Feature Suggestion: Open PDF as read-only (non-blocking), notify on change by other applications

[chrkuhlmann]

Hi,

I'd like to suggest an option in the open file dialog and command line options to request that a file is opened as read-only, so that other applications can still modify it while it is open in PDF Editor.
XChange Editor should monitor the file and show a notification (maybe at the top of the document as is done for PDF errors etc.) if the file is changed by another application to allow a user to reload the file.
Upon selecting an editing/annotation tool the application could ask whether the user wants to switch to read/write mode.

Rationale behind this is that PDFs that are generated by other applications need to be closed each time they need to be updated. With this new mode an unnecessary close/open cycle is avoided. This behavior is present in most text editors and office applications (when using shared docs), so users should be familiar with it.

This would be a great productivity enhancement, especially with a command line option to open as read-only:
Current behavior:

1. Try to generate PDF
2. Find out it is blocked
3. Focus PDF Editor
4. find PDF tab
5. Close Tab
6. Switch to other application
7. try again to generate new version
8. switch to PDF Editor
9. Open PDF

Improvement:

1. Generate PDF
2. switch to PDF editor
3. find PDF tab
4. click reload button

Thanks for considering this idea.

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hello Chrkuhlmann,

Thank you for the suggestion, We are currently in the process of reworking how the editor accesses files (and recovers remote files that have been lost) so that it can hopefully be a bit more user friendly. We do not have a timeline on it, but I will mention this idea at our next meeting to see if it can be worked into that solution.

As for the "fetching an updated version" portion of this, it is less likely, but nonetheless still possible. Again I cannot make any guarantees, or provide any timelines however.

Kind regards,

[David.P]

I like this feature suggestion. I think it's also in some way closely related to this thread:

Rename "open" files

Hope that helps
Cheers
David

[Will - Tracker Supp]

Thanks for the input David

[chrkuhlmann]

Hi Will,

thanks for considering this feature request. I hope you can give us an update once you've had the meeting.

Regards,
Chris

[David.P]

Hello @all,

I think the present topic is also in some way closely related to the discussion about PDF Collaboration.

Cheers
David

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hello All,

We will need to do some research about how to go about notifying other users accessing the file. This is definitely something more in the realm of cloud services, which we do not offer, but we would like to be able to offer something similar if it is possible.

David, you are quite correct that this would be closely related to collaboration (and may end up as a precursor feature), however, as both functions are highly complex they will very likely not be coming any time soon. We are however certainly already discussing collaboration, as well as general utilities like this.
Conversely, renaming an open document (which has been confirmed is coming very soon), will likely cause a great deal of issues with a feature like this, as a read only file that multiple users are viewing could suddenly disappear as far as the reading instances would see. We would need to account for those possibilities in order to implement this correctly.

Kind regards,