this freezing is active:
- Mouse dragging always work. I did this with touchpad, but as I recall, this is always equivalent to mouse on netbooks/notebooks.
- When I finger touch and try to move the page and it is not moving, the cursor stays at the same location it was when I started and it is changed from hand to little cross, looking like a rhombus with four short cuts at the corners.
- Sometimes when I sporadically move my finger in this freezing mode, I managed to do the dragging, but just once in a while.

Hope this will help

chowirun

[Corwin - Tracker Sup]

Hello chowirun,

Many thanks for your detailed description. We will investigate it as soon as possible.

Best regards

[Corwin - Tracker Sup]

Hello chowirun,

Good news - in next build this problem will be fixed. Thanks for your help.

[chowirun]

Good news - in next build this problem will be fixed. Thanks for your help.

My compliments to the developers showing the impressively quick fix

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Thanks chowirun,

I will make sure your compliments are passed to the correct guys!

Cheers,
Stefan