2 Bookmarks on the Same Page - Highlight Effect Fails

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standish-001
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2 Bookmarks on the Same Page - Highlight Effect Fails

Post by standish-001 »

Hi,

So, on the same page I have two sections. For example:

Major Theories

Implications


Sad thing about all this is that, due to the minimal formatting of the original document, the Bookmark Pane's Bookmarks - and HIGHLIGHTING of the bookmarks that show "You're in this section right now!" - are the main way I am able to navigate this long text.

Here's the anomaly: seems like, if a single page has two bookmarks then...as you drift down the page either the first bookmark will get highlighted in the Bookmarks Pane, or the second. But, not both.

So that, skimming down the page and paying attention to the Bookmarks Pane to see when I'm in the next section, the display is not accurate.

For example, I could go to Section A on page 1, pass through Section B on page 1 and be well into Section C on page 2 before the highlight around the bookmarks update. And, then the highlight only shows up around the Section C, page 2 bookmark - having ignored Section B on page 1 entirely.

Put another way - when there are two bookmarks on a page, the highlighting of when you're IN a section seems to fail.

What do you think is happening?

Sincerely,

SW
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Re: 2 Bookmarks on the Same Page - Highlight Effect Fails

Post by Dimitar - Tracker Supp »

Hello SW,

Could you please send us a document with which you have this issue?

I'm asking you this because it seems that I cannot reproduce the issue at my end.

Regards.
igorlima
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Re: 2 Bookmarks on the Same Page - Highlight Effect Fails

Post by igorlima »

Good night!

I see what SW is saying because I face this issue too. I think that the way the highlight feature works (only highlighting one bookmark per turn) doesn't handle very well when there is more than one bookmark that shares partially or totally the same location in page.

For example, as SW said, the highlight can skip a bookmark that totally or partially shares the same "page location" of another bookmark when scrolling through pages since it can only highlight one bookmark at once.

I think that if It was possible for the highlight to point at more than one bookmark at the same time, this issue would be solved and I think it would improve the efficiency of navigating pages and looking at the bookmark pane.

Please see the gif bellow. See how the highlight skip the bookmark "Art. 16..." as I scroll through the page. It's a issue I see a lot when working with bookmarks.

GIF.gif

thanks for the attention!
Igor
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TrackerSupp-Daniel
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Re: 2 Bookmarks on the Same Page - Highlight Effect Fails

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hello, igorlima

Thank you for the Gif, although I understand the explanation, I can currently only say that this is the expected handling. The bookmarks pane considers you to be "in" the current bookmark until you pass the next bookmarks page location, so in the case of your gif, I would expect if you very slowly scroll down, you would in fact light up the 16 section for a brief moment once the top left corner of the display area is in the correct position. In your example, you jump from a bit above the 16 mark, to almost touching the 17 mark. The slight change in proximity to the text is likely the notable different here.

Now, all that being said, I do understand the frustration, so while I cannot make a bug report about this (being the intended handling) I have explained the issue in a formal Feature request, to offer an option to highlight all bookmarks which are "visible" at a given moment:
RT#5849: FR: highlight ALL visible bookmarks in bookmarks pane.

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

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standish-001
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Re: 2 Bookmarks on the Same Page - Highlight Effect Fails

Post by standish-001 »

Hi,

Yes! @igolima has illustrated the exact thing I'm discussing.

Daniel you wrote:
so in the case of your gif, I would expect if you very slowly scroll down, you would in fact light up the 16 section for a brief moment once the top left corner of the display area is in the correct position. In your example, you jump from a bit above the 16 mark, to almost touching the 17 mark.
I can confirm that, while Igor's bookmarks may be quite close, in the example I made the two bookmarks couldn't be further apart - literally one at the top of the page, the other nearly at the bottom.

From my tests, more than one bookmark on the same page seem to blow up the bookmark highlighting.
I cannot make a bug report about this (being the intended handling)
Seems like it would be VERY safe to call this a bug. Seems inappropriate to call this intended handling.

How do you see things?

Sincerely,

SW
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David.P
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Re: 2 Bookmarks on the Same Page - Highlight Effect Fails

Post by David.P »

Hi all,

without having verified this, the present problem could be due to the these two bookmarks both possibly having the same Y-coordinate (or no Y-coordinate at all, thus only a page number, in this case the same page number), see also the related, recent discussion here:
https://forum.pdf-xchange.com/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=37714&hilit=xyz#p155738

Image
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Re: 2 Bookmarks on the Same Page - Highlight Effect Fails

Post by igorlima »

Hi all!

I understand that my exemple wasn't a good one to illustrate this issue because the two bookmarks were indeed really close to each other and the scroll I made wasn't a really small one.

But, for example, sometimes the highlight indicates a bookmark that is not in the page view anymore. Other times the highlight jumps to the next bookmark when the view of the page is still almost completely in the previous "bookmark area".

For instance, I'd like to know if its possible to only let the highlight jump to the next bookmark when all the text from the previous bookmark is not in the page view anymore. To do that, I tried to bookmark the next topic in the top of the page to be the "first thing" we see in the page. But when I'm scrolling as soon is the topic appears in the bottom the highlight jumps to this topic, even though there's a lot of text from the previous bookmark showing in the view of the page.

When those things happens I get confused on how this highlight bookmark feature works and I start questing myself if I'm adding bookmark the wrong or the less efficient way. Please, if there is any good way or specific rules on adding bookmark, like a position in the page view that they should be or a specific configuration, let me know.

And I feel too that this is more of a limitation of the highlight bookmarks feature than a bug. I understand that this is the what is indeed supposed to do.

But, as I think we are all agreeing here, the way that the highlight works now can cause those frustrations when you have some bookmarks disposed in an certain way. Unfortunately, I fell that this "way" happens a good amount of times for me, as I really cherish the bookmark feature and use a lot.

Considering that I already think the bookmark feature is really good in PDF X-CHANGE and its essentiality on navigating through ruge documents with no images and a lot of topics and subtopics bookmarked, I really wish that this "highlight bookmark feature" could indicate multiple bookmarks at once if they share totally or partially the same page location.

Saying that, I thank you a lot Daniel for anticipating my request and already making a ticket for that (RT#5849: FR: highlight ALL visible bookmarks in bookmarks pane).

Please see the video bellow. I tried to make the bookmarks with more distance from each other but maintaining them in the same page. I tried to scroll using the "hand" to be as slow as I could too. I tried to add the bookmarks with different page location views too. Most of the time the highlight ignored one bookmark. The quality of the video begins poorly because I had to compress but a few seconds in it gets better. I atteched the pdf I used to make this video too.
20211207_145939.rar
(3.01 MiB) Downloaded 34 times
1.pdf
(56.64 KiB) Downloaded 26 times
Hope I could be clear with what I'm trying to say, I confess that for me this is not a easy issue to write about and show what I feel when I see this happening, sorry if I talked in a roundabout way. Either way, although having in mind I don't know the complexity and the interest of the tracker team on that feature request, I think that if it was possible for the highlight to indicate more than one bookmark at the same time, this whole issue could be solved.

Thank you for the attention!
Last edited by igorlima on Tue Dec 07, 2021 6:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Igor
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igorlima
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Re: 2 Bookmarks on the Same Page - Highlight Effect Fails

Post by igorlima »

David.P wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 10:47 am Hi all,

without having verified this, the present problem could be due to the these two bookmarks both possibly having the same Y-coordinate (or no Y-coordinate at all, thus only a page number, in this case the same page number), see also the related, recent discussion here:
https://forum.pdf-xchange.com/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=37714&hilit=xyz#p155738

Image
Thank you for this, David! Didn't see this thread yet. Will take a look a it. About those Y coordinates, I tried to add the bookmarks there too and changing those settings for the bookmarks, but I wasn't successful :(
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Re: 2 Bookmarks on the Same Page - Highlight Effect Fails

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hello everyone,

I am writing this post as I read the above items, but I want to try and address some of these items.
standish-001 wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 7:44 am I can confirm that, while Igor's bookmarks may be quite close, in the example I made the two bookmarks couldn't be further apart - literally one at the top of the page, the other nearly at the bottom
In this particular case, it would make sense for the bookmark at the top of the page to be the one shown, once you progress to the next page, either the bookmark from the bottom of the previous page, or the one from the top of the next page should be shown. If there is a bookmark at the top and bottom of every page, It is entirely expected that the one at the bottom will be skipped, if you do not line up the viewing area perfectly to have the last sliver of the page where this "page end" bookmark actually starts.
standish-001 wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 7:44 am more than one bookmark on the same page seem to blow up the bookmark highlighting
This somewhat ties into what was said above, the position of the bookmarks is key, we highlight the "current" mark, based on the top left corner of the current display area. If you have two bookmarks on a page, and one is higher up, or further left than the other, that one will be shown until you scroll past the second one.
Again, this is indeed the intended handling, it is difficult, if not outright impossible to determine where you are "looking" on the page, so we need a single point that is always referred to for this case. That single point is used to calculate the current bookmark being viewed, and that relative bookmark is highlighted. This is also why I created the feature request, as was mentioned earlier, multiple bookmarks may be visible in the page area, and in cases like this, since the intended handling struggles to offer a properly concise solution, it would be best to simply show all results within the viewing area bounds.
igorlima wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 6:47 pm understand that my exemple wasn't a good one to illustrate this issue because the two bookmarks were indeed really close to each other and the scroll I made wasn't a really small one
I actually think your gif was excellent to showcase both the issue that was being seen, as well as my point that it is working as intended here.
igorlima wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 6:47 pm For instance, I'd like to know if its possible to only let the highlight jump to the next bookmark when all the text from the previous bookmark is not in the page view anymore
That would not be possible, as many documents have bookmarks without text content in them, perhaps having one large image with a few bookmarks in different areas of the image. With the image example I made here, even if you tried to simplify this to "content items" after the bookmark, you would encounter the same issue as you are now, so the page position really is the only viable option.
igorlima wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 6:47 pm When those things happens I get confused on how this highlight bookmark feature works and I start questing myself if I'm adding bookmark the wrong or the less efficient way. Please, if there is any good way or specific rules on adding bookmark, like a position in the page view that they should be or a specific configuration, let me know.
As ive mentioned above, these items are based on the top left corner of the view area. In many cases, this includes creating a bookmark from page text, so for example, referencing your document and video, If you zoom out so the whole page is visible, and then create all 3 bookmarks without scrolling at all, the "position" of the bookmarks is most like the same for all three, only taking the text that you have selected as the bookmark "name".
Also like above, you are scrolling from one section to another. In the second part of your video, you create the bookmarks by scrolling through the document and positioning the 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3, each in the top left corner, this is correct. But then you click and drag to scroll, without stopping. This not stopping is the problem. We do not dynamically check your position at every single frame of movement to update the panes with features like this. If you release the mouse inside the 1.2 section here, the bookmarks pane will properly reflect where you are, but in you example, you mostly scrolled to have the 1.1 or 1.3 category in focus, overlooking 1.2 entirely.
igorlima wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 6:47 pm Hope I could be clear with what I'm trying to say, I confess that for me this is not a easy issue to write about and show what I feel when I see this happening, sorry if I talked in a roundabout way. Either way, although having in mind I don't know the complexity and the interest of the tracker team on that feature request, I think that if it was possible for the highlight to indicate more than one bookmark at the same time, this whole issue could be solved.
Indeed, it was made quite clear, I also hope that others can review this conversation and understand why I too am saying, that, as problematic as it is, this is indeed functioning as intended, and not something which really has much leeway to change. A new feature to show all that are visible on the other hand, is much more possible, and likely the best solution for all problems here.

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

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