Continuous page view, and Find/Search occurrence positioning

David.P · Post by **David.P** » Fri Nov 07, 2014 11:32 am

Hi forum and Tracker team,

I'd like to propose two feature requests that are partially related to each other.

Regarding the first request, if in "Continuous" page view mode, the "Fit Width" zoom setting really should set the zoom value such that the currently visible page (or the currently visible pages) should be fitted to fill the width of the document pane.

Instead, currently the "Fit Width" zoom setting sets the zoom such that the widest page in the entire document is used for calculating the "Fit Width" zoom value. This however is impractical since the width of the widest page in the entire document is of little interest, as long as that page is not being actually viewed.

Therefore, if hitting the "Fit Width" zoom button (when in "Continuous" page view mode), that button actually should do simply the same as when in "Single Page" view mode: set the zoom value such that the currently visible page fits into the width of the document pane.

Regarding the second request, "Search" and "Find" should always center any found occurrence of the search term vertically inside the document pane (as for example Firefox has started doing lately) -- but never horizontally (unless the zoom is so large that the search term occurrence would be not be visible).

At present, any found occurrence of a search term is highlighted and centered vertically already -- most of the time, however not if the found occurrence is contained in the currently visible part of the page or document. This however can lead to a) search term occurrence positioning at the very top (or bottom) border of the document pane which can make it difficult to read the context of that search term occurrence, and b) it can lead to the search box actually covering up the search term (and/or it's context):

It would thus be advantageous if any found occurrence of a search term is always centered vertically, not only if it is off the currently visible document part.

More importantly, any next occurrence of a search term should never be centered horizontally (unless the zoom is so large that the search term occurrence would be not be visible). Currently, when in "Continuous" page view mode, any next occurrence of a search term (if it is vertically off the currently visible page/document part) is centered not only vertically (which is great) but also horizontally. The latter however disrupts the reading process since you continuously have to re-position (re-center) your document horizontally inside the document pane in order to see the entire width of the text

Therefore, please always center any search term occurrence vertically, but never center it horizontally (the latter of course unless the zoom is so large that the occurrence would not be visible at all otherwise).

Thanks already for consideration,

Regards David.P

David.P · Post by **David.P** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 6:59 pm

Addendum:

Please also consider to not change the horizontal position of the document in the document pane when in Continuous page view mode, and a bookmark or thumbnail is clicked.

Currently, when in Continuous page view mode, and zoom is set such that the widest page in the document (usually some page that is in landscape orientation whereas the rest of the document is in portrait orientation) is wider than the document pane, if then a bookmark or thumbnail is clicked, the document not only jumps to the target page (good), but also gets moved horizontally (not good).

Thanks for consideration,

Cheers David.P

Fri Nov 14, 2014 11:06 pm

Hello Peter,

Thank you for the post and for your requests. They have been passed along to the dev team for consideration.

Thanks!

Arnold · Post by **Arnold** » Sun Nov 16, 2014 9:03 pm

>> Therefore, if hitting the "Fit Width" zoom button (when in "Continuous" page view mode), that button actually should do simply the same as when in "Single Page" view mode: set the zoom value such that the currently visible page fits into the width of the document pane. <<

This would be a great, great feature. I am often looking at an asbestos removal survey, or a huge set of specifications that have pages that are 11 inches x 17 inches or even CAD drawings (24 inches x 32 inches) scattered here and there with all of the letter size pages. Once I reach a CAD size page and continue down the document the letter size pages are very small on screen.

Could you make the Viewer behave in this manner also? Still using the Viewer every day, all day.

Thank you.

Post by **Will - Tracker Supp** » Mon Nov 17, 2014 5:26 pm

Hi Arnold,

We can certainly add your voice to the ticket.

Regarding adding this to the Viewer, I can't make any promises, as this is ultimately up to John (CEO) and the Dev. Team, though do please note that the official policy is that no new features will be added to the Viewer.

Cheers,

David.P · Post by **David.P** » Tue Dec 02, 2014 5:25 pm

Hello Will & Tracker Team,

because the unwanted horizontal scrolling when clicking on "Find" or "Search" occurrences (same with clicking on bookmarks or thumbnails) is rather distracting, or even can move parts of the document out of view -- I was gonna ask whether the respective feature request:

Always center any search term occurrence vertically, but never center it horizontally (the latter unless the zoom is so large that the occurrence would not be visible at all otherwise).

...has been assigned a ticket already (and is being actively considered)?

Same for the other request:

If hitting the "Fit Width" zoom button when in "Continuous" page view mode, the zoom value should be set such that the currently visible page fits into the width of the document pane.

... is this also in the status of having an official ticket?

Thank you
Regards David.P

Post by **Will - Tracker Supp** » Tue Dec 02, 2014 6:35 pm

Hi David,

Unless we've received direct confirmation, from both John and the Dev. Team, that features will be implemented, we don't generally create formal tickets for feature requests. We haven't received confirmation (or denial) yet, as the Dev. Team's focus is currently, primarily, on migrating the remaining features of the Viewer over to the Editor.

I'm afraid, at this point, we know as much as you do.

Cheers,

David.P · Post by **David.P** » Tue Dec 02, 2014 7:58 pm

Thank you Will,

still hoping that these features will make it into the Editor, at a point in the not too distant future.

If I get around to it, I shall prepare a sample document where it can be seen how the document keeps moving horizontally (and partially out of view) all the time when Search/Find results or Bookmarks/Thumbnails are clicked.

Regards David.P

Post by **Will - Tracker Supp** » Tue Dec 02, 2014 8:26 pm

Not a problem

If you do get around to it, the sample would be appreciated and would obviously help us to better understand the frustration - it may also help with the ultimate decision.

Cheers,

David.P · Post by **David.P** » Fri Dec 05, 2014 11:33 am

OK Will, I will prepare a sample document that shows the problems with horizontal positioning of the page in the document pane, and with adjusting the optimal display width of the page.

Regards David.P

Post by **Tracker Supp-Stefan** » Fri Dec 05, 2014 2:03 pm

Looking forward to it David!

Cheers,
Stefan

David.P · Post by **David.P** » Tue Mar 17, 2015 3:58 pm

Hi forum and tracker team,

here comes the (somewhat detailed) problem description, together with a sample document which is attached to this post. To reproduce please follow the steps below.

First issue: "Fit Width" calculation

Open the attached PDF document in PDF-XChange Editor
The document should open with the bookmarks pane visible, and in "Single Page, Full Page" view mode. If it opens in another view mode, please switch to "Single Page, Full Page" view mode by clicking the appropriate buttons, or by choosing the appropriate commands from the View menu.
"Single Page, Full Page" view mode
Please also open the Advanced Search pane (Ctrl+Shift+F).
Imagine that now you'd start to read or redact the document. In order to show the page in full width (which usually is best for reading or redacting text on screen), you click on the "Page Width" zoom button, or you select "Zoom -> Fit With" from the "View" menu.
"Fit With" zoom mode
The currently visible page now will be zoomed to fit exactly into PDF-XChange Editor's document pane (horizontally) -- so far so good.
However, the document is still in "Single Page" layout mode, which can make reading or scrolling awkward because of the jumps between consecutive pages. Therefore, you'll want to switch to "Continuous" page layout mode in order to have a smooth scrolling and reading experience also when changing pages.
Hence, you switch to "View -> Page Layout -> Continuous" from the menu (or by pressing the respective toolbar button).
"Continuous" page layout mode
Unfortunately, what happens now is that the zoom changes (becomes smaller), and the page you are reading is not in "Page Width" zoom anymore. This is due to the one single landscape page that is contained in the present 260 pages document (the last page). No matter where you are in the document (other than on the last page), if you want to see your current page in "Full Width" zoom mode and press the "Fit Width" button (or choose "View -> Zoom -> Fit Width" from the menu), you will never get there because the "Fit Width" zoom ratio will be calculated on the basis of the width of the widest page of the entire document (the last page in this case), instead of getting calculated based on the width of the currently visible page (which is what you wanted).
Therefore, you will now have to zoom in manually in order to get your current page shown in proper "Page Width" zoom ratio. Additionally, this can be difficult because typically, you will not end up in exact "Page Width" zoom but somewhere larger or smaller due to the zoom increments of the software. What's more, usually you'll have to center the page manually using the mouse in order to actually get the full width of the page visible and centered in the document pane (which again is what you wanted).

Second issue: Unwanted horizontal page movement

Anyway, after zooming in manually and centering the current page manually, now you are finally in (approximately) "Page Width" zoom mode, while still being in "Continuous" page layout mode -- which is what you where after in the first place.
"Fit With" and "Continuous" page layout mode
However, now you start to use "Find" or "Search" to look for occurrences for example of the word "Emma" in the present document.
Unfortunately, as soon as you start to jump to the next occurrence (and so on) of your search word, the document starts to move sideways depending on the place where the found occurrence is located in the respective line of text.

.....Context surrounding the search term occurrence is getting cut off

These two issues (issue 1: inability to easily set the zoom ratio to the width of the currently visible page when in continuous page view mode, and issue 2: pages unintentionally moving horizontally when jumping to the next occurrence of a found word) can make it really hard to work with a document because you continuously find yourself manually moving the page back to the center and/or manually changing the zoom ratio to maintain (approximately) full width view of your document.

What PDF-XChange Editor is doing here, it is a) trying to center the found search occurrence on screen vertically (which is good) -- but unfortunately b) also horizontally. The latter however is disadvantageous because it makes the page move horizontally which usually cuts off the visibility of the paragraph or line of text, such that you are continuously forced to move the page back to the center in order to be able to read the entire line, or the entire paragraph of text.

Instead, the page really only should be moved horizontally if the found occurrence is outside the visible screen area (horizontally) for some reason (which of course is never the case when in "Page Width" zoom mode). At present however, PDF-XChange Editor needlessly also moves the page horizontally if the entire text width IS visible already, a case where there really is no reason at all for horizontal movement.

This behavior also is due to the single oversize page (here: last page at the end of the document). If you delete the last page such that the current document only contains pages of the same size and orientation, the problems with both "Zoom -> Fit With" and with the unwanted horizontal movements when searching for words disappears.

Note that the document view (i.e. the page) also moves horizontally to become left-aligned inside the window every time you click on a bookmark or on a thumbnail.

Therefore, the solution for the described two issues would be firstly, to always zoom to the width of the currently visible page when in "Continuous" page layout mode (not to the width of the widest page of the entire document) when the "Fit Width" button is pressed (or when "View -> Zoom -> Fit Width" is chosen from the menu), and secondly, never (needlessly) move the document horizontally when jumping to the next found occurrence of a search word (same with bookmarks: never move the document horizontally when clicking on a bookmark, which unfortunately happens as soon as the zoom ratio is larger than "Fit Width" (try it with the present document).

Sorry for so much text -- I tried to describe the issues step-by-step such that it definitely can be reproduced.

Thanks for listening and
Keep up the great work

David.P
--

Sample e-Book 'Emma' with one XL page.pdf: (993.49 KiB) Downloaded 28 times

Post by **Will - Tracker Supp** » Tue Mar 17, 2015 5:30 pm

Hi David,

You'll be pleased to know that this was reported by another user recently and we have passed this on to the Dev. Team. So it's being looked into already

Cheers,

David.P · Post by **David.P** » Wed Mar 18, 2015 8:56 am

Ah Will, I must have missed that -- was it on the forum?

Anyway, I hope that my description still adds some detail to the problem and to possible solutions for both parts of the issue:

"fit current page into window, not the widest page of the entire document when "Fit Width" is selected; and
"do not move the document horizontally when clicking on a Search/Find occurrence, on a bookmark or on a page thumbnail".

Thank you
Best Regards
David

Wed Mar 18, 2015 10:03 am

Hi David,

Ah Will, I must have missed that -- was it on the forum?

No don't worry, you didn't miss anything here, this was something that I dealt with via email, so you wouldn't have seen it

I apologize if I should have notified you, as you can imagine, I see a lot of emails/forum topics everyday and it's quite difficult to remember who's what and which is which.

Cheers,

David.P · Post by **David.P** » Wed Mar 18, 2015 10:18 am

Ah thanks Will -- no worries

Great to see that this feature request has made it into the system.

Cheers
David

Wed Mar 18, 2015 12:20 pm

Arnold · Post by **Arnold** » Wed Mar 18, 2015 2:15 pm

I could not agree with you more David P. I often receive huge specification files with pages in different orientations. To make matters worse they throw in a bigger page size here and there. These files consist of many combined pdf files from different authors with a crazy number of bookmarks. Your explanation was spot on.

David.P · Post by **David.P** » Wed Mar 18, 2015 2:40 pm

Thanks Arnold, for your approval. Glad to see that this issue feels the same for other power users as well.

What I've found today as a workaround: I replaced the button for "Fit Width":

on my toolbar with the button for "Fit Visible":

This latter button seems to work quite well also with documents that have pages of different width. While this button's functionality does not show all of the page's white margins (which in some cases even might be advantageous), it always zooms the currently visible page to fit into the document pane. It even changes the zoom ratio accordingly, if you come across wider or less wide pages while scrolling through the document.

This however should not keep the Tracker Dev. Team from implementing the same intelligent functionality ("always calculate zoom ratio based on the currently visible page") also for the former, the "Fit Width" button.

Additionally, the problem with the unwanted sideways movements of the document when clicking on bookmarks, thumbnails or Search/Find occurrences (in documents with pages of different width) stays untouched, and therefore also should be dealt with, hopefully in one of the next upcoming versions of this great software.

Cheers
David.P

Wed Mar 18, 2015 4:31 pm

Thanks for those Kind words David!

I am glad you found a temporary work around for this. The dev team are still working to resolve the above mentioned issues and we hope to see their resolution soon.

Thanks for you both for your diligence and tips!

Cheers!

David.P · Post by **David.P** » Wed Mar 18, 2015 4:34 pm

Post by **Tracker Supp-Stefan** » Wed Mar 18, 2015 4:40 pm

Arnold · Post by **Arnold** » Wed Mar 18, 2015 8:50 pm

David P I will try using Fit Visible. I will attempt to get used to how it looks. I sure do like Fit Width. I don't think I am a power user, I just "skim" over a lot of different features and tools. You truly are a power user.

It is great software. I hope they will consider the other feature you suggested for restricting searches to certain pages. I know there are some 1,200 page documents where it would come in very useful for me also. I am lucky in that sometimes I receive the asbestos survey I need all by itself.

Only Tracker can know how much work it would take to implement it. Anything the Editor has to separate itself from the "pack" is good. I stumbled upon a comparison of Viewer/Editors where the Editor was picked 3rd. It was an old version of the Editor(2.5?), but I still took it kind of personal.

Wed Mar 18, 2015 9:21 pm

Hi Arnold,

Thanks for the kind words. I too hope to see some of those features implemented. We are at the mercy of the development team here and where they decide to direct their resources. If I am not mistaken, they are focusing most of their attention towards the Editor SDK for the next update cycle.

That being said, they are still actively working on the Editor.

Cheers, guys!

David.P · Post by **David.P** » Mon Dec 14, 2015 8:59 am

Gentlemen,

I was going to ask whether there has been any progress on this matter in the meantime -- especially on the

"do not shift the document horizontally when clicking on a Find occurrence, on a bookmark or on a page thumbnail"

part?

Best Regards
David.P

Post by **Will - Tracker Supp** » Mon Dec 14, 2015 7:31 pm

Hi David,

I've not heard anything more, I'm afraid - I'll try to get an update in the next few days, if possible, and will let you know.

Cheers,

David.P · Post by **David.P** » Tue Dec 15, 2015 11:00 am

Hello Will,

thank you for the update. I shall be glad to hear whether there are any news about this matter.

Cheers
David

Post by **Will - Tracker Supp** » Tue Dec 15, 2015 1:57 pm

Seeker45 · Post by **Seeker45** » Tue Jan 19, 2016 10:41 am

Hi,

since David pointed me to this thread, I would like to give my +1 for "It would thus be advantageous if any found occurrence of a search term is always centered vertically, not only if it is off the currently visible document part."

When stepping through the hits in the search, I need to see the full context for each hit immediately, i.e., before and after the hit. Otherwise I cannot analyse the hits effectively. I trust that this is an issue for anyone who uses the search extensively.

Cheers
Ralf

David.P · Post by **David.P** » Tue Jan 19, 2016 10:50 am

Thanks @Ralf for the approval.

This behavior can be easily tried in Firefox by searching for the word "issue" on the present page, and pressing F3. The next occurrence of the search term will (nearly) always be centered vertically.

If the Dev team should start working on this issue, it would be great if the irritating "horizontal movement of the document when clicking on a Find occurrence, on a bookmark or on a page thumbnail" could be removed as well.

Cheers
David.P

David.P · Post by **David.P** » Thu Jan 21, 2016 12:44 pm

Hello Tracker Support and Dev team,

please, could this be fixed soon-ish?

David.P wrote:it would be great if the irritating "horizontal movement of the document when clicking on a Find occurrence, on a bookmark or on a page thumbnail" could be removed

I find myself re-adjusting the horizontal position of my documents practically every single time after I click on a bookmark, a search occurrence or a thumbnail. This must be like many hundred times a day.

(Remember, the problem mostly only occurs with documents that contain pages of different orientation and/or width).

Thanks heaps already
David.P

Thu Jan 21, 2016 10:28 pm

Hi guys,

Regarding this

"fit current page into window, not the widest page of the entire document when "Fit Width" is selected;

This is not something to be fixed, but is simply the way that it works in every application that I've tested, you will see the same thing in Adobe Reader DC, for example and there isn't really any different, practical way that we can handle this.

Regarding horizontal shift during searches - I'm not seeing this here and I suspect that that is because I don't have any appropriate sample documents. Can you please upload a sample doc. that displays this, and advise on the specific term that you're searching for?

Thanks,

Peter 123 · Post by **Peter 123** » Thu Jan 21, 2016 11:24 pm

Hi Will,

Will - Tracker Supp wrote: Regarding horizontal shift during searches - I'm not seeing this here and I suspect that that is because I don't have any appropriate sample documents. Can you please upload a sample doc. that displays this, and advise on the specific term that you're searching for?

May I reply on behalf of David.P? (I hope it's o.k. for him too.)

You can find an appropriate sample document in David's posting from March 17th 2015:
https://forum.pdf-xchange.com/ ... 750#p90750

And I have to pay David a compliment for his detailed and clear description in the above posting.

I never had to do with such a problem but out of simple curiosity I downloaded the document and with the help of his instructions I could immediately reproduce the issue.

I searched for the term "Emma" and the problem concerning horizontal shift appeared for the first time during the 6th occurence of the term (= the first occurrence on page 2):

However, David, in case that the issue cannot be fixed:

Is it indispensable that you see the page exactly in full width? If you reduce the zoom by only one step with the button "Zoom Out" (that's in the sample document a zoom factor of 150% instead of approximately 200% in case of manually produced full width) you have almost the same view but the problem with the horizontal shifting is no longer so urgent: because, yes, the shift still happens but nothing of the text is cut off any longer (at least with the few occurrences I tried). But I admit that the occasional "jumping" of the pages from left to right (and vice versa) continues to be a little bit annoying for the eyes.

Here a picture of the same occurrence of "Emma" as in the above one but this time with the (smaller) zoom factor 150% (and without having centered the page manually):

David.P · Post by **David.P** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 8:22 am

Gentlemen,

thanks for your replies. I can see that the earlier document "Emma", while showing the problem to some extent as described above, is probably not ideal for the demonstration.

I will prepare another document that shows the problem more clearly. Trust me, it is a major problem -- as soon as a PDF document contains just one page (or more) which is wider than the other pages. The wider that one page, the more drastic the issue.

Cheers
David.P

Post by **Tracker Supp-Stefan** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 5:16 pm

Hello David,

When there are pages with various widths - the width of the widest page will be considered as the boundaries for the Editor, and that's why in such documents the search result could be positioned in a bit of an awkward position.
A way to avoid this would be to switch to non continuous page view mode - this way each page's own size will be the limiting factor for the horizontal boundaries, and the found string should show in a clearer way.

Regards,
Stefan

Seeker45 · Post by **Seeker45** » Tue Feb 02, 2016 12:27 pm

Hi Stefan,

Hopefully the following is reproducible on your end.

Please open the attached file, zoom 200%, 1920x1080 resolution and search for "content". You will get 6 hits. Click on the first hit shown in the list and the page will show the hit at the very bottom left . (I do not see a different behavior for continuous or single page mode.). Click on the second hit and the page will show the hit at the very top right. Click on the third hit and the page will show the hit in the left middle (that's what we want). Now click again on the second hit and the page will show the hit in the right middle (that's what we want).

Also, you will note that the positioning behavior depends on how I click through the list, even though hits 2 and 3 are on different pages. That's probably not desired, right?

Briefly: Hits displayed in the middle --> good. Hits displayed at the top or bottom hiding the text above or below, respectively --> not good

Cheers
Ralf

Post by **Tracker Supp-Stefan** » Tue Feb 02, 2016 4:27 pm

Hello Ralf,

Thanks for the sample.
I am on a 4K screen - so I got my Editor window at 1920x1200 (16:10 ratio instead of 16:9) - but still managed to see what you mean. I will bring this up for discussion tomorrow on my meeting with our developers so that we can decide how to best handle this.

Regards,
Stefan

Arnold · Post by **Arnold** » Sat Jul 21, 2018 2:34 am

Was any consideration given to David P's request in the original post of this thread? I was looking through another survey today that had 24" x 36" pages mixed in with 8.5" x 11" pages. On some files I just split the file up to make it easier, but other files such as this one have security settings that won't allow me to do that. Not the end of the world, but it would be a nice feature.

Thanks.

Timur Born · Post by **Timur Born** » Sat Jul 21, 2018 5:57 am

We had this point in another thread, too. So I give a big +1 to this.

Mon Jul 23, 2018 12:35 pm

Hello Timur and Arnold,

I am afraid that for now with continuous page mode and Fit Width - things are working only that way - the widest page is used for calculating the width, and the only workaround is to switch to e.g. single page mode, where each individual page's width will be matched to the available screen space.

I will see to bring this one up again on the next meeting and see what our devs have to say on this one.

Regards,
Stefan