RFE: annotations for marking by teachers/lecturers: ticks (check marks) and crosses

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DIV
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RFE: annotations for marking by teachers/lecturers: ticks (check marks) and crosses

Post by DIV »

Dear Tracker staff,
you would be aware of the proliferation of online schooling since last year, although even prior to that electronic file submission (often as PDF) was common.

You may also be aware that there are some dedicated software tools/platforms out there that are designed/marketed especially for the purpose of allowing school teachers or university staff to mark students' electronic submissions.

Some teachers/staff will need a lot of functionality, which would only be available in a dedicated software product.
Others would be coerced by their institution to use the one software product purchased by the employer.
But there are surely some school teachers and university staff who don't need complicated functionality and aren't already tied down to a dedicated software product.

For this third group, by far one of the most useful additions would be an EFFICIENT way to add ticks (a.k.a. check marks) and crosses to a document. A third useful symbol would be question-mark. After which you can consider other optional symbols (exclamation mark, perhaps).

This should as-far-as-possible be a single-click process. It is awful having to navigate even through a couple of menus just to change the active annotation from tick to cross. The symbols should be right there on toolbar [sorry, "ribbon"], just like the current shapes. Size would certainly need to be configurable. Optionally colour could be configurable. Perhaps within the code they might work like stamps (not a suggestion, just a hypothetical), but even if so, they should not be stored in a drop-down menu like the current stamps (too many clicks required).

Another option to maximise efficiency might be for the user to enter "marking mode", in which left-click = tick, right-click = cross, and middle-click = question-mark. (Obviously these are for clicks within a page. Clicks on the menu bar or ribbon would still work as normal.)

Most of the other things that teaching staff might commonly need to annotate a PDF are already built in to Editor, and wouldn't need to be utilised with such rapidity as tick/cross/query.

—DIV
Last edited by DIV on Sun Mar 21, 2021 11:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
DIV
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Re: RFE: annotations for marking by teachers/lecturers: ticks (check marks) and crosses

Post by DIV »

For your interest, the level of competition is not quite as high as you might expect it to be. At least in terms of technical functionality.

You can find a number of my (constructive) criticisms of one tool at
https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=404674
under the title "Thirty things I hate about annotating submissions in the Assignment module of Gradebook in Moodle".
(Believe it or not, I have been told that this is actually one of the better [more user-friendly] alternatives among the mainstream products/tools.)

—DIV
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Re: RFE: annotations for marking by teachers/lecturers: ticks (check marks) and crosses

Post by DIV »

Note: I guess some staff would be marking on a touchscreen with a stylus, and so could/would draw the ticks & crosses in. I am thinking more of an option for those who wish to add an annotation.
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TrackerSupp-Daniel
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Re: RFE: annotations for marking by teachers/lecturers: ticks (check marks) and crosses

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hi, DIV

Unfortunately there is no way for us to offer this within checkboxes, as those fields are simply booleans (true/false) and cannot have a third value. Adobe has broken this rule to some degree using their proprietary "XFA formatting", but as we do not intend to develop our own specification breaking proprietary format, I think it is safe to say this is quite impossible to do using basic functions.

I did bring speak with the Dev team, and they offered the suggestion that, for users with knowledge of javascript, it would be possible to make a "button" field which somewhat has this effect. Though in the case of the average teacher, I think it might be expecting a bit much for all of them (outside the infotech/programming teachers) to have advanced Java Scripting knowledge. As a demonstration of how this could be done, we created this document for you:
test_multiState.pdf
(4.85 KiB) Downloaded 70 times
In essence, there is "a way" to do this, but it is not pretty, and is not something that we can offer as an official function.

Kind regards,
Dan McIntyre - Support Technician
Tracker Software Products (Canada) LTD

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DIV
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Re: RFE: annotations for marking by teachers/lecturers: ticks (check marks) and crosses

Post by DIV »

Hi, Daniel.
I'm not sure whether we might be talking of slightly different things...

I agree that getting into Javascript, or even form elements such as checkboxes, is not likely to be something that most teachers (or most users) would consider to be an easy way to approach the exercise of marking students' electronic submissions.

I don't know quite how your Stamps work — except that they show up as Comments, not as part of the page Content — but I suggested that this might be more the sort of thing that could work.

Fundamentally it may not be too important whether it's some sort of (SVG?) image like a stamp or whether it's a Unicode character, as in
✓ = U+2713
✔ = U+2714
✗ = U+2717
✘ = U+2718

If the marking idiom were to annotate with "@" for good/correct responses and "*" for poor/wrong responses, then the marker could easily and efficiently use the existing Typewriter Tool (or Text Box Tool) to type these symbols in directly from the keyboard.
But it's much harder to 'type' "" or "". It can be done, but it's currently slow and not user-friendly.
I'm not suggesting that a new technology be developed. I'm suggesting that some relatively minor (?) changes to the GUI might enable these marks to be easily added with a single mouse-click.

—DIV
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TrackerSupp-Daniel
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Re: RFE: annotations for marking by teachers/lecturers: ticks (check marks) and crosses

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hi, DIV

If that was all! Then you should take a look at our optional Stamps collections, which could be added to the Editor and selected for quick and easy placement:
https://www.pdf-xchange.com/stamp-collections

Kind regards,
Dan McIntyre - Support Technician
Tracker Software Products (Canada) LTD

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Re: RFE: annotations for marking ... — RFE: new drop-down menu item

Post by DIV »

Hi, Daniel.
Yes, that was all!

I am not sure that many people are going to stumble across the stamps collection that you provided the link to.
I suggest that in the Stamps Palette on the Add New drop-down menu you could add a new item such as "Download Free Expansion Pack" which simply loads the website in the user's browser.

Personally I am not a fan of applications doing things in the interface that the user hasn't explicitly requested (or would reasonably expect).
Therefore — even with the word "Download" within the menu item — I would suggest as a minimum an 'OK' confirmation message box with text such as "Open https://www.pdf-xchange.com/stamp-collections in your default browser?".
A more fully featured (bloated?) dialogue box could allow the user to specify which of their browsers to use to open the specific link.
(Of course, the application wouldn't need to do anything if the operating system somehow handles it.)
Confirmations can become annoying to users if attached to frequently executed tasks, but I don't envisage users clicking through that menu item regularly.


—DIV
Last edited by DIV on Sun Aug 01, 2021 1:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Willy Van Nuffel
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Re: RFE: annotations for marking by teachers/lecturers: ticks (check marks) and crosses

Post by Willy Van Nuffel »

I agree with the suggestion.

Additional stamp collections, like Checks and Marks, can be very useful for particular people not even knowing that these collections already exist and the more, that they are available 'for free'.

The new item in the Stamps palette might also be called "Download Free Stamp Collections" to be more attractive.

Kind regards.

Willy.
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Re: RFE: annotations for marking by teachers/lecturers: ticks (check marks) and crosses

Post by dasy2k1 »

I would do this with stamps too,
I check engineering documents a fair bit and do this quite a lot this way

but what the OP suggested that i fully agree with would be the ability to add a button to the toolbar/ribbon of a pre-defined stamp from your collection,

If i had 1 or 2 custom stamps i used literally all the time it would be much easier to be able to go to customise toolbars, and add a button that can be assigned to a specific stamp...


this is sort of possible at the moment by using the other stamps tool on a new toolbar that gives you a view of 1 stamp collection with 1 click selection of a suitable stamp
2021-06-24 09_37_11-New Document_ - PDF-XChange Editor.png
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TrackerSupp-Daniel
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Re: RFE: annotations for marking by teachers/lecturers: ticks (check marks) and crosses

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hi, All

Thank you for the suggestions, Though I cannot make any promises for a stamp collection download manager, it has been a topic of discussion in the past, I will be sure to bring it back up in time.
As for the placement of individual stamps on the toolbar, this one is considerably more difficult to implement due to how disconnected stamps are from the rest of the "Command Based UI" which we offer. The ability to place the "stamps palette" and focus on a certain collection may be the closest we can achieve to this at the moment.

Kind regards,
Dan McIntyre - Support Technician
Tracker Software Products (Canada) LTD

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DIV
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Re: RFE: annotations for marking by teachers/lecturers: ticks (check marks) and crosses

Post by DIV »

dasy2k1 wrote: Thu Jun 24, 2021 8:38 am this is sort of possible at the moment by using the other stamps tool on a new toolbar that gives you a view of 1 stamp collection with 1 click selection of a suitable stamp
Hi, dasy2k1.
Thanks for sharing your opinion and advice.

At first I couldn't figure out what you had done to provide one-click stamps in a new toolbar.
Not sure if we have the same version, but I think I have now figured it out, as below.

  1. Right-click the ribbon and select Customize Toolbars... from the context menu.
  2. On the Toolbars tab click New... to create a new toolbar.
  3. This newly created toolbar will be empty, so it might be hard to see on the screen. You can more easily locate it by toggling the tick (or "check mark") for that toolbar in the Customize Toolbars dialogue box.
  4. Switch to the Commands tab. In the Commands: text-entry field type stamps. Ensure that <All Commands> (N) is selected in the Categories: list, where N is some number.
  5. Select the entry labelled Stamps from the Commands: list and drag-and-drop it onto the newly created toolbar. The relevant entry is displayed with a circled question-mark icon in grey, and (also in grey) the description <No Description> and the command identifier cmd.stampsList.
Please let me know if you did something different.

—DIV
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Re: RFE: annotations for marking ... — KB instructions for portable installation

Post by DIV »

Hello, all.

Another follow-up on this.

I have installed some new stamps from the online collections. However, my installation of Editor is a 'portable' installation, so the instructions at https://www.pdf-xchange.com/knowledgebase/175-How-do-I-copy-a-custom-Stamps-Palette-for-other-users-to-use did not quite apply.

The main point of difference is the folder (directory).
For example, my portable installation is saved to
C:\Program Files (portable)\PDF-XChangeEditorPlus_9-0-351-0_Portable
I then created a Stamps subdirectory within that folder.
This could be broadly described as creating the new subdirectory in the folder containing the "EXE file" or executable for Editor.
It would be tempting to write an instruction to look for the "PDFXEdit.exe" file ...except that I have renamed my executable files too, according to the main version (e.g. PDFXEdit9.exe), because otherwise I have problems with Windows launching an older portable version when I click to open a PDF file. (This happens even when I direct Windows to the appropriate path for the new version, when specifying the updated file association through File Explorer, if the executables are identically named. I guess it's got something to do with the order in which things are added to the Windows registry.)
I presume that this should make the added stamps available to all users. I'm not sure if there's also a per-user folder for stamps in the case of portable installations, but that's not something I need anyway.

Another small detail is that a new instance of the application has to be launched before the newly added stamps will be displayed in the Stamping Tools menu.

—DIV
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Re: RFE: annotations for marking by teachers/lecturers: ticks (check marks) and crosses

Post by Tracker Supp-Stefan »

Hello DIV,

Yes - you need to restart the Editor, before it can check the stamps folder(s) and load all the collections you've placed there.
The Stamps subfolder in the portable directory will indeed make those stamps available for all users, and the per user stamps will be stored in
%Appdata%\Tracker Software\PDFXEditor\3.0\Stamps

Kind regards,
Stefan
DIV
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Re: RFE: annotations for marking by teachers/lecturers: ticks (check marks) and crosses

Post by DIV »

For the record, there's now been a button added to the Stamps Palette (I'm now on 9.4.364.0, installed on 64-bit Windows 8.1), as per a request made above.
image.png
Thanks!
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Re: RFE: annotations for marking by teachers/lecturers: ticks (check marks) and crosses

Post by Sean - Tracker »

:)
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