Touch/tablet support

[mibrown7]

I use PDF-XChange as part of a corporate license and find it indispensible for reviewing and marking up documents. I would like to make greater use of touch and pen capabilities, such as available on Microsoft Surface device. I have noted previous post threads in the forum regarding smoothing with the pencil tool and accompanying assurances that Tracker is developing new generation interface for pen devices based on updated PDF standards. The last note in this regard seems to date back to last summer.

I would like to weigh in as an avid user that would very much like to see enhanced touch/pen functionality. Current constraints include the lack of differentiation between touch and pen. It would be greatly helpful to be able to scroll with a finger, but use pencil or highlight tool with the stylus without having to change tool selection in the ribbon. Automatic recognition of the erase tool at the back end of the stylus would also be a plus. Could the click buttons on the pen be custom-programmable to select certain in-software tools, such as pencil, highlight, screen capture, etc?

It would also help to be able to select stylus functions within the full screen mode. This could be done by pop-up menu triggered by touch/pen/mouse-over action or by stylus buttons. Right now the full screen mode seems to be usful ONLY for reading, with no ability to highlight or comment.

I have other pdf software with the desired functionality for pen/touch (such as PDF Annotator), but I prefer Tracker's implementation of most other pdf functionality, including comments and summarizing of comments, print to pdf, . an upgrade of touch/pen interface would be a huge step forward and allow me to be even more productive.

Thanks for your consideration. Love the product.

-Mike

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hello mibrown7,

Thank you for the detailed post, Some of these issues should already be resolved, so I am curious to see if what I have below helps you.

Regatrding the smoothing issue you mentioned, while there is not a UI option yet, you can modify this with a registry key, please see this article for the registry key in queston and more information.

The Editor is able to distinguish differences between touch and advanced pens, such as those that come included with the Surface tablets, and most other modern 2in1 machines. This does not however work with standard capacitive touch pens that you can purchase for just a few dollars at any computer store. You can enable this function from the Editor preferences (Ctrl+K) under Commenting:

The eraser end of many styluses should be recognised automatically as well (assuming that they offer eraser functionality), if they are not, please ensure that you are using the latest build of the Editor (8.0.330.0) and try once again.

You can setup custom hotkeys for any desired function, and these should be able to be bound to buttons on your stylus, assuming that the stylus has been configured to allow this. You will likely need to bind key combinations to each button, such as Ctrl+C to copy. simply choosing a set that is not bound would allow you to set this to a custom function in the editor. Please see the bottom of this article for more information.

Currently full screen mode is intended only for viewing and presentations, however, you can still select most tools by using the respective keybindings while in fullscreen mode. We do have an active feature request on this matter to allow toolbars and the like to have a presence in fullscreen mode.

Thank you very much for the kind words, and your continued loyalty.

All the best,

[mibrown7]

Daniel,

Thank you for your prompt and kind response. I have learned that a few of the items do work as you've suggested. For example, I have sucessfully applied the registry modification for smoothing (much better), and I have found the "eraser" to function in conjunction with the pencil tool. I also like the "exclusive mode" that allows annotations to overlap (picked up from another forum post).

"The Editor is able to distinguish differences between touch and advanced pens, such as those that come included with the Surface tablets, and most other modern 2in1 machines. You can enable this function from the Editor preferences (Ctrl+K) under Commenting"

I am using a Surface Pro 4 stylus on a Surface Pro 3 tablet PC (they are compatible; the v.4 stylus is more precise than original v.3). I did discover the PDF-XChange setting you identified that switches to pencil tool automatically when the stylus is used. Unfortunately, the functionality I seek is to be able to independently set the stylus to one of several tools (especially highlight, but also underline, strikethrough, or pencil) and have it maintain that function while being able to use my finger to simply scroll the page. The setting you've suggested only permits pencil tool for the stylus. When not using this setting, all tools apply both to both stylus or finger touch if selected. Thus at present I have to keep switching between the hand and highlight tools, for example. The functionality I am seeking would assign touch and stylus functions independently. One idea is to have a setting similar to what you've shown for stylus/pencil, but limits the touch function to the "hand" feature for navigation.

While I'm thinking of it, let me also voice support (seen in a prior post by others) for an option to turn off the vertical scroll bar, or move it to the left edge of the screen. As a right-hander, I frequently "bump" the scroll bar while using the stylus and the page jumps.

"You can setup custom hotkeys for any desired function, and these should be able to be bound to buttons on your stylus, assuming that the stylus has been configured to allow this."

I am not yet familiar with how to map individual commands to the stylus buttons on the Microsoft Surface Pen. With Windows 10 settings configurations, the buttons can be assigned, but typically to a limited predetermined list, such as to open an application, not to execute explicit in-program commands. Perhaps I can investigate this further. I realize that hot-key keyboard combinations can be used, but in portrait tablet mode, it is not convenient to have the keyboard attached and active. I am attempting to use with touch, stylus, and occasional on-screen keyboard for review purposes.

"Please see the bottom of this article for more information."

I very much appreciate the flexibility built into PDF-XChange to customize ribbons and toolbars. I have developed a specific ribbon with the most-used features with large buttons for touch use. It helps considerably.

"We do have an active feature request on this matter to allow toolbars and the like to have a presence in fullscreen mode."
That is good news...let me just register a "vote" in support of that feature and I look forward to it.

Thanks again for your consideration.

-Mike

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hello mibrown,

Glad to hear I was able to be of some assistance.

the functionality I seek is to be able to independently set the stylus to one of several tools (especially highlight, but also underline, strikethrough, or pencil) and have it maintain that function while being able to use my finger to simply scroll the page.

The "switch to pencil with digitizer" function that I mentioned before should remember the last tool used by you finger, so that if you select for example the highlighter tool, with your finger, it will switch between the pencil (stylus) and highlighter (finger) from then on. Unfortunately we have not yet implemented a function for the stylus to be handled similarly yet.

While I'm thinking of it, let me also voice support (seen in a prior post by others) for an option to turn off the vertical scroll bar, or move it to the left edge of the screen. As a right-hander, I frequently "bump" the scroll bar while using the stylus and the page jumps.

While I can bring this up at a meeting, it is unlikely to gain much traction as offering the ability hide scrollbars would bring with it its own set of issues that would be difficult to circumvent, and most tablets that offer touch capabilities, such as your surface, have an option to "ignore touch input when I'm using my pen", this option can be found in the windows ink & stylus menu.

I will be certain to note your support of the fullscreen toolbars feature request. Unfortunately I should advise that it is currently a low priority development ticket, but the more traction it gains, the sooner we will see it.

Kind regards,

[Daniel1234]

Hi,

First of all, I would like to congratulate you to a great software.

The only feature I am desperately missing is to select a tool for highlighting with the pen (stylus) while still being able to use touch for scrolling. I presume this is a very common task for everyone working with text and a pen.

Currently, it is actually possible to scroll with touch and use the highlighting with the pen by not selecting that the pen automatically switches to the pencil and selecting highlighting from the tools. Then one can actually scroll with two fingers. This is partly satisfying and maybe something to partly satisfy the needs of the person from the person of original post.

However, this workaround is quite frustrating at times because the difference between one finger and two finder touch is not always perfectly recognized and hence text gets highlighted instead of the page scrolled.

There seem to be two ways in which a good pen/touch function could be implemented. For example, there could be a setting, e.g. in the toolbar, to not use tools with touch but only for scrolling.

This is how Microsoft Edge designed its PDF editor pen/touch function which I take to be a main competitor with a lot of resources to figure out what works right for people. It is actually the only reason I am still using Edge from time to time though I use it for working with PDF's only. But it is buggy at many ends, so I guess there should be plenty of people desperately looking for an alternative. Actually, since Microsoft is rebuilding their browser on Chrome this might be quite an opportunity for Tracker Software to fill the resulting gap with a good tool for pen and touch input.

The second would be, to select a tool to be used by pen as TrackerSupp-Daniel suggested. This also seems to be indicated by the current settings which allow for setting a specific tool (though this is limited to pencil only). However, I think that the first option is superior to the second.

Finally, the "eraser" (which actually works by default by using the pen's other side, great!) should work not only to remove pencil but any kind of annotation, most importantly highlighting.

I hope to see some improvements soon!

Kind regard,
Daniel

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hello Daniel, Great name, I love it!

Im glad to see your enthusiasm for the software, and Im sure you will be happy to see our future developments. I cannot promise when exactly, but as I mentioned before, we are looking at different ways of implementing some similar handling to what you have requested here.

Fun fact: Two finger scrolling is actually an unintended side effect of Pinch zooming. We are definitely looking to refine our touch scrolling functionality, hopefully to include panes and other similar windows as well in the future.

Kind regards,

[mibrown7]

Tracker folks should be commended for their responsiveness to this forum and efforts to continually improve. The more I use it, the more versatility I discover.
I look forward to the updates; sounds intriguing.

Thank you, Daniel

-Mike

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

[danjelk]

Hello

Now I have bought the latest version 10 of the program. Do I understand correctly that the touch/pencil function is still not integrated?

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hello danjelk,

Welcome to our forums.
Can you please let us know what is your device - and please also share in a few more details what issues exactly are you experiencing with it and the latest Editor when you try to use your touch on that device?

Kind regards,
Stefan

[danjelk]

Hello

I use a ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 7 and i have a Lenovo Precision Pen 2.
My Version of XChange Editor is 10.2.1 build 385.
So if i use the Pen its like i use my Finger or Mouse.
For example in Office Word,OneNote... recogice automaticly the Pen and i can use it like a Pen and if i use my finger, its recognice is my finger and i can scrol and zoom...
In XChange i need to switch manualy to the pen and also again back to the mouse. It would be a realy good feature in XChange Editor it would works like in the Office Apps. It doesnt exist at the moment ah PDF Reader who can do this and i will change to this Programm who will have this feauter at first. Because i use it dayli in my Work in Meetings and its realy helpful if the programm switch automaticly fast like office.

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hello, danjelk

Just to confirm have you tried enableing this option:

The name has changed since this function was implemented, but it should work in any case where windows has properly flagged the input device as a stylus device, instead of a mouse.

It is worth noting that this function does only work with the pencil/hand tools. if you change to other tools, at the moment it will change to that tool for both finger touch and the stylus.

Kind regards,

[danjelk]

hello
Thank you very much! So embarrassing that I didn't find this myself. It makes my everyday life at work much easier. Maybe it's good if this is set by default in the next version? Many employees and also customers here work with this program and nobody knows about it and is annoyed by it, although this feature exists.

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hello danjelk,

I will check with our devs and ask them to review your above suggestion, however I can't make any promises that it would actually be approved or implemented.

Kind regards,
Stefan

[PHK]

For what it's worth, I use a Wacom Intuos Pro touchpad, mostly in stylus-only mode, and I haven't had much to complain about.

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]