Multiple instances of the program

daniel hofer · Post by **daniel hofer** » Mon Nov 07, 2016 10:33 pm

Hello

there is an old thread about multiple instances of a document.
I would like to have another thing: multiple instances of PDF-XChange.

I explain why:
while reading and annotating in one window I would like to use OCR in another window.
At the moment I can have two windows but if I do OCR in one the other one is blocked.

Also a very interesting thing: when I change the view from thumbnails to annotations in the sidebar in one window,
it changes the same way in the other window.
So it seems the windows are not really separate instances.

Is there a chance to use the program this way?

Thanks a lot!
Daniel

Mon Nov 07, 2016 11:38 pm

Hello daniel hofer

Thank you for the post.

while reading and annotating in one window I would like to use OCR in another window.
At the moment I can have two windows but if I do OCR in one the other one is blocked.

I am afraid this is a limitation of the Editor's inability to run in separate instances. I am afraid this is not something we can currently change.

Also a very interesting thing: when I change the view from thumbnails to annotations in the sidebar in one window,
it changes the same way in the other window.

This is a setting which can be changed under Edit> Preferences> Documents> Tabs and Windows> Setup. Turn off the "Synchronize layout of document panes across all opened documents"

I hope this helps!

daniel hofer · Post by **daniel hofer** » Mon Nov 07, 2016 11:57 pm

Hi Patrick

no problem! Thanks for the help.

Best wishes
Daniel

Tue Nov 08, 2016 12:14 am

David.P · Post by **David.P** » Tue Nov 15, 2016 2:34 pm

daniel hofer wrote: there is an old thread about multiple instances of a document.
I would like to have another thing: multiple instances of PDF-XChange.

I explain why:
while reading and annotating in one window I would like to use OCR in another window.
At the moment I can have two windows but if I do OCR in one the other one is blocked.

You could also run a copy of the portable version of the Editor alongside with the normally installed version. This way, you could OCR your document in one of the instances of the Editor, and read it in the other instance at the same time.

You even could start annotating (bookmarking, commenting etc.) the pre-OCR version, and later replace the page contents of that version with the OCR'd version using the replace pages feature the right way

:

The thread about multiple instances of the same document that you mentioned probably is this one:
New window/new tab with same document

Cheers
David.P

Post by **Will - Tracker Supp** » Tue Nov 15, 2016 3:33 pm

Thanks for that David, that's a great workaround

Willy Van Nuffel · Post by **Willy Van Nuffel** » Tue Nov 29, 2016 8:28 pm

The "New Document Window" feature seems to be implemented in the new V6.0 (build 319.0).

https://www.pdf-xchange.com/produc ... nge-editor

Now, editing of the same document in multiple separated windows seems to be possible.

David.P · Post by **David.P** » Tue Nov 29, 2016 9:00 pm

Indeed, Willy. Good find!

It seems to be no problem at all now to have as many copies of one PDF open side by side and read as well as edit all of them at the same time.

It is fantastic that this feature has made it into the program now. Thanks to the Tracker team!

There is one small glitch though that I have found

The view history is not window specific

This means when going back/forward in the view history by hitting alt+left or alt+right on the keyboard (or using the back/forward buttons), the active window can change all the time.

My strong opinion on this however is that view history always should be window specific (it is already pane specific when using the "Split Window" feature, which is great). See related discussion here.

Thanks everyone
Regards
David.P

Tue Nov 29, 2016 10:32 pm

HellO David,

Thank you for the post and kind words!

This means when going back/forward in the view history by hitting alt+left or alt+right on the keyboard (or using the back/forward buttons), the active window can change all the time.

If I am not mistaken, Vasyl is working on adding some configuration capabilities to the view history, which should allow it so be tab, or window specific.

Cheers!

Arnold · Post by **Arnold** » Tue Nov 29, 2016 11:54 pm

This is a good feature. I was under estimating how useful it could be. Thanks for adding it.

kongyiu9998 · Post by **kongyiu9998** » Wed Nov 30, 2016 12:41 am

Great to see that your team has added this useful feature to the editor! Now I can read my ebooks in just one editor without having to use my tablet. Also, I can edit in different places and save them in one copy without much effort! Thanks very much for your efforts!

Post by **Will - Tracker Supp** » Wed Nov 30, 2016 8:09 am

David.P · Post by **David.P** » Wed Nov 30, 2016 9:03 am

Hello Patrick and thank you for your friendly and informative reply!

Patrick-Tracker Supp wrote:
This means when going back/forward in the view history by hitting alt+left or alt+right on the keyboard (or using the back/forward buttons), the active window can change all the time.
If I am not mistaken, Vasyl is working on adding some configuration capabilities to the view history, which should allow it so be tab, or window specific.

Actually this capability seems to be there already! See in the version history:

Newly added feature - Added the ability to choose the type of documents navigation history: common - through all opened documents, or individual - per document (Menu/Edit/Preferences/Documents/OpenDocuments section). (T# 2691)

...and in the prefs:

But this only affects (as also the version history says) the document navigation history per document.

Since however multiple windows of the same document are treated as one document by this feature, the navigation history is not bound to any of a multitude of open windows of the same document.

This should be changed in my view, because it is distracting if you use multiple windows of the same document -- and when trying to navigate your view history, the focus suddenly and unexpectedly switches to one of the other windows of the same document.

Therefore, it would be great if some additional thought could go into this. Thereby, maybe it could be looked also into this little glitch that the history navigation still has in the latest version:

When using Alt+Left or Alt+Right you are not taken to where you came from but somewhere else

On the other hand, by reading the version history of the latest 319 build, it can be seen that incredible efforts and amounts of work must have been gone into this over the last couple of months. Kudos and Congratulations to the developer team!

Cheers
David

David.P · Post by **David.P** » Tue Jul 06, 2021 11:19 am

Hello Forum and Tracker Team,

daniel hofer wrote: ↑Mon Nov 07, 2016 10:33 pm I would like to have another thing: multiple instances of PDF-XChange.

I explain why:
while reading and annotating in one window I would like to use OCR in another window.
At the moment I can have two windows but if I do OCR in one the other one is blocked.

In the portable version of PDF-XChange Editor there is an option to allow multiple instances of the application. As in Daniel's feature request from above, this is convenient for example when text recognition is to be performed on a (large) document. You can then keep one instance busy with OCR, and continue working on other documents in another instance of PDF-XChange Editor:

image.png

Multiple instances however still do not seem to be possible with the installed version of PDF-XChange Editor, or did I miss something? If it should not possible with the installed version, I would consider switching completely to the portable version for greater convenience.

Best regards
David

Post by **TrackerSupp-Daniel** » Wed Jul 07, 2021 11:19 pm

Hi, David.P

Yes, the portable is the only way to run multiple instances of the software, and being entirely honest, when I mentioned this to the dev team to get more information on how it works, they were surprised to hear it was still present. This feature was supposed to have been removed quite a while ago due to conflict errors when closing separate instances of the application. I asked them not to remove it, as some users like yourself are finding it quite useful, but it is unlikely to see any further implementation in the installed application, because of these errors.

With that said, we are looking at methods of allowing many of the functions which cause the aforementioned "application locks", to not do so. Allowing you to continue using the software, not only in other application windows, but in all docuemnts outside of the one being processed (even other tabs in the same window).

Kind regards,

David.P · Post by **David.P** » Thu Jul 08, 2021 8:40 am

Thank you Daniel, it is great to hear that "Background OCR" might be possible in the future with the installed version.

For now, I shall continue to use the portable version for this -- or PDF Tools, of course.

Kind regards
David

Thu Jul 08, 2021 12:12 pm

dhtrvpdfe · Post by **dhtrvpdfe** » Fri Sep 03, 2021 9:06 pm

While I've been able to open multiple instances quite happily, I find that the search feature looks in all open files across instances. Since I opened the instances to create collections of similar documents I want to limit the search to all active documents in only the active window. Is there a way to achieve that?

Post by **TrackerSupp-Daniel** » Fri Sep 03, 2021 9:15 pm

Hello, dhtrvpdfe

At the moment we do not offer a window specific search, but there has been demand for this recently, and we are looking at its implementation for a future release. I cannot promise implementation or a timeline at the moment, but it is something which we are looking at and trying to find a way to offer.

Kind regards,