Can't Figure Out Text Editing New Background

[shade-cabin-hammock]

Hi,

I've got a long document where I use a dark blue background and white text. Seeing as it's so long and my old tired eyes being what they are it's easier for me.

Recently, the editing of text bocks has begun exhibiting an unusual feature. When I click into a text box to edit, the textbox itself fills with grey or perhaps a transparent white, making it pretty hard to read the text, it being white, and even HARDER to see the cursor.

2024-02-07_14-11-05-567.png

At first I just sort of took this in stride as I'd been away from the file for a good few weeks as my OTHER job had taken priority. I was just sort of thinking, "Ah! Maybe it's ALWAYS been this way."

After working with the file a while now, I recall that it used to be whenever I clicked edit, I'd just go INTO the text box, and there wouldn't be any extra background. That was GREAT, and really the BEST thing about the blue background was that it was ALWAYS that rich blue against the brilliant white text - no matter editing or reading.

I've played around in the settings a bit - Customize UI, but I couldn't get anything to change.

Have I thrown a switch somewhere?

I just upgraded, too, before returning to this file - is this a change at all in the latest version? Is there any way I can get back to being able to edit text on this file so that these text boxes won't fill with grey every time I click to edit? It used to look just like this either reading or editing:

2024-02-07_14-10-52-983.png

Example file attached.

Also, I tested on regular files just white background / black text, and there's not fill that seems to occur upon edit.

edit-text--hard-to-see.pdf

[Willy Van Nuffel]

Hi,

It seems like the difference in presentation while editing has come with build 360 of PDF-XChange Editor (released April 5th, 2022).

I have tried changing several options and settings, but there is no way to have the same presentation as with older builds (before 360) when editing text blocks in your sample PDF with the current release (build 385).

Personally, I would prefer the presentation of the text blocks to NOT changing while editing.
Let us hope that the people of pdf-xchange can give us a reasonable explanation for the current behavior.

Kind regards.

Willy

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hello Willy Van Nuffel, shade-cabin-hammock,

The different appearance is there to make it easier to distinguish your text over a background that might not be uniform in nature.
Admittedly - with the sample file above it is probably better if that is not applied.

I will ask my colleagues in the dev team to check that, though I can't make any promises that this would be changed back to how it was before.

Kind regards,
Stefan

[shade-cabin-hammock]

Hi,

WILLY & STEFAN! Thanks VERY much to you both!!

I follow.

In the interim, I had a few possible ideas that are sort of beyond my ken, not sure if they offer any hope.

If the "fix" here that has initiated the new text editing presentation was built around an effort to help folks distinguish text over a background that might not be uniform in nature, is there any possible dark background I could use instead that would NOT initiate the condition?

I mean, if the change is an effort to fix some problem with backgrounds, does that imply that there is a kind of dark background that WOULDN'T engender this condition, or the visible appearance of the condition in edits?

Put another way - is there some kind of dark-ish background that DOESN'T cause this to happen?

If there's not - it may be possible for me to slog through if I could just see the cursor more clearly. I tried making the cursor bigger in the app, but it didn't respond. I'll try at the Windows level, too.

Finally, can I roll back to the previous build until we get either a workable dark background or the feature is suppressed in some way, or we hear definitively that no change is going to be forthcoming?

Thing is, the file is one I've worked on now for a good few years, and comprises most of my research!

I know I can switch the background to white, but...that's kind of like taking your kids to Disneyland and putting them all in bright red t-shirts so you can be sure to spot them should they go to far afield. You watch them go around a bit. Then, they all change into blue t-shirts in the nearest souvenir booth. And, then there you are trying to scan over the horizon to find them.

I've got my work really pretty much memorized in terms of the text structure. Also, the supporting files, images, charts, etc., were each designed from the ground up to complement the dark background. The 1,200 + pages of it that exists now will nearly be a different document by a different author should I need to, for all intents and purposes, "invert" the image. :.(..

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hello, shade-cabin-hammock

At the very least, I did find that you can enable the accessibility color overrides, (with some custom selections), and set it to only change black text, and you get the desired outcome:

image.png

Specifically, I have used the color overrides for "dark grey" page background, and "light grey" text in this example:

image(1).png

This may be usable as an interim workaround, while the team looks into this. You can toggle the accessibility color override at any time with Ctrl+Shift+6

Kind regards,

[shade-cabin-hammock]

Dr. D!

NICE! That seems to be a good work around for now for that big file.

I entered the color of the page that I'd posted, which appears to be a sort of uber-black denim, 212934 as the background, used white for the text, and then followed your other configurations (set it to only change black text). Ctrl+Shift+6 works, too. Can't ask for much more than that! But, I'll hold tight to see what the devs say.

I can only imagine that was a bit of a trial and error headache for you to get figured out! REALLY grateful! Thank you, Dan!

[shade-cabin-hammock]

Hi Again Dan,

Ah! Yes, but herein lies the rub: it's the OTHER files...

That is, it being a global fix, all my read-to-learn files are now also overridden.

I know I can Ctrl+Shift+6 switch them, but with four files open it's not practical.

Of course, I could always open the reading files in another app, but...for certain they're mostly...pdf!

And, for sure it's the features of PDFX that I need.

<back to them bitter tears and tall beers>

(Wait! Did I just come up with a HIT country music song title? )

Yeah! So, is it possible for me to roll back to the previous version in any way?

Then, finally, as a nod to MAYBE getting the devs to agree to undo this in the latest version, or at least let it be somehow checkbox activated - I'm thinking there may be some small legion of folks who read with or work on dark background files. My hunch is that our wee number of such unique folks may be larger than the set of people who were having trouble distinguishing text over a background that might not be uniform in nature, which seems to be the condition that initiated the change.

Fingers crossed.

PLEASE let me know about using the just-previous version. Using two PDF apps for this wee work will be less than ideal.

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hello shade-cabin-hammock,

Not sure about the Country Music - but it might be worth a try

And as on rolling back - please make sure you are logged in your account on our website (not just here for the forums), and then navigate to this page:
https://www.pdf-xchange.com/product/downloads

You will see e.g. the Editor with links to download the current version, and below that a link to "Previous Builds". There you will see some older builds for which your current license is valid, and you can download copies of those.

Kind regards,
Stefan

[shade-cabin-hammock]

Hi Stefan & Dan!

Ah! Alright - got the past edition:

2024-02-14_14-46-17-800.png

Please keep me posted on if this gets a look from the devs as to if it can become optional.

Willy! Thanks for the close read on where the edition break was.

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

[shade-cabin-hammock]

Hi,

Back a while ago I discovered that Version 10 put a kind of background color behind text boxes as explained by so many good folks in this thread here. With a dark background in order to see my cursor in text boxes during edits I'd need to roll back to 9.x. Did that.

Just noticed that in 10.x we can add bold, italics and underline to the annotation copy-ver texts in the Comments pane. BUT...not in 9.x, seems just in 10.x.

So, am I right about that, the formatting is new to 10?

2024-04-18_22-59-34-825.png

And, if that's the case, then is there any kind of setting MAYBE we're missing about the cloudy background when editing text? Does it by any chance have to do with this "CUSTOMIZE UI > Backgrounds setting?

2024-04-18_23-01-30-383.png

Or, any other way you think I can defeat that coudy background and stick with 10?

Key thing for me here is seeing the cursor. I've already got it at size Extra Large in the settings. I tried all the Windows modifications, but noe took effect inside PDFX.

2024-04-18_23-20-23-428.png

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hello, shade-cabin-hammock

Underline may be fairly new, but I believe that bold and italics inside of comments has been around for a long while.
As for the color background issues, that should have been pretty well resolved, and I am struggling to reproduce the old issue of comment text being illegible anymore. have you confirmed that this is still present in build 385, and if so, could I ask you for a sample file (and a settings export) so we can reproduce it?

I am not sure I follow the mention of a cloudy background issue, but the "customize ui > background" setting shouldn't have an impact on the comment popups, aside from mild color change caused by the slight transparency they have when floating off the edge of the page and are not selected.

Finally, regarding the windows cursor options, we do not currently support those, but I will ask the Dev team to take a look and see if that is a possibility for the future.

Kind regards,

[shade-cabin-hammock]

Hi Dan,

Ah! Thanks, mate. You're right about the formatting in Comments. Thing is it seems different about also showing up in the PANE? Like this:

VERSION 9

2024-04-19_13-29-25-542.png

VERSION 10

2024-04-19_13-31-44-734.png

Sorry, I was a bit in typo-land and I didn't make clear about the background thing - that's in text blocks. See attached. So, in 10, if I try to edit, the block fills with a kind of semi-transparent white.

2024-02-07_14-11-05-567.png

And, so, this is kind of a two barrelled-question, if you will: is the support of formatting in the Comments pane JUST since 10?

And, is there ANY way I can get that background taken out OR at least make my cursor more visible? (file attached) The cloud effect occurs when you actually make an edit to the text, not just upon selection.

edit-text--hard-to-see.pdf

[Willy Van Nuffel]

It seems like the presentation of comments in the Comments pane has changed since build 384 and optional settings for comments have been introduced since the current build 385.

The option "Show Uniform Text Style in Comments" has only an influence on the font size, not on color, underline, italic, ...
.

PDF-XChange Editor - Comments pane - additional options.png

.
I would like to repeat my personal preference for keeping the original background color while editing base content text, like it was in build 359. Maybe this change has been introduced for cases where text color and background color have been set equal, per abuse ?
Can someone tell us how this behaves in Ad*be Acr*bat ?

Kind regards.

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hello,

With relation to base content colors, I will bring this up again to the Dev team, but I cannot promise any changes. At the very least, they should be able to increase the contrast for the cursor bar in these blocks, but hopefully something can be done about the background color changing while editing as well

As for comments, I am still trying to understand which background color is being referred to here, do you mean this?

image.png

If so, these colors are, as you can see, much the same as they are in the original comments. If you wish to disable those and have a uniform background inside the comments pane, you would want to disable the "show colors" view option:

image(1).png

This will allow allow the text uses a static background color instead:

image(2).png

Does that help?

Kind regards,