Feature Request: session title

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pdfxbob
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Feature Request: session title

Post by pdfxbob »

Dear All,

whenever relying on session by means of xcesession files, it would be useful to have a default folder (directory) attached to the session as well as an informative title. Currently, the active document name is displayed in the application window handle. It would be nice to have the session title displayed next to the document title so as to have the information which session we are in.

Many thanks for your consideration.
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Tracker Supp-Stefan
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Re: Feature Request: session title

Post by Tracker Supp-Stefan »

Hello pdfxbob,

Thanks for your post, but I will need to ask a few more questions to understand your idea better.

Currently for me - when I try to save a new session to a file - that is defaulting to:
%APPDATA%\Tracker Software\PDFXEditor\3.0\CustomSessions

And yes - the default name offered is generic (PDFXChangeEditorSession.xcesession), but you can easily change that.

Then when I load that session from the file - it opens the files correctly and as expected.

Or are you trying to use the "Save Current Session" button instead?
For me with build 356 it offers a "Custom Session" as the default name, and I can once again change that:
image.png
I am not sure I understad the "it would be useful to have a default folder (directory) attached to the session as well" statement either. Can you please clarify that a bit?

Please note that those "sessions" are not exclusive. It is just a way for you to remember a list of files, and quickly reopen them later. So you could have the same file included in several sessions, and you can e.g. have a session with 2 files, and then another one with 5 files - two of which are the same as in the first session - so the first is a subset of the second. There's also no 'folder' exclusivity for sessions - you can have files from anywhere included in the same session.

Kind regards,
Stefan
pdfxbob
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Re: Feature Request: session title

Post by pdfxbob »

Dear Stefan,

many thanks for your reply and apologizes for the delay in my answering.

Maybe it is worth then here to provide a broader picture of my use of the session.

As you correctly say, the session files keeps track of a set of files and reopen them as there were displayed upon saving. Hence this makes for a very useful tool, whenever working on a particular project to save the latest "view" about it, with all files neatly organised into panes etc. (By the way, kudos to the company for such a great user interface in organising the files in such a useful and user friendly way: it's brilliant!) What I would like is the ability to then switch to another project and ultimately come back to that project as needed. The xcesession files gives us all that! Up to here it's really perfect.

However, after opening an xcessesion file (which I understand as capturing a particular view of a project), opening a new file leads by default to the last used directory (independently of the project/xcesssion file opened). What I would like to be able to do is to attach a default directory instead to the xcesession file so that opening a new file would present that attached directory by default. A good default location would be the one where the xcesession file itself lies! (This also would help whenever saving the new state to the xcesession file: no need anymore to scramble to find the location of the xcesession file: it's in that default folder opened by default when clicking on the save session button -- see also top left corner of my screenshot.)

Similarly, whenever switching between projects (by means of xcesession files then), I have no means to see from the PDF Xchange Editor view which project is actually currently open. That is, no information is displayed wherever indicating which session file had been opened:
Image
On the screenshot, the information about the title of the document in the currently selected tab is being displayed: see "New Document" next to the mention "PDF Xchange Editor". This would be an ideal place to configure an information about the xcesession file, what I call the title/name of the xcesession, which needs not be the xcession filename itself.

I understand that the xcesession files are currently just opened by PDF Xchange Editor and immediately forgotten about: that leads to the above described behaviour such as to the painful task of having to locate the corresponding xcession file upon saving, as well as to having no indication about the origin of the current view of a project, etc.

To summarize, it would be nice if the xcesession could be made more into an actual session mechanism and not merely an anonymous collection of files : )
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Tracker Supp-Stefan
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Re: Feature Request: session title

Post by Tracker Supp-Stefan »

Hello pdfxbob,

I replied in one of your other topics first, but for your use case maybe using PDF portfolios would be better?
You can have a portfolio with the main file name being the "session" you want to be aware of. You can then include other PDF files to that portfolio (they are effectively attachments to the main file), and you can then access all the files in that portfolio by just double clicking on them. You can then add files to the portfolio or remove some - and when you save the portfolio, your whole project will be saved under one file. Would that be a viable solution for your needs?

Kind regards,
Stefan
pdfxbob
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Re: Feature Request: session title

Post by pdfxbob »

Stefan,

Thank you for your suggestion.
It appears to me that it would not achieve my goal: the session we're talking about here, is a working session within PDF Xchange rather than just a collection of pdf files (I have them files organised in directories for that purpose). What I need is the ability to resume the view within PDF Xchange so that I can continue working within PDF Xchange. Those xcesession files are great with that respect, because they allow me to keep the PDF Xchange view (i.e. how pdf files are physically arranged with respect to one another in space with panes and tabs). As far as I can see, thePDF portfolio would not allow me to maintain this kind of PDF Xchange working "state".

So in a way, the xcesession files are already providing pretty much what is needed to nicely work with sessions. The suggestions I (together with the other users in the different threads) made are merely polishing the idea really (inserting a session name so as to be able to display it; note that the default directory is already defined because it's used with the "use relative path" flag; autosave is there for other types of files) so that it would, with those slight enhancements as proposed, turn it into a very powerful session mechanism.
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TrackerSupp-Daniel
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Re: Feature Request: session title

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hello, pdfxbob

Before anything, I need to mention that we do not have any plan or intentions of offering an "auto-save" function for the foreseeable future.

Outside of that, What it sounds like you are looking for is a specialized viewing mode specifically targeted at sessions. essentially, opening a session file would open all related session documents in the same window, and you could then add new files to the session with the open document "+" button within that window (and go to the "session folder" for that session automatically). Opening multiple sessions at once could open multiple windows, one for each session. Perhaps we could even offer a "save all session files, and session itself" function.

I just want to run that by you to make sure I am fully understanding your needs/wants here before I go make a feature request ticket. Is that all correct, and is there anything else that I missed?
I cannot make any promises that such a request could be implemented (and if it could, it would doubtless be a large undertaking, so I would not expect it in a short timeframe), but I do believe it should be possible.

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

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Our Web site domain and email address has changed as of 26/10/2023.
https://www.pdf-xchange.com
Support@pdf-xchange.com
pdfxbob
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Re: Feature Request: session title

Post by pdfxbob »

Hi Daniel,

What it sounds like you are looking for is a specialized viewing mode specifically targeted at sessions. essentially, opening a session file would open all related session documents in the same window, and you could then add new files to the session with the open document "+" button within that window (and go to the "session folder" for that session automatically).

Exactly! PDF Xchange Editor allows me to do all that except for the "session default folder". Instead, a latest used folder is being proposed, which is prone to error. This is especially true whenever saving the new state of a session back to the original xcesession file as one might actually inadvertently overwrite another xcesession file in that latest used folder. With the default folder, the default folder (e.g. the one where the originating xcesession file resides) would prevent errors and greatly diminish the required navigation (while still allowing to store the session to any other file in any other location if desired).

The autosaving of the session is not that important to me. The default directory would already cuts the number of clicks dramatically (be it to add new documents from that folder or to save the updated session) while practically removing errors (while saving the updated session). An alternative to the autosaving would be a command that allows to save back to the original xcesession file, thereby saving three more clicks which seems to correspond to what you call "save session itself".

Opening multiple sessions at once could open multiple windows, one for each session.

Again, exactly, even though I'm not using multiple windows myself. (I was just trying to integrate the view of another user who was apparently having a similar workflow and relied on multiple windows.)

I fully understand that no commitment can be made. I just wanted to let you know about this use case and make the corresponding feature request. I understand that not all requests can be implemented and that any addition needs to be carefully weighed.
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TrackerSupp-Daniel
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Re: Feature Request: session title

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hello, pdfxbob

Glad that I understood, I have created the ticket, and included a link to this discussion directly so that they can look our conversation over as well. Hopefully we can see this at some point in the future. For now all I can offer is the internal ticket number for tracking.

RT#5945: FR: session view mode

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

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Our Web site domain and email address has changed as of 26/10/2023.
https://www.pdf-xchange.com
Support@pdf-xchange.com
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