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Search results highlighting

Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2025 12:14 pm
by PeeblesHistoricalArchive
Search results highlight.jpg
Ideally, I'd like search to highlight just the extents of my text object, rather that the whole auto-grouped text box.
Is there an option that I've missed which would allow this?

Sometimes it works as intended and an individual advert is highlighted as hoped, but other times, remote (non-adjacent and well separated) text objects seem to be getting pulled into the orbit of other text objects, resulting in a larger and unwanted combined highlighted area.

It would be great if there could be a user-specified choice between 'grouped-textbox extents' and 'object-textbox extents' for search result highlighting.

Re: Search results highlighting

Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2025 12:36 pm
by David.P
To my knowledge, this happens automatically due to spacial proximity of text objects on the page. For finer control over what is selected/highlighted on selection I'd recommend the "Edit Content" tool, not the "Edit Text" tool.

Re: Search results highlighting

Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2025 12:37 pm
by PeeblesHistoricalArchive
By way of illustration, these two images show the desired behaviour and also the apparent randomness of the frustrating auto-grouping of text items.

Here with Moffat, you'd think it would be auto-grouped, but it isnt.
Moffat.jpg
Similarly, Williamson is unaffected, so I don't understand why Hunter is different!
Williamson.jpg

Re: Search results highlighting  SOLVED

Posted: Mon Jan 27, 2025 7:01 pm
by Daniel - PDF-XChange
Hello, PeeblesHistoricalArchive

To investigate this at all, we will need a copy of your document, however, David is correct here, use of the "Edit content" tool will ensure there is not auto-grouping of the text content, what you see with that tool enabled is the actual "text-content blocks" as they exist in the structure of the document.
In a PDF there is no concept of paragraphs, even lines of text are questionable at best, sometimes a single letter may be one object other times, a whole word, sometimes the latter half of one word, the next 3 words, and the first letter of the 5th word can all be one object, meanwhile, each other letter in the first and 5th words could be a separate object on their own.

This is why automatically assuming these groupings is so important to the use of not only editing features, but also the search functions. As such, I am sorry to say it is simply not possible to disable this entirely, the best we can offer is the Advanced Search function (Ctrl_Shift_F) which allows you to specify the proximity to some degree.
image.png
With that said, the default value "adjacent words" should be the same as the find function; both use the same assumed "text-block" logic as the edit text tool does.

Kind regards,