Wish: Ability to make a "Review Comment"

[timmorn]

Hello,

mostly, when i read a PDF, i make review notes to it. Best is, to store them in the pdf. This ability you have with the XChange Viewer. But the problem is, that a review note don't belongs to a special site. It belongs to the whole document. And so there is not really a way to realize this in the moment in Xchange viewer. When i make a note (let 's say on site 1), then i must always go back to the site where this note is, to write a new point to it which i read on site 21.

So the following possibilities would be cool: a completely separate review docking window, where i can write the review to the current PDF. Or to use the standard notes, but make it possible to move the text writing window out of the current window (like a docking window) and let it stay if you go to an other site.

Thanks!

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

By "site" I assume that you mean page.

Open the Comments pane where you can see a list of comments in the current document. Right click on any comment to add a reply to it.

[timmorn]

Yes, i mean page. Thank you.

To your recommendation: And what should be different, if i do this? When i want to write something into the reply i must go back to page 1. I see no sense in this recommendation. At all i don't want to make a reply... i want to write a review in one comment.

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Hi timmorn,

I'm not entirely clear on the difference you point out to Bhikkhu,

i don't want to make a reply... i want to write a review in one comment.

can you explain how this is differnet to a reply? What then do you mean by a review?

regards

[timmorn]

A review is no reply, it is an evaluation about the whole document:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Review

But this wish can not only be used for reviews, it can also be used to make an abstract about the document.

I can only try to explain the same ones more, perhaps with more easy words and less complex:

When i read through a document, i want to have a textfield, which is always present in a seperate docking window (like the extended search for example) no matter on which page i am.

Ones more: If i use the normal notes for my review and put the note on page 1, i can't write a comment into it when i am on page 20. And it makes no difference if i use the reply function. My only chance is to jump back to page 1 to write a review of page 20, but i want to stay on page 20.

Is this better to understand?

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

If i use the normal notes for my review and put the note on page 1, i can't write a comment into it when i am on page 20. And it makes no difference if i use the reply function. My only chance is to jump back to page 1 to write a review of page 20, but i want to stay on page 20.

That's what I thought you meant. If you use the comments pane, you can see a list of notes you have made on each page. If you add a reply to the note on page 1 or edit it, yes the focus will automatically jump back to page 1, but your note on page 20 will also be listed in the comments pane, so you can quickly jump back to page 20 to resume making notes on page 20 after editing your note on page 1.

I think it may not be quite what you want, but perhaps it will help.

Any new text area for editing has to somehow be saved with the PDF document as a comment of some sort. You could open notepad, or course, and tile that with the PDF viewer, or you could use Opera browser's notes panel with the PDF open in a tab, but whatever you do, the notes need to be saved with the PDF document don't they?

[timmorn]

Ok, now i understand how you mean this. It's a work around but like you said... not very useful.

Yes it must be stored somehow in the PDF but like i suggested in my first post, it should be very easy to find a usable solution. Imagine the following as a workaround which is very easy to implement, but also useful:

You make a normal note on the first page for the review. The only Problem is now that the normal textfield is trapped in the viewer window and disappears when you leave page one. But the only thing what programmers must do, is to make an option to make a docking window out of the textfield, which is not trapped on the first page and the viewer (think of the extended search window). -> problem solved and the X-Change viewer has one more very usable and flexible feature!

[jhreg]

+1
i also like to vote for this helpful feature requested by timmorn!
i would suggest a "review pane" in which one can enter text.
Thanks for considering!
Joh

[ugradedeveloper]

Of course the Tracker team will have the final say... but it seems to me this proposed feature would be misleading to users, as it would give the impression that the software has the ability to add comments which are not tied to a specific page - something which is not allowed by the Adobe PDF specification.

To put it another way, what you are running up against is not a limitation of PDF-XChange Viewer, but a limitation of the PDF format itself.

Lewis

[timmorn]

I understand what you say, if you would use the way jhreg suggests. But at all... if it works... why not?

But if you use the way i suggested in my post before, it is not true what you say. If you make the possibility (little undocking button or so on) to move a notes textfield out of the window and that it don't disappears on page change, you have no conflict with this specifications!

[Lzcat - Tracker Supp]

Sorry, but the PDF specification demands that each annotation is placed on a page, so we cannot make it "floating" or unattached to a page.
Of course we can try and realize some extension to the specification, but it will work only in our Viewer, and any modification of the document outside of our Viewer may drop required (and excess for another viewer following the specification) data, so information will be lost.

We do not think that it's worth spending the time to realize such an extension that will be outside of the specification.

As a workaround it's better to use the Comments pane for annotation navigation. You may group annotations not only by pages, so this may speed up their location.
HTH.

[timmorn]

Sorry, but the PDF specification demands that each annotation is placed on a page, so we cannot make it "floating" or unattached to a page.

I think you don't understand exactly how i mean this. Because my suggestion is not in conflict with this!

• The note is on the page and stays on the page and will never move until a user desides to place it on an other page
• The only thing which is floating (and only when i activate this behaviour) , is the texteditor window, which pops up when i doubleklick the note

I see here no conflict with the limitations you wrote!

[Lzcat - Tracker Supp]

The "Thing" you opened when you double clicked on the annotation is called Popup and it is falling under the same Specification restrictions as others and it cannot be used outside of a page. The difference with Popups is that it is linked to a parent annotation, can be shown/hidden, can be moved around the page where the parent annotation is placed. However it must disappear when the parent annotation goes outside of the View pane - otherwise the document display will be bloated with Pop-ups. Even if we create "detachable" popups this will work only in the Viewer and the state of this Popup will not remain between sessions.

To add such an option we should seriously modify the UI code to handle them, and I don't see any additional benefits to doing this. In the current version if I want to see an annotation's popup I just open comments pane (to locate annotation faster) and double click on it's record in the comments pane - annotations and it's Popup become visible.

As for me this way is fast enough and good enough to use... for now at least.