Features I am missing in Editor

[Timur Born]

Hello everyone,

I love using Editor (Viewer) for reading due to its ability to render pages asynchronously and generally great performance for going through long and complex PDF files. Top that with such useful features as being able to extract pages at original quality out of a larger PDF file.

Nevertheless there is much room for improvement, so here is a short list of features I am missing in Editor (Pro) tat I would very much like to see in future builds:

Copy text should include formatting

Every time I need to copy text out of a PDF file I have to switch to Adobe Reader to copy the formatting properly. Some other 3rd party PDF viewers can also copy formatting, but Editor removes all formatting during the copy process, aka leaves only pure text.

Ability to select image elements

Instead of having to snip rectangular areas manually, I would prefer to select images directly, just like I can in Adobe Reader. This would be even more useful with an option to not only copy, but also extract the images. And obviously it works so much better for any files where text floats around images.

Ability to print text with embedded fonts

As far as I can tell Editor currently always transforms text (fonts) to vector graphics during the printing process. This considerably blows up the print data size and thus takes longer to print. For testing I printed a complex 698 pages document via Editor and Adobe Reader, Editor outputs text as vector graphics while Adobe sends it as softfont (using printer fonts curiously doesn't change the size, though). Here are some numbers:

HP universal PCL driver
Editor: 1.96 gb
Adobe: 0.65 gb

Device specific PCL driver (HP Laserjet 500 Pro)
Editor: 3.58 gb
Adobe: 0.7 gb

HP Universal PS driver
Editor: 49.1 gb
Adobe: 1.11 gb

Unsurprisingly the Adobe print-jobs finish much faster and even look closer to the original.

Improved Search results

Even when I list this last, this one is the most important point for me. I seriously don't understand why all Windows based PDF software lacks behind in search capabilities by years. The gold standard here is OS X built in PDF viewer (preview), but even on my iPad I get better search results via PDF Expert 5 than any software that is being offered for Windows.

OS X' preview lists search results ordered by Relevance, which not only includes the number of hits per single page, but also seems to include whether a search word/term is part of a headline and content table. Other OS X software only sorts by number of hits per page, but even that is better than just chronologically sorting from page 1 to page x.

Editor (Pro) already lists the page number where search terms have been found. But if a single term is found 6 times on a page then you get 6 single entries in the search results. OS X software and PDF Expert 5 (iOS) create a subtree per page and list the number of hits in a headline entry. That way you can quickly see the number of hits (even without sorting), can list the results without having to expand the tree to every single hit and can click on a page entry instead while the corresponding page shows all hits highlighted. Only if you need specific hits on a single page you can expand the page entry and click on single hits.

OS X' preview and the ezPDF Reader (on the iPhone, not iPad) go even a step further, they limit the thumbnail previews to only list/show the pages that contain hits. This is especially useful for somewhat known (large) documents where you recognize the general layout of the single page you are looking for in the thumbnail and also gives a quick visual clue how many hits are found on a page (highlighted in the thumbnails). I once found some university/research related Windows based PDF software that did something similar, but it was complex to use and rather slow in the process.

So having one Windows based PDF viewer stepping up to modern search results handling would really be great and long overdue.

Thanks and keep on the good work!

[Will - Tracker Supp]

Hi Timur,

Thanks for the post:

Copy text should include formatting

Every time I need to copy text out of a PDF file I have to switch to Adobe Reader to copy the formatting properly. Some other 3rd party PDF viewers can also copy formatting, but Editor removes all formatting during the copy process, aka leaves only pure text.

This can be done by right clicking and selecting Copy as Rich Text. This can be assigned a custom keyboard shortcut via the instructions here:
https://www.pdf-xchange.com/knowle ... he-Editor-

Ability to select image elements

Instead of having to snip rectangular areas manually, I would prefer to select images directly, just like I can in Adobe Reader. This would be even more useful with an option to not only copy, but also extract the images. And obviously it works so much better for any files where text floats around images.

Images can be copied and pasted by selecting them with the Edit Content Tool, or extracted using the Extract Images feature of PDF-Tools:
https://www.pdf-xchange.com/product/pdf-tools

Ability to print text with embedded fonts

As far as I can tell Editor currently always transforms text (fonts) to vector graphics during the printing process. This considerably blows up the print data size and thus takes longer to print. For testing I printed a complex 698 pages document via Editor and Adobe Reader, Editor outputs text as vector graphics while Adobe sends it as softfont (using printer fonts curiously doesn't change the size, though).

If text is not printed as text, it will be printed as either curves or the text will be rasterized. Please make sure that you have Advanced Print Options --> More --> Text Rendering Mode set to Auto.

Improved Search results

OS X' preview lists search results ordered by Relevance, which not only includes the number of hits per single page, but also seems to include whether a search word/term is part of a headline and content table. Other OS X software only sorts by number of hits per page, but even that is better than just chronologically sorting from page 1 to page x.

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll pass this along for consideration.

Thanks,

[Timur Born]

Hi Timur,

Thanks for the post:

Hi Will,

thanks for getting back to me.

Copy text should include formatting

This can be done by right clicking and selecting Copy as Rich Text.

Thanks for pointing me to this. I wonder why this isn't the default, though? Adobe and others copy rich-text via CTRL-C and most Word like applications paste rich-text by default unless you specifically paste unformatted text.

I also noticed that columns are formatted as tabs, which is a nice alternative to Adobe's approach of only formatting the text without the paragraphs.

There are two issues I noticed.

- Several paragraphs come out with the all lines except the first one being indented, other paragraphs have only the first line indented.

- Words that have been split over two lines via "-" in the original come out in one line like "Mal- com". Adobe usually writes these together as one word, which also is different than the original, but a better solution.

Ability to select image elements

Images can be copied and pasted by selecting them with the Edit Content Tool, or extracted using the Extract Images feature of PDF-Tools:

Thanks again for pointing me to this. Unfortunately I cannot test this, because in the evaluation version the clipboard remains empty when I try to copy a selected image. I will take a look at the image extraction feature in PDF-Tools.

Ability to print text with embedded fonts

If text is not printed as text, it will be printed as either curves or the text will be rasterized. Please make sure that you have Advanced Print Options --> More --> Text Rendering Mode set to Auto.

Curiously this was set to use "Outline" mode, which I might have caused myself in one of my earlier tests. Nevertheless the results using "Auto" are not satisfying.

- The print size still remains too large at 1.1 gb vs. Adobe's 0.65 gb using the universal PCL driver.
- The fonts are not properly embedded. Just like Foxit there are some "strangename.tmp" fonts embedded instead. Single characters seem (mostly?) intact, but kerning (and maybe spacing) is definitively different/off.
- The searchable text-layer is complete gibberish, again the same result as with Foxit.

The latter two mean that printing to a PDF printer results in result of somewhat limited use (or extra work)..

Improved Search results

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll pass this along for consideration.

I suggested this first when Editor was still in Beta, which unsurprisingly meant that you had other priorities. It would be nice if you could give this another thought now, because the pathetic state of Windows based PDF searching is what forces me to use OS X (or even tablets, where I had to test all PDF solutions just for this) for when I need this intensively.

[btz]

(copy rich text as default)

I wonder why this isn't the default, though?

BTW: I prefer unformatted by default. Most of my documents separate content and presentation, therefore formatting is done by style sheets etc.

...Advanced Print Options --> More --> Text Rendering Mode

Curiously this was set to use "Outline" mode, which I might have caused myself in one of my earlier tests.

My fresh installation is also set to "Outline".

Oliver

[Will - Tracker Supp]

Hi guys,

Thanks for pointing me to this. I wonder why this isn't the default, though? Adobe and others copy rich-text via CTRL-C and most Word like applications paste rich-text by default unless you specifically paste unformatted text.

I have to agree with btz on this point, but if you would prefer to copy rich text as default, I'd recomend simply changing the keyboard shortcut from Ctrl + C being copy, to being used for copying as rich text:
https://www.pdf-xchange.com/knowle ... he-Editor-

- Several paragraphs come out with the all lines except the first one being indented, other paragraphs have only the first line indented.

- Words that have been split over two lines via "-" in the original come out in one line like "Mal- com". Adobe usually writes these together as one word, which also is different than the original, but a better solution.

Can you share a sample document that demonstrates this? This would be something that would likely depend on the content being copied and I'd like to have the same baseline, to ensure I get the same/similar results.

Thanks again for pointing me to this. Unfortunately I cannot test this, because in the evaluation version the clipboard remains empty when I try to copy a selected image. I will take a look at the image extraction feature in PDF-Tools.

This wouldn't be a limitation of evaluation mode, as the only limitation there is that documents are watermarked when features requiring a license are used. Please first make sure that you are using the latest release, as base content copying was not implemented in previous versions:
https://www.pdf-xchange.com/PDFXVE6.zip

If that doesn't help, please try clearing your temporary files folder:
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/softw ... s-3273110/

Curiously this was set to use "Outline" mode, which I might have caused myself in one of my earlier tests. Nevertheless the results using "Auto" are not satisfying.

- The print size still remains too large at 1.1 gb vs. Adobe's 0.65 gb using the universal PCL driver.
- The fonts are not properly embedded. Just like Foxit there are some "strangename.tmp" fonts embedded instead. Single characters seem (mostly?) intact, but kerning (and maybe spacing) is definitively different/off.
- The searchable text-layer is complete gibberish, again the same result as with Foxit.

The latter two mean that printing to a PDF printer results in result of somewhat limited use (or extra work)..

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this is being discussed in your other topic, correct? If so, it's best we continue dealing with that there, to limit reposts and re-testing by any of my colleagues that might pick this up, should I be off ill (I'm flying back to Canada on the 25th, so I will be unavailable for a day or two and they may pick this up while I'm away).

I suggested this first when Editor was still in Beta, which unsurprisingly meant that you had other priorities. It would be nice if you could give this another thought now, because the pathetic state of Windows based PDF searching is what forces me to use OS X (or even tablets, where I had to test all PDF solutions just for this) for when I need this intensively.

During the beta stages, we were filling most feature requests away unless they were deemed essential to a PDF editor and, as I'm sure you can imagine, some were lost or simply buried.

Unfortunately, at the moment, the dev. team may still have higher priority items, but if they feel it's something that we can and should implement, it will at least be 'on the map' this time.

...Advanced Print Options --> More --> Text Rendering Mode
Quote:
Curiously this was set to use "Outline" mode, which I might have caused myself in one of my earlier tests.

My fresh installation is also set to "Outline".

Oliver

Thanks for the note Oliver, I'll look into this and will see if this is intentional. For the future, we'll continue to take a look at this here:
https://forum.pdf-xchange.com/ ... 39&t=27991

Cheers,

[Timur Born]

I have to agree with btz on this point, but if you would prefer to copy rich text as default, I'd recomend simply changing the keyboard shortcut from Ctrl + C being copy, to being used for copying as rich text:

I appreciate very much that XChange offers both options and understand your preference for using non-formatted text for your own applications. Unfortunately this is against the default behavior of most other software I have ever worked with, especially including Adobe Reader (and Foxit) and any Office software (Microsoft Office, Libre Office, etc).

Usually when you want unformatted text you either specifically copy it unformatted, more likely you paste it unformatted or if both options are unavailable you paste it into a text-editor that doesn't support formatting to get rid of the formatting (i.e. via simple Windows Notepad).

For the past few years of me using XChange (Viewer, then Editor) I always just assumed that copying formatted text is not available and didn't even care to look for it, simply because it did not behave like expected and known from all other software. So this is not about an feature missing, but about how it is presented in an "unexpected" way. Great thing, though, that this is can be customized, which I will make use of.

Can you share a sample document that demonstrates this? This would be something that would likely depend on the content being copied and I'd like to have the same baseline, to ensure I get the same/similar results.

I already sent a document to your support e-mail for the PDF printer driver discussion. Just tell me where to send it again for this Editor related one and I will gladly do.

Here is an example of what I was writing about:

This wouldn't be a limitation of evaluation mode, as the only limitation there is that documents are watermarked when features requiring a license are used. Please first make sure that you are using the latest release, as base content copying was not implemented in previous versions:

I was already using build 319 and cleaning the temporary folder does not help. What happens is that within Editor I can copy and paste images inside the PDF file. But the (Windows) clipboard remains empty, so I cannot paste them out of the file to another program (like Paint).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this is being discussed in your other topic, correct? If so, it's best we continue dealing with that there, to limit reposts and re-testing by any of my colleagues that might pick this up, should I be off ill (I'm flying back to Canada on the 25th, so I will be unavailable for a day or two and they may pick this up while I'm away).

There is some overlap, yes. The things I listed here are purely Editor related, though, and independent of the XChange print driver problems/limitations.

So here in the Editor thread I write about issues at the source, aka Editor's output. In the other thread I also mention source issues, but I also list issues at the destination, aka XChange Standard's input/output. Both are problematic compared to Adobe Reader and FreePDF respectively.

During the beta stages, we were filling most feature requests away unless they were deemed essential to a PDF editor and, as I'm sure you can imagine, some were lost or simply buried.

I originally suggested a better search function - or sorting of results - for Viewer. Of course that doesn't mean that I expect the suggestion to be implemented, I just wanted to emphasize that the last time I suggested it was quite some time ago. It would still be nice to finally get a Windows based PDF Viewer (Editor) with proper search functionality.

Here is the original thread from 2012 where I suggested a "modern" search engine. Here we are 4.5 years later and I still need to use OS X for good PDF search results.

https://www.pdf-xchange.com/forum3 ... 35&t=13894

Thanks for the note Oliver, I'll look into this and will see if this is intentional. For the future, we'll continue to take a look at this here:

I'd like to emphasize that I had seen this settings before. But because there is an "Auto" option together with two manual options I assumed that "Auto" only encompassed these two other manual mechanics. There was nothing suggesting that "Auto" would include the one option I needed, namely a third unnamed option to neither use outline nor bitmap fonts. So again mostly a problem of GUI vs. user expectations.

[Timur Born]

Were you able to reproduce the problem of images not being copied to the clipboard? Or is there some option that I missed to enable me copying/extracting images out of Editor to other software?

This is one function I need regularly now and I am very happy to pay for it by buying the Pro version, since I also have use for editing forms.

According to your comparison page extracting single images out of PDF files is not possible via Editor anyway?

"Extract PDF Page/File Image content to an Image File (BMP, JPEG, TIFF etc)" is listed as "No" for Editor, and "Yes" for PDF Tools. The problem here is that I need to extract single images out of very large files, I don't want to batch extract all images.

On the other hand it also lists "Extract PDF Page/File, text content to a text file etc" as "No" for Editor, but you still can copy text to the clipboard at least.

[Willy Van Nuffel]

For people looking for the PDF-XChange products comparison chart, it is located here:
https://www.pdf-xchange.com/pdf-xc ... ison-chart

1) Selecting pictures by a simple click and then having a feature like "Save image as ..." or "Copy image" for using it in another application, is actually not possible (at my knowledge). Let us hope that this becomes available soon.

2) It is not completely clear to me neither, what is exactly ment by:
a) Extract PDF Page/File Image content to an Image File (BMP, JPEG, TIFF etc) = not possible
b) Extract PDF Page/File, text content to a text file etc (no OCR capability) = not possible

Actually, both things are possible.
a) via File > Export > Export to images
b) via File > Save As > Save as type: Plain text

[Will - Tracker Supp]

Hi guys,

I wasn't aware previously, but it looks like Willy is correct and images cannot be pasted into different applications. I'll see if there are any plans to add this. For now, it looks like PDF-Tools is the only option, but that will extract all images as you said.

I appreciate very much that XChange offers both options and understand your preference for using non-formatted text for your own applications. Unfortunately this is against the default behavior of most other software I have ever worked with, especially including Adobe Reader (and Foxit) and any Office software (Microsoft Office, Libre Office, etc).

I'll pass this along for consideration, but I can't make any guarantees.

I already sent a document to your support e-mail for the PDF printer driver discussion. Just tell me where to send it again for this Editor related one and I will gladly do.

Here is an example of what I was writing about:

I'll have to speak with the Dev. Team about that, as I'm not sure if this was done on purpose. One thing to note is that copying test from a PDF and retaining exact formatting is extremely tricky, as PDF's don't have any logical flow like a Word document does, but instead are coordinate based, which doesn't always translate well when pasting into different file types.

There is some overlap, yes. The things I listed here are purely Editor related, though, and independent of the XChange print driver problems/limitations.

So here in the Editor thread I write about issues at the source, aka Editor's output. In the other thread I also mention source issues, but I also list issues at the destination, aka XChange Standard's input/output. Both are problematic compared to Adobe Reader and FreePDF respectively.

Given the nature of the questions it's still best to continue in that thread, as they're all font related and likely for one/two specific developers.

I'd like to emphasize that I had seen this settings before. But because there is an "Auto" option together with two manual options I assumed that "Auto" only encompassed these two other manual mechanics. There was nothing suggesting that "Auto" would include the one option I needed, namely a third unnamed option to neither use outline nor bitmap fonts. So again mostly a problem of GUI vs. user expectations.

I believe that auto will try to print font information if available, or if not will decide upon which of the two other options is best for that particular print job.

Cheers,

[Timur Born]

I wasn't aware previously, but it looks like Willy is correct and images cannot be pasted into different applications. I'll see if there are any plans to add this. For now, it looks like PDF-Tools is the only option, but that will extract all images as you said.

Since it isn't practical to extract all images out of a document 700 pages document it seems like I have to use Adobe Reader for extracting single images (right-click on image -> Copy image).

I appreciate very much that XChange offers both options and understand your preference for using non-formatted text for your own applications. Unfortunately this is against the default behavior of most other software I have ever worked with, especially including Adobe Reader (and Foxit) and any Office software (Microsoft Office, Libre Office, etc).

I'll pass this along for consideration, but I can't make any guarantees.

I'll have to speak with the Dev. Team about that, as I'm not sure if this was done on purpose. One thing to note is that copying test from a PDF and retaining exact formatting is extremely tricky, as PDF's don't have any logical flow like a Word document does, but instead are coordinate based, which doesn't always translate well when pasting into different file types.

I understand. Nevertheless the unformatted text is copied properly while the formatted one is not.

Given the nature of the questions it's still best to continue in that thread, as they're all font related and likely for one/two specific developers.

Agreed.

I believe that auto will try to print font information if available, or if not will decide upon which of the two other options is best for that particular print job.

It seems so, yes. Unfortunately there is no hint about this in the dialog. Overall it would be helpful if there context sensitive help was available, either in form of mouse-overs or some simple help button (F1) that opens the relevant help page directly.

[Sasha - Tracker Dev Team]

Hello guys,

I've added the feature that allows copying the image content items into the clipboard so that you can paste them into Paint or similar programs and save them. This feature will be available in the 320 build.

Cheers,
Alex

[Timur Born]

Great news!

Is this available via the content browser, too, for image objects that are layered/hidden behind other objects (and thus cannot be right-clicked)? Currently we can only copy/paste content objects inside the document, but cannot select a text object in the content list and copy its content. So an option to directly copy content from the content list would be very useful for pages full of objects (without first having to delete/relayer all the objects in front of the one we need to copy).

I also noticed that turning off layers only turns off the content being viewed by Editor, it does not turn off the corresponding objects. So turning off the text-layer only makes the text invisible, but the text box still stays in front of other objects.

Speaking of which: Is there any way to make the content browser jump to the currently viewed page (and selected object) instead of manually having to scroll and search for it?

PS: The content browser does not adhere to "logical numbering".

[Sasha - Tracker Dev Team]

Hello Timur,

This will be available with the Edit Content tool and also via the Content Panel.
As for the jumping to the needed page\item - double click it in the Content Panel - that should do the trick.

Cheers,
Alex

[Timur Born]

Great news again! Please also consider a function to directly save a selected image to disk, including transparencies. This is especially useful/necessary for images containing transparencies, because transparency doesn't get copied over the Windows clipboard (Photoshop can copy/paste internally only).

Concerning "jumping": I meant it the other way around. Say I am on page 210 of a PDF, but the content panel still shows the pages 1 - 57. Instead of having to scroll through the content panel I would like to just set it to the current page (and maybe item I was selecting).

[Sasha - Tracker Dev Team]

Hello Timur,

As for the other way around jump - I'm thinking of making this kind of button. So hopefully this will be included in the build after 320.

Cheers,
Alex

[Timur Born]

Thanks again! I just decided to buy the whole Pro package, just for the sake of supporting you.

Here some more feature suggestions for Editor:

- Shortcut/button/right-click menu entry to mark all text on a single page. Currently CTRL-A marks text of the whole document, but to mark text of a single page only seems to work by manually selecting it?!

- Option to export single/range of pages to Word/PP instead of having to export the whole document. If I need to export a single page out of a complex 700 pages document then exporting the whole big PDF seems excessive.

- Better export and better "Copy as RichText" algorithms, especially concerning indentations.

One drawback of Editor is that it converts columns of floating text into single lines with indentations, which also affects its "Copy as RichText" function. This makes it quite tedious to work with the results. Other software like Acrobat or FineReader keep floating text within columns intact without adding line-breaks after every line.

Editor also tends to get confused about original indentations, exporting some correctly, but mixing up others, aka swapping indentations for first and following lines of a paragraph (which are turned into single lines anyway).

The gold standard for exporting complex documents seems to be Nuance Power PDF. But for my own use it would be sufficient if Editor learned a trick or two for better exporting.

- Color managed printing options (as offered in Acrobat DC).

- Option to automatically create custom page sizes for printer that support it (would also be useful being supported by the XChange printer). This one is useful for when you print some odd sized files, I use it in Acrobat regularly.

[Timur Born]

One oddity I noticed: The CTRL-F popup forces Editor to the front when it's activated. Since this doesn't happen with the extended search I suspect that this isn't intentional. Of course hardly anyone would notice or mind, but if it's just one flag to change then it's worth reporting.

[Sasha - Tracker Dev Team]

Hello Timur,

Thanks again! I just decided to buy the whole Pro package, just for the sake of supporting you.

Appreciate it

- Shortcut/button/right-click menu entry to mark all text on a single page. Currently CTRL-A marks text of the whole document, but to mark text of a single page only seems to work by manually selecting it?!

I will add a command that does this in one of the future releases.

- Option to export single/range of pages to Word/PP instead of having to export the whole document. If I need to export a single page out of a complex 700 pages document then exporting the whole big PDF seems excessive.

The easiest way of doing this right now is to press the CTRL-SHIFT-E combination (Extract Pages) and select |Extract All pages to a new document" option then use the Export to Word feature.

Cheers,
Alex

[Timur Born]

I will add a command that does this in one of the future releases.

Perfect, thanks!

The easiest way of doing this right now is to press the CTRL-SHIFT-E combination (Extract Pages) and select |Extract All pages to a new document" option then use the Export to Word feature.

Yes, this is how I did it, too. It works quite well, especially because it can be combined with marking pages via thumbnails.

That being said, I feel that XChange's export options are very rudimentary. There are no options at all and it doesn't work well with complex documents. If I had to export regularly I would likely have to buy another software.

[Will - Tracker Supp]

Hi Timur,

That being said, I feel that XChange's export options are very rudimentary. There are no options at all and it doesn't work well with complex documents. If I had to export regularly I would likely have to buy another software.

The export to Word and PowerPoint features are actually extremely new. I'm sure that they will be expanded upon as and when we can, but many many users were requesting this feature in even a rudimentary sense, so we reall just wanted to release this is a functional and simplistic feature that could later be expanded upon.

Cheers,

[Sasha - Tracker Dev Team]

Hello Timur,

As for the selection on page - after further investigation it appeared that this functionality is already present. Please use the select text tool and click it 4 subsequent times on one text part. That should select the text on the entire page.

Cheers,
Alex

[Timur Born]

I understand. As a sort of extreme test I exported a whole complex book of 578 pages. At 300 dpi image settings Nuance Power PDF turned it into a nearly perfect 305 mb Word file, Editor turned it into a 763 mb file (exceeding Word's 512 mb limit to open the file). Judging from smaller documents I tried Editor had quite some way to go, but if you ever aspire to get close to perfect then Power PDF really is the one to beat for the time being.

More suggestions:

- Allow zooming in the thumbnail windows/view via CTRL-mousewheel.

- Command for switching thumbnail pane to maximized window (and back).

- Movings tabs is really difficult right now, because they split off to new windows too easily and once that happens you don't see exactly where you move them in relation to other tabs. Please consider changing the vertical movement limit at which a tab changes to a window.

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hello Timur,

Most likely this file has quite a few images, and probably Nuance Power PDF decreased their quality to make the file smaller.

Also thank you for the suggestions - we are grateful for your comments and I will pass them along to the devs for consideration.

Regards.
Stefan

[Timur Born]

Hello Timur,

As for the selection on page - after further investigation it appeared that this functionality is already present. Please use the select text tool and click it 4 subsequent times on one text part. That should select the text on the entire page.

I cannot seem to make this work. Clicking two times selects a single word, but that's it. More clicking just switches the word selection on/off. I cannot even move the mouse/cursor then to select additional words once a full word is selected. Rather inconvenient.

From other applications (Word, Firefox) I am used to something like:

2 clicks: select word + move mouse to select more full words.
3 clicks: select paragraph + move mouse to select more full paragraphs.
4 clicks: unselect paragraph and select word again + move mouse to select more full words.

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hi Timur,

This is going to be available in build 320
double-click – to select a word
triple-click on a word – to select whole paragraph (not just current text-line).
quad-click on the word – to select whole page

Sasha has a pre release version of 320 - and that's why it's working for him and not (yet) for you.

Regards,
Stefan

[Timur Born]

Most likely this file has quite a few images, and probably Nuance Power PDF decreased their quality to make the file smaller.

Yep, full of images. The original PDF file is "only" 114 mb, though, and I specifically set 300 dpi (=rather high) for image file export (at 150 dpi the Word file is 105 mb). Image compression seems increased, but not overly so.

It's really astounding how close they get to the original, especially where the combination of several layered images and floating text is concerned. I tried all the well known programs during the last two weeks and this one really nails exporting. Curiously it doesn't beat Acrobat in the OCR department, even though it's using the specialized Omnipage engine.

Anyway, for my personal use I don't really much exporting, rather better rich-text copy/paste. That being said, I noticed that while Power PDF doesn't allow me to export single pages out of files where security disallows it, it does allow me to export the whole document. So in a way it's a way of still getting my hands on single pages, albeit just printing them to PDF via PDF printer driver is a much easier way (hence my interest in a good PDF printer ).

[Timur Born]

Ah, great news, especially the paragraph part. Thanks Stefan!

Will it be possible to move the mouse with the button pressed to select more words/paragraph?

[Timur Born]

I just noticed that Editor does not support CBR/CBZ (Comic Book Zip), which Soda and MuPDF do support. Would be a nice addition, even though it is not directly related to PDF, more related to "reading" in general.

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hello Timur,

There are other reading/book formats that are even more wide spread, but for now we are not planning on supporting those natively. Things might change in the future, but for now we have plenty of features on our list that need to be done with priority.

Will it be possible to move the mouse with the button pressed to select more words/paragraph?

I am not sure yet myself - the version I have doesn't work this way, but Click+drag does work well

Regards,
Stefan

[Timur Born]

Hi Timur,

This is going to be available in build 320
double-click – to select a word
triple-click on a word – to select whole paragraph (not just current text-line).
quad-click on the word – to select whole page

Sasha has a pre release version of 320 - and that's why it's working for him and not (yet) for you.

I just checked 321 and I still can only use double-click. Once I tripple-click it just deselects the word again.

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hello Timur,

Just checked - and a triple click for me does select a whole paragraph.
Maybe this is specific to the file you are testing and the Editor can't recognize the paragraphs in it correctly?

Cheers,
Stefan

[Timur Born]

Please check the Content pane for your example. Maybe it's content is a special object that I am not seeing here. Most of my PDF files are created by Adobe Indesign, which tends to put each line as a single text object inside a container. This doesn't keep Editor from identifying a whole box (like one column) of text as a single large object (no all encompassing container in Content view).

For testing I printed some lines of Word text (three paragraphs) into a PDF via XChange Standard. There are no containers, but XChange also puts each line into its own text object. Still I cannot use more than a double click.

Independent of whether this works or not Editor should still allow to use mouse-dragging to mark text after a double/tripple-click was used. This is how Word, browsers, Notepad, Notepad++ and lots of other software handle it. It's very convenient to be able to first double/tripple-click and then drag the mouse with the button pressed to mark more text on a whole word/paragraph basis.

[Will - Tracker Supp]

Hi Timur,

This works perfectly for me, with your file:

Timur File Demo.zip

(3.36 MiB) Downloaded 146 times

Do you have any unusual mouse settings?

Thanks,

[Timur Born]

No, but I found the culprit. Tripple/Quadrupple clicking only works for the Select Text tool, but not for the Edit Content tool. Guess what I'd like to be changed?!

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hello Timur,

Yes - indeed it only works for the Select Text Tool for now - we will see if we can add it for the Edit content one as well.

Regards,
Stefan

[angel herraez]

Hi
Regarding the discussion of copying text with and without format, and leaving aside which one should be the default (Ctrl-C), maybe the options in the pop-up context menu could be rephrased to say

• Copy as plain text
• Copy as formatted text

That would help usability, I think.

[Patrick-Tracker Supp]

Hi Angel,

If this is implemented, the context menu will have distinguishing options much like you've described.

Cheers!

[Timur Born]

Hello Timur,

Yes - indeed it only works for the Select Text Tool for now - we will see if we can add it for the Edit content one as well.

Hi there,

I am still missing this for Edit content. It's also still not possible to double/tripple-click on a word/paragraph and then drag the mouse to select further words/paragraph, like we are used to in every word processor, editor and browser out there.

Thanks and regards.

[Timur Born]

Ability to select image elements

Instead of having to snip rectangular areas manually, I would prefer to select images directly, just like I can in Adobe Reader. This would be even more useful with an option to not only copy, but also extract the images. And obviously it works so much better for any files where text floats around images.

Unfortunately there still is no way to select images other than using the Content browser or Edit content. The former is quite cumbersome on busy pages and the latter not possible for protected files.

I do applaud the inclusion of the new "Edit Image using" function and its ability to keep transparent background intact. But this is only available for unprotected files, while Adobe Reader allows to select and copy images from protected files as well.

Furthermore the "Copy" function still copies images with white background, though. Interestingly copy & paste of images does not work at all with Paint.Net, where it only pastes a solid white image. No such issues from Adobe Reader, which also comes with the additional benefit of adding a white outline on black background around the image content. While the latter is still worse than getting true transparency, it at least makes cutting out the image from the background easier.

Improved Search results

Several years later this still remains to be my number one missing feature! We are at a point where even tablet PDF viewers offer better search results functionality than Windows desktop software. It's time to catch up.

[Will - Tracker Supp]

Hi Timur,

Can you please send a sample of one of these protected documents? Also, just a note, you will need the password to be able to edit protected documents, as allowing users to edit without the password would be a gross breach of trust and would defeat the purpose of password protecting a document.

Several years later this still remains to be my number one missing feature! We are at a point where even tablet PDF viewers offer better search results functionality than Windows desktop software. It's time to catch up.

Can you elaborate on this point? Are you looking for e.g. search indexing?

Cheers,

[Timur Born]

Hi Timur,

Can you please send a sample of one of these protected documents? Also, just a note, you will need the password to be able to edit protected documents, as allowing users to edit without the password would be a gross breach of trust and would defeat the purpose of password protecting a document.

Once I get my PC going again I will send you a file via e-mail. Keep in mind, though, that Adobe Reader is perfectly fine with allowing users to copy & paste images out of the very same protected documents. This is possible, because Reader allows to mark images just via a simple mouse-click, whereas Editor only allows to mark text that way.

Furthermore Editor does not offer the "Edit image using" command on images of these protected files. This in turn means that I cannot extract them with transparencies, because copy & paste always adds a solid background color (white in Editor, black in Reader).

Can you elaborate on this point? Are you looking for e.g. search indexing?

It's still the very same issues I posted years ago, with all Windows PDF viewers. Just take a look at how OS X' Preview displays search results, or several popular iPad viewers (I use PDF Expert).

- Results should be (optionally) ordered by relevance instead of chronologically, likely by number of hits per page + whether a search term is part of a headline/chapter.

- Instead of listing multiple entries per page there should just be a single result listing per page + number of hits on that page. This should be in form of an expandable tree view, so that I can either just click on the page or expand the page tree to select single hits on said page. If I search for a single term in a 500 pages document then I don't want bazilions of results entries, sometimes listing dozens per page.

- Instead of a simple icon in front of a result listing there could be a small thumbnail that enables users to quickly assert if the page is the one we are looking for (by recognizing the general design should the document be known).

- An option to make Editor only display pages that are part of a search result (or just skip others in navigation) would allows to quickly flip through pages that might be relevant via keyboard or scroll-wheel.

The first two are the most important ones. Imagine you would have to navigate Google search results chronologically and getting a single result line per every hit of a term on a single web-page. That's what Windows PDF viewers currently force on us with big PDF files.

[Will - Tracker Supp]

Hi Timur,

Once I get my PC going again I will send you a file via e-mail. Keep in mind, though, that Adobe Reader is perfectly fine with allowing users to copy & paste images out of the very same protected documents. This is possible, because Reader allows to mark images just via a simple mouse-click, whereas Editor only allows to mark text that way.

Furthermore Editor does not offer the "Edit image using" command on images of these protected files. This in turn means that I cannot extract them with transparencies, because copy & paste always adds a solid background color (white in Editor, black in Reader).

It's likely that the security handler used on this files is not supported in the Editor (and/or other readers). It's quite common for Adobe or 3rd parties to release security handles designed only for Adobe, and not release the details needed for others to support it (e.g. LiveCycle). I'll be able to tell for sure when you're able to send the file. Please remember to link this topic in your email for reference, as it's quite easy for us to lose track given the number of emails and forum topics we typically see in a day

It's still the very same issues I posted years ago, with all Windows PDF viewers. Just take a look at how OS X' Preview displays search results, or several popular iPad viewers (I use PDF Expert).

- Results should be (optionally) ordered by relevance instead of chronologically, likely by number of hits per page + whether a search term is part of a headline/chapter.

- Instead of listing multiple entries per page there should just be a single result listing per page + number of hits on that page. This should be in form of an expandable tree view, so that I can either just click on the page or expand the page tree to select single hits on said page. If I search for a single term in a 500 pages document then I don't want bazilions of results entries, sometimes listing dozens per page.

- Instead of a simple icon in front of a result listing there could be a small thumbnail that enables users to quickly assert if the page is the one we are looking for (by recognizing the general design should the document be known).

- An option to make Editor only display pages that are part of a search result (or just skip others in navigation) would allows to quickly flip through pages that might be relevant via keyboard or scroll-wheel.

The first two are the most important ones. Imagine you would have to navigate Google search results chronologically and getting a single result line per every hit of a term on a single web-page. That's what Windows PDF viewers currently force on us with big PDF files.

Thanks for the reminder - I do remember that now. I'm not sure what my stance was previously, but your suggestions do make a lot of sense to me here and now, and I agree. I regularly search through the Adobe JS API Reference and have the same issue, simply due to the number of hits per page. I'll have the discussion with the Devs. on this and will see what they think, though I obviously cannot yet attest to the programmatic feasibility of the implementation (I'm very confident it's possible, just not sure if it would be feasible for them to implement such a major refactor at this time).

Cheers,

[Sasha - Tracker Dev Team]

Hello Timur,

I just created the secured document that prohibits extraction of all sorts - I could not save the Image from the Acrobat. Anyways we will add the separate Replace Image and Save Image features in on of the nearest future releases (hopefully 323).

Cheers,
Alex

[Timur Born]

Hello Alex,

thanks for looking into this. Now that I got my PC running again I took another look at the documents I am working with. They do explicitly allow "Content Copying", so copying images out of the file is allowed and possible in both Adobe Reader and more or less X-Change Editor.

But: In order to copy an image out of Editor I have to pinpoint the image out of the very busy "Content" side-bar, which still doesn't even seem to offer an option to focus on the current page. There is no way in Editor to simply mark an image when "Edit content" is prohibited by document rights. In Reader I simply click on the image and then use copy & paste.

And there is another issue: Images copied from Editor to the clipboard does not seem to conform to clipboard standards, both from Content sidebar and Edit Content selection. Trying to paste such images in Paint or Paint.net results in a solid white frame, trying to paste it into a Gmail e-mail in Firefox results in Firefox crashing. On the other hand pasting into Photoshop CC or MS Word does work. Trying to paste the same from Reader works without hassles in all programs.

PS: Is there still no way to focus the Content sidebar on the current page without having to scroll through the sidebar manually? For files that allow content editing I can trick it by copying & pasting one object on a page and then delete it via undo again, this makes Content sidebar focus on the pasted object. This needs three key-strokes, but it's still better than manual sidebar search and selection. But for files that do now allow editing I have not found any such trick yet.

[Timur Born]

Here is a comparison of search & results functionality between OS X Preview and X-Change Editor. Things I noticed:

- Preview offers sorting by both chronological page order and "rank", Editor always sorts by page order.

This is my most common grief with all PDF viewers, for reasons unfathomable this seems to be an OS X exclusive. I know no Windows or iOS software that does offer different sorting of results. The same page that is ranked no. 1 in Preview is no. 128 in Editor. There are 47 matches of the searched word combination on that page, plus a headline with both words in direct combination. This at least is a strong indication for this page being a good hit, while in Editor (and any other Windows program) I have to flip through 127 other page results first to finally land there (without thumbnails to help).

- Preview (and several tablet apps) lists the number of hits per page, Editor only lists the number of hits per document.

In my example Editor lists 131 hits, because I used the "Proximity" (same page) option to only display one result per page. If the single word "Ability" is searched for in Editor then not using "Proximity" results in over 1000 hits, 46 hits on the example page alone (see below). So using Proximity helps to keep result entries on a sane level, but gives me no numbers.

- Preview allows to jump between results on a page right from its single page oriented search functionality (either via arrow keys or GUI arrow buttons), Editor + Proximity needs to open an extra simple CTRL-F dialog to jump between results on a page.

- Preview displays a small thumbnail beside each page result, Editor only displays a generic icon. Some tablet apps also mark search results in thumbnails to give an quick idea of the distribution on a page. I once found a Windows based scientific PDF program that offered the same, but it was veeeeery slow and rather cumbersome.

- Preview allows to search for both "whole words" and partial words within a single search, Editor only allows one at a time (see how my search also caught "STability" and "ADAPTability" in Editor).

- Preview only the same color for all search term, Editor allows to color each term differently.

- Preview uses a smaller font for its result list and thus allows more results per screen height, Editor uses larger fonts. It would be nice to change font-size for results in either program (via CTRL + wheel like with the thumbnail sidebar). Editor at least allows to generally set the "Common UI font", but that affects a lot of other UI elements as well.

[Timur Born]

- Preview uses logical page numbers for search results, Editor uses physical ones even when logical numbering is used for the document page count.

- Editor lists chapter/page names + page number on top of search results, Preview only lists page numbers.

[Sasha - Tracker Dev Team]

Hello guys,

About image saving/selecting - check out this video:

Cheers,
Alex

[Timur Born]

Great changes, thanks a lot, very much appreciated!

You demonstrate that mouse-selected images will highlight the corresponding Content sidebar entry. Will it also jump to the entry (page) when and expand the corresponding sub-tree? Is the same available for selected text then? Currently in documents of 500+ pages and dozens of content objects per page it's very cumbersome to find the right content object in the sidebar.

One suggestion: At 3:32 you tried to use the context-menu (right-click), but found nothing to work with. I guess it would be a good idea to add content-menu entries for selected images (or allow to add them by users).

[Sasha - Tracker Dev Team]

Hello Timur,

To see the currently selected content item, use this:

I do not know whether this should be done automatically, because the Content Panel will grow drastically when you click on the random images in the document.
Also, we will update the context menu for the selected images so that it would correspond to the image content item correctly.

Cheers,
Alex

[Timur Born]

Thanks Alex, I missed that icon being present now. That being said, it can only be used for files that allow content editing. So hopefully the latest changes will also include being able to use the "Display selected item" for protected files.