Multi Line URLs

[RightPaddock]

OpSys : Windows XP-SP3
PDF-Exchange : Free version 2.0.42.7

I periodically receive a SECURED monthly product update from a wholesaler from whom I make purchases from time to time. The update contains lists of products from different vendors.

Each product is listed as a descriptive URL - http://wholesaler.com/products/vendor/p ... escription. The description part contains basic product characteristics, as a result the URL usually wraps over two or even three lines. The URL does NOT contain spaces, instead it has underscores between words, as_in_this_example, wrapping occurs on an underscore.

Until the latest release when I double clicked a multiline URL the entire URL text would be sent to the browser which would in turn bring up the product page. In the latest release when I double click a multiline URL only the first line is sent to the browser, as a result I get page not found errors, because the URL is truncated. Because the document is SECURED I cannot easily copy the entire URL and paste it into my browser.

I downloaded & installed Acrobat 9.2.0.124. Guess what, it behaves exactly the same as earlier versions of PDF-Exchange, when a multi line URL is double clicked the ENTIRE URL is sent to the browser, and the product page is displayed - i.e. its not truncated at the end of the first line.

I cannot send a copy of the document as it is subject to federal government non disclosure regulations.

There is no point in me complaining to the wholesaler, they will simply say, use the software that we recommend, Acrobat 9.2

For the time being I can use Acrobat 9.2. However I prefer to use PDF because IMO its a better product; also it is much less vulnerable to being used as a vector for the intruction of malware onto my system.

I would be quite happy to revert to an earlier version of PDF-Exchange, there's nothing in the new version that I could not live without. Then I can uninstall Acrobat.

TIA

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hi RightPaddock,

I read in your post that you can not post the file, and I can understand it for the forums but would it be possible for you to send us a copy to support@pdf-xchange.com with a link to this topic? If not please do ask your wholeseller for a permission, or tell us an e-mail we could use to contact them and request a copy of such file so we could test.

If you do send us a copy of your file we will treat it with all the respective caution and will not use it for anything other than testing.

Best Regards,
Stefan

[RightPaddock]

I am not minded to ask the wholesaler, I know what they will say - use Acrobat.

Even if I were to approach the wholesaler to seek authority from the feds, then the feds would have to seek authority from the OEMs with whom they have NDAs, which I have have had to sign, and that Tracker would have to sign. There is no way I am going to go through that rigmarole, when I know what the answer will be from each layer - "use Acrobat, you know it works, its free - now go away". Perhaps you've never dealt with government bureaucracies on issues they regard as being matters of "national security", which these days is practically everything.

I'll try to recreate the scenario with test document, but I am really busy at the moment so it may take a week or so. This is not business critical, as I only look at the lists a few times a month - it's just an annoyance.

BTW : I am sure Tracker Software has far more IT technical resources at its disposal that I do (I am a partner in a 4 person marine engineering consultancy, hence I have no such resources), have you tried to recreate the scenario I've described, I get the impression that you probably haven't,

What is it with the software industry - why is the onus always placed on the end user to debug and test its products. Imagine if food manufacturers did that - "oh dear, your husband died when he ate our rice crispies, can you get another one and send him along to us so we can give him some rice crispies and watch him die" - sorry I couldn't resist the analogy.

Thanks

[Ivan - Tracker Software]

Code: Select all

What is it with the software industry - why is the onus always placed on the end user to debug and test its products.

I think there a lot of reasons: 1) modern software is very complex and has a lot of dependencies from other software and especial hardware; 2) hardware may be standardized but there are huge variations and a vast array of different components.

With regards your analogy with rice: when rice crispies go bad, humans can became ill, but will live and nothing critical will happens, but with software/hardware in most cases a mistake or damage to one of the components or relations can crash a system, right?

[RightPaddock]

Code: Select all

What is it with the software industry - why is the onus always placed on the end user to debug and test its products.

I think there a lot of reasons: 1) modern software is too complex, and has a lot of dependencies from another software and especial hardware; 2) hardware is standardized but has a lot of variations and contains a lot of components.

Into your analogy with rice: when rice crispies will be bad, human can became ill, but will live and nothing critical will happens, but with software/hardware in most cases mistake or damage one of component or relation, can crash all system, isn't?

The Hardware Abstraction Layer that's found in practically all modern operating systems, even Symbian and Android, shields 99.5% of software from the vagaries of different h/w configurations. Ivan you are communicating with an engineer who wrote his first program in Fortran on a Control Data computer in 1968 and who still writes engineering simulation models.

If you read this, http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol5no5/mead.htm, you'll see that 5000 people in the US alone die from food poisoning every year - worldwide its probably a 100 times that number!

Please don't respond unless you have some useful information for me. Otherwise I'll have to turn notify off and then I might miss some other persons useful contribution.

Thanks

[Ivan - Tracker Software]

Without source document (page with this link is enough) I cannot say you any useful information.

[ugradedeveloper]

What is it with the software industry - why is the onus always placed on the end user to debug and test its products.

I think that comment is rather poorly timed for this forum, as Tracker recently imposed a moratorium of several weeks on development of new features so that they could do extensive testing and debugging of their product before beginning work on a major version update.

Anyway, even if a software company has dozens of people devoted to testing and scores of development/testing systems, that number will still be tiny compared to the thousands (if not millions) of users, each of whom may have a unique combination of hardware and software (not to mention viruses and misconfigurations). There is no way that inhouse testing can catch all the multitude of possible problems (Hardware Abstraction Layer notwithstanding).

Lewis

[RightPaddock]

I fully appreciate that you can't test every scenario - but when a problem is reported I would have thought that the first thing surely is to try to replicate the problem with data in which you have total confidence as to its provenance, in which you have in depth knowledge and that is entirely within your control.

I have turned off the Notify Me If A Reply Is Posted flag, I'll come back when I have created a sample document that manifests the problem which I will attach as a Word 2007 Document and 2 PDFs, I'll create the PDF with the Office Save as PDF option AND using PDF Creator.

Thank you

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hi again RightPaddock,

The thing is that your problem is one of those "custom" scenarios, it's not something we could reproduce with ease, (I tried )
And that's the reason we are asking for sample files - in most cases it is much faster to get a copy of an already breaking the behaviour file than trying to create our own.
There are really too many things that could be wrong with a PDF file that are not practical to explore when there is already a test case.

We will await your example posted here, and until then
Best regards and have a nice day,
Stefan