PDF-X Change Editor Plus, Text Box and font issue

[Victor Warner]

I know that Tracker Software does not officially support the use PDF-X Change Editor on OS other than Windows, but if there is a simple answer, I would like to know if the following is solvable:

1. Running PDF-X Change Editor Plus 6.0.318.1;
2. in a CrossOver (ver 15.3.1) Windows XP bottle;
3. on a Mac (macOS 10.12).

When I create a Text Box and enter text within it, I can style some or all of the text with bold, italic (and the styled text is shown as bold, italic etc as the case may be). As soon as I exit the box, e.g. by clicking outside the Text Box or pressing the escape key, all the styling is lost. This occurs regardless of the font I select. This happens with all PDFs I use.

Is there a known solution to this? Any help would be gratefully received.

[Will - Tracker Supp]

Hi Victor,

Thanks for the post - Two things that you could try would be 1) Reset your settings (Edit --> Reset Settings) and 2) Clear your system Temporary Files folder.

If neither of them helps, then there's nothing that we can do to help, as we've received no reports of this on native Windows operating systems, so it's very likely specific to your setup.

Thanks,

[Victor Warner]

Thank you for the response.

Neither suggestion helped. However the problem is more prevalent with PDFs containing scanned pages, or those created with Apple's Print to PDF function.

I installed PDF-XChange Viewer 2.5.318.1 (both portable and installable versions). These do not cause the problem.

Based on this I am not sure why the current version of PDF-XChange Editor is causing the problem, but not an earlier version.

[Will - Tracker Supp]

Hi Victor,

Thanks for the info. - The Viewer and Editor are actually two entirely different applications. The Editor was re-written from the ground-up and the two share very, very little of the same code.

Can you please send us one of these samples and we'll take a look to see if we can reproduce it here.

Thanks,

[Victor Warner]

Thank you being prepared to look at the files.

One file is the pdf as scanned ("File - without text box"), the second is the same file where I added a text box and added some text, the first word which was bold, and then exiting the box, the bold disappeared ("File - with text box").

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hello Victor,

We just ran some tests on a Virtual XP, and could not reproduce the issue.
Can you please try to reinstall the Editor and see if that will help?

We can see the "non bold" word that should be bold, but when we try to edit that text box and the problem is fixed.
An object in a PDF could have "appearance dictionary" - which tells how it should be displayed, and this can sometimes be different than the "content" of the same object or doesn't get updated properly when the content updates. It seems to be happening with your file, but it also seems to be very specific to your virtual machine. If reinstall doesn't help - do you also have a "clean" XP on which you can try to install our Editor and see if the issue will still be there (I am suspecting that the XP image you have might be causing the trouble and not our Editor).

Regards,
Stefan

[Arnold]

I see the same thing as Victor. Windows XP sp3. Please see attached files.

[Victor Warner]

Stefan,

Thank you for the update. Reinstalling does not cure the problem (I have tried several times), but just to re-iterate, I am not using a 'real' version of Windows XP but a Codeweavers CrossOver (ver 15.3.1) Windows XP bottle. I am not technical expert, but I Codeweavers is built on Wine (and is used under Linux).

I do not have a real Windows XP installation anymore (whether running on a real machine or virtually).

[Will - Tracker Supp]

Hi guys,

Arnold - We see that here too, but when adding any character (e.g. a space) to the textbox and deselecting it, the text then stays bold. Do you see the same when adding a space to the textbox, or does it still revert back?

Victor - Does Crossweavers run as a compatibility layer, similar to Wine on Linux?

Cheers,

[Victor Warner]

Will,

Crossweavers is based on Wine (version 1.8.4): https://www.codeweavers.com/about/support-wine.

[Will - Tracker Supp]

Hi Victor,

Thanks for that - That's definitely not something that we support, I'm afraid. If we're able to reproduce this on a native Windows system or VM, then we can obviously fix the issue for a later release, but otherwise we cannot help.

I'm interested to see if Arnold is able to recreate the problem on his own because, if not, that's 4 Windows XP VM's that we've failed to reproduce the problem on, so it would seem specific to your current and, unfortunately unsupported, setup.

Thanks,

[Arnold]

Just got back here to test. Yes, adding a space does cause the problem to go away. If I create a text box in a new document, the bold text seems to be fine with no problems. Seems like it might be confined to the file Victor sent in.

[Will - Tracker Supp]

Thanks for doing that Arnold, much appreciated!

Victor - I'm afraid that this really does appear specific to your setup and, as such, we cannot help. If we (or another user) are able to consistently reproduce this on a native Windows installation/VM, then we will of course look deeper and fix the problem. But for now, we've done as much as we can

Thanks,

[Victor Warner]

I believe I have found the solution to the problem I posted about here in 2016.

To recap

The issue relates to running PDF-XChange Editor under CrossOver on a Mac.

The specific problem relates to entering formatted text in Typewriter or Text Box mode. It is possible to do so (eg “Entering formatted text”). But once you exit either mode all the formatting is lost.

The solution

1. Create a new Windows 7 bottle.

2. Then install “Microsoft XML Parser (MSXML) 6.0 SP1” (from Bottle menu / Install Software into “New Bottle”).

3. “Microsoft XML Parser (MSXML) 6.0 SP1” is found under Non-Applications / Components

4. Then install PDF-XChange.

There are a lot of different Microsoft components that it is possible to install and I tried most of them, and in different combinations. But it appears only “Microsoft XML Parser (MSXML) 6.0 SP1” is necessary to retain formatting in Typewriter and Text Box mode.

This solution works in version 6.0 or 7.0 under CrossOver 17.00.

[Paul - Tracker Supp]

Thanks for the solution under Crossover. I thought the problem was using an XP bottle but you mentioned Win 7. Was that a typo or intended as Win7 under Crossover?

Regards general usage under wine we do like to support it where practical. With all the different versions of Linux and Wine it can be a bit of a minefield so we will have to decide what our official policy for this should be.

My feeling is that we should support Ubuntu LTS releases. Ubuntu seems the most common Linux I see referred to on these forums. I am going to propose we do what we can for whatever is the current LTS using the wine version from the repositories - not the latest stable from winehq.org. That way it remains consistent with the concept of LTS.

[Victor Warner]

The problem does occur under XP and also Windows 7. Only after the installation of “Microsoft XML Parser (MSXML) 6.0 SP1” does the problem go away.

I use CrossOver on a Mac, so Ubuntu is not a really an option. The version of Wine that CrossOver uses is 2.8. CrossOver now uses Windows 7 as the default bottle.

[Paul - Tracker Supp]

Thankks Victor.

Only after the installation of “Microsoft XML Parser (MSXML) 6.0 SP1” does the problem go away.

That sounds like a solution to me...