Comment / Sticky Usage Question

[koczurr]

I'm looking at PDF Xchange Viewer for a data mining process. It appears thus far to be very attractive for this purposes. The plan was the have people prepare their data entries directly in the document (using the sticky function) rather than the current practice of using excel. The comments would then be exported and parsed. However while doing a trial run of this I've hit an issue that I can't resolve.

I have a comment with a large amount of text, text from the pdf, comments on the text, and additional metadata. The comment extends below the pdf viewing area, and there appears to be no way I can access the text below this space. The comment window has docked itself to the top of the pdf viewing window, a function apparently related to a large comment. There is no scroll bar in the comment box, and the scroll bar to the side is for the pdf itself, not the comment. I've tried everything I can think of to gain access to the lower part of the comment. I added reply comment, and those disappeared below the threshold. I tried undocking, resizing and remaking and the comment. I kept typing and used arrow keys and page up and down with the comment box selected. I clicked every icon, button or menu option that seemed related to comments in any way. All in an effort to get access to the text below the viewable space and all to no avail.

How can I see comment text in the bottom part of comment, that extends beyond the immediate screen, or do comments have be small to be viewable. Perhaps a fatal flaw for my purposes.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Yes, this can be a problem, but were sticky notes really intended to hold so much text?

The way to get access to the rest of the text is to cut the text that you can see, and then resize the note by dragging the top down. Nothing much appears to happen while the text is still too much, but the note does eventually get small enough to fit the window.

Paste the text that you cut into a new note.

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Hi koczurr


If I understand your question properly and you want to be able to access that text do do something with it you could use CTRL+A which will select all the text in the note in one action.

Is that what you want to do?

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

I am sure what is needed is to read the text, or perhaps to edit it.

Copying it all to notepad, editing it, then pasting it back would be one way, but not pretty.

Changing the font size from the Properties toolbar might help in some cases, but the comment either needs a scroll bar, or the text needs to scroll up when the cursor moves down past the bottom.

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Hi Bhikkhu

I tend to agree that a scroll bar would be the best solution. I just don't know myself if that is something that can be added to a sticky note and remain true to the PDF Specification. I'll have one of the dev team comment.

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

good news!

The dev team have informed me that scroll bars in Sticky notes will be added as a feature to v.3

Roll on v.3....

[koczurr]

That is most excellent news, thank you for your support.

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

My pleasure, makes me feel like Santa when I can deliver what you want...

seriously though - the team put a lot of work into making the software what you ask for and I too appreciate all the work they do in this area.

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Just a heads up that scroll bars are in Sticky notes now. (As of build 311)