Editing typewriter text boxes (+ potential feature request)

[dexamethasone]

I have 2 questions/suggestions regarding editing typewriter text boxes.

1. When I try to edit a text box created using the Typewriter tool, the text box immediately lengthens, which is inconvenient when I am annotating PDF files. I've made a diagram illustrating the issue (see below).
Although the text box may spring back to its original size if I don't make edits to the box, the main source of frustration for me is that the text box immediately lengthens and stays that way whenever I try to edit it.

2. Is there a keyboard shortcut for adjusting text box width/height? It would be rather useful and may help with solving issue #1 above as well.

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, dexamethasone

The typewiter annotation is designed to work as the good old-fashioned typewriters did, if you do not use a carriage return, the line continues on writing, even past the end of the page, you can force wrapping by adjusting the size of the box after editing, but this is not the intended use of the comment type, and as such will not be changing.

If you wish to enable and retain word wrapping, you should instead be using a "text box" annotation, near the typewriter on the Comment tab.

Outside of that, there is no default shortcut for adjusting the height/width of comments, but you can set your own shortcut key for the "transform" tool, by using the "customize UI" menu (the commands tab). With that said, I expect using the correct tool for the job will prevent you from needing this solution.

Kind regards,

[DIV]

I also wondered why the typewriter text boxes automatically expand themselves to the right-hand edge of the page upon editing.

So what actually are the differences between the Text Box tool and the Typewriter tool.

Psychologically when I want to add pure text I gravitate to the Typewriter tool, and I perceive the Text Box tool as a function for adding text within an outlined box (even though I know the outline can be turned off by setting zero width*) that commonly has an opaque fill (though I know it can be turned off too).

So is the only difference this box-expansion/text-refolding behaviour upon editing, or are there other differences?

—DIV

* Not sure why the GUI doesn't offer an option to set Stroke colour to None.

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello DIV,

So what actually are the differences between the Text Box tool and the Typewriter tool.

Internally for the PDF file - none. These two are actually different representations and visualizations of the same type of annotation as far as the PDF file is concerned. In fact - if you look at the comments pane - both Text Boxes and Typewriter objects are grouped under the "Text Box" category when you group comments by type:

image.png (17.13 KiB) Viewed 488 times

You just get one without border (by default), and with no word wrapping to the size you've specified, and the other one starts more like a "rectangular box" of text which you draw first and type in after.

For a "quick addition of a few words" - I also personally gravitate towards the typewriter tool, but both discussed in this topic can be made to look like the other.

As for the stroke colour - it has to be specified (due to requirements in the specification), so you can set the stroke width to 0 instead.

Kind regards,
Stefan

[PHK]

...
You just get one without border (by default), and with no word wrapping to the size you've specified, and the other one starts more like a "rectangular box" of text which you draw first and type in after.
...

The word-wrapping distinction is not an insignificant difference, in my humble opinion.

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

It's dictated by the ISO specifications I believe so it should be the same in all PDF software.
They may not show it under the same category as we do, but the behaviour is standard.

I hope that helps.