Bug report

[Huidong]

Dear developers:

This is sort of a bug, or some imperfection at least, in Viewer Pro 2, I'm trying to describe the scenario:

First, I'm in the Select Tool mode.

Now I'm doing a quick search, and the first hit is highlighted (actually, similar to being "selected", I guess).

Then I noticed a sentence of interest, so I need to switch from the Select Tool mode to Highlight Text Tool mode, right?

However, upon clicking on the highlighter button, that previous search hit gets highlighted, which is not what I intend to do.

Of course I could be more careful and simply avoid this, but I do think this is an imperfection in terms of "friendliness". I guess the issue is that the search hit gets highlighted in a similar way as being selected, and that's why upon switching to highlighter mode, the search result also gets highlighted.

Would you please implement a better way to highlight search results so that it does not interfere with normal text selection?

I hope this is a logical bug report...

Anyway, after many years of using Viewer, this is by far the only thing that I would consider as a bug.

[Chris - PDF-XChange]

Hi Huidong,

I have tried as you described, and searched for some commonly occurring text in a pdf document and when I click the higlight button, it highlights my selected search result, I click F3 to goto the next occurrence and first it refinds the word I just highlighted as the highlighter deactivates the search result selection so it moves to itself and then moves on when I click F3 again. I tried it a few times and it hasn't jumped to a previous search result in my investigation.

Can you please let us know the following:

1)What version of Windows are you using, is it 32 or 64 bit, and what service pack level is installed?

2)Run the Viewer and goto Help->About PDF-XChange Viewer and let us know what build of the Viewer you are using.

Thanks,

Chris

[Huidong]

Thanks Chris.

Windows 7 SP1, 32-bit

Version: 2.5 (Build 201.0)

[Huidong]

I tried it a few times and it hasn't jumped to a previous search result in my investigation.

But I did similar things as you described, and it was able to jump to "previous search results" that had already been highlighted (which was not desired) once the search reached the end of the document and restarted from the top again. Did I misunderstand your point?

[Katya - Tracker Supp]

Hi Huidong,

Thank you for your patience.
We've manage to "reproduce" the behaviour you had described.
As our dev team confirmes this is not a bug but usual behaviour and such scenario is presented in all pdf viewers including Adobe Reader.

Now I'm doing a quick search, and the first hit is highlighted (actually, similar to being "selected", I guess).

Then I noticed a sentence of interest, so I need to switch from the Select Tool mode to Highlight Text Tool mode, right?

However, upon clicking on the highlighter button, that previous search hit gets highlighted, which is not what I intend to do

When you do a quick search PDF-XChange Viewer (as well as Adobe) shows you the results by means of selecting of searching word, phrase etc.
Then if you don't remove the selection and choose the other tool (in you case it is Highlight Text Tool), this tool (Highlight Text Tool) has an effect on selected text first. Nothing strange - it is common behaviour.
So please, remove selection first by clicking somewhere on the text or select the area you want to highlight BEFORE changing the tools.

Thanks,
Katya

[Huidong]

Hi Katya,

I fully understand your point, if you saw my original post, I was definitely aware that this was a usability- rather than crash-related bug, but bear with me that I called it a bug, maybe in a more general sense (anything not quite desirable for users...)

Of course I could be more careful and simply avoid this, but I do think this is an imperfection in terms of "friendliness". I guess the issue is that the search hit gets highlighted in a similar way as being selected, and that's why upon switching to highlighter mode, the search result also gets highlighted.

Would you please implement a better way to highlight search results so that it does not interfere with normal text selection?

As I said, I was asking if your team could invent a better way how search results are highlighted, namely, in a different way from "selecting", rather than simply saying: Adobe does that, too! Well, the whole point of PDFX is that it must be better than Adobe, otherwise...

Furthermore, there's something to be improved regarding searching itself: many cool programs, like Vim, and even Word, when you do a search, it highlights ALL the matched strings, and you move from one to another via F3, etc. This gives much better view esp. if the "hits" are close to one another.

If you are interested, please let me know!

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello Huidong,

And thank you for your comments. We are considering the "Highlight all" feature, and F3 already works as "Find next" in our Viewer as well.

We will also consider your highlighting comments, but can not promise there would be any change, and you would be surprised how often we get the "This does not work like Adobe" kind of comments - even on features that we think are better implemented. So "fixing something that isn't broken" like the highlight tool is not something that we can promise.

Best,
Stefan