Pop up box scaling

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AmyTaylor
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Pop up box scaling

Post by AmyTaylor »

How can I scale down the UI of the app to make UI elements appear smaller on my screen?
Specifically the comment icons and their pop up boxes, for "Sticky Note" comments.

I receive PDFs with a lot of markup commentary, but the icons cover too much area and obscure the objects.
Although I can select a single comment Icon and use the arrange tab to resize it, if I select all comments it resizes all of them overall as one large object, so if centred the outside icons move inwards.

I've tried to set the text in pop ups to be smaller but I cannot find a way to apply the default style to all pop up boxes, when I select all comments and apply nothing changes.

I've tried changing my Windows UI scaling but it can only go up from 100% which seems to make everything bigger.
I've also tried to change the App properties under Compatibility tab / High DPI scaling override to force scaling to be performed by Application.
I've also tried settings > general > High DPI... and tried each option, and restarting.
None of the above settings seem able to make the app or text appear smaller.
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Paul - Tracker Supp
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Re: Pop up box scaling

Post by Paul - Tracker Supp »

Hi Amy,

Are you speaking about the popups themselves, or the icons?
image.png
If it is the popups you can reset them, all to default position and size using the Comments Pane and a right click.
image.png
The small icons actually are dynamic and retain their visual appearance even when zooming:
StickyNotZooming.gif
does that help?
Best regards

Paul O'Rorke
Tracker Support North America
http://www.tracker-software.com
AmyTaylor
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Re: Pop up box scaling

Post by AmyTaylor »

Hi Paul, thanks for your reply.
I am referring to both the icons and the pop up boxes for Sticky Notes, and other aspects of the UI, but maybe that's for another day.

I really, REALLY don't want to reset my pop up box locations! it takes me a good 10 minutes to process all the comments and locate them adjacent to their icons or subject on the page. I forever live in fear of accidentally selecting that option and resetting them all 🙏✝ . In the images below I only have 40 comments, but normally have 60-100, and they may contain long passages of text to.

Watching your video got me thinking how the dynamic action of the comments actually contributes to my issue.
The ability to "Lock" the size of comment boxes at any particular scale of page zoom would be a good solution to my issue. So that when needed they remained constant relative to the page zoom, but can be adjusted intuitively.
Edit to add: having min/max constraints on the scaling of icons/pop ups would be super ideal. After setting the min/max zoom scale they would continue to behave dynamically as they do now, but only on either side of that constraint window, within those limits icons and pop up boxes would actually zoom in and out with the page content.

Another aspect of pop up box dynamism is that they always squeeze on to the page, often crowding the bit I'm trying to look at.
It would be more useful to me if they stay where they are placed so I can zoom in and see only those adjacent to the part of page I'm viewing. Even better, in an ideal world an "auto display mode" for the pop up boxes so they would only open when their icon is fully displayed on screen, that way only the relevant comments are shown when viewing that part of the page.

I never use Xchange on my larger screen as that is where my CAD software lives. Xchange resides on one half of my second monitor.
As a trial I opened it full screen on the 27" 2160 monitor and the UI appears at a scale that is reasonably workable. I just wish it looked like that on my second monitor where I have to use it.

So I guess a more useful question is,
how do I get the app to scale on my 24" monitor so the UI looks like it does on my 27" monitor.
Currently the only element I can easily adjust is the page zoom.

Hope that helps explain my challenges.

Thanks
Amy

Images below shows how an an A1 sheet (891mm x 594mm) with a relatively small amount of commentary appears on my screens...

... with document fitted to screen on my 27" monitor.
27full.png
... with document fitted to screen on my 24" monitor.
24full.png
... page fully zoomed out with my window at maximum size on desktop.
24max.png
... page zoomed in to subject with window at a regular size on desktop.
24regular.png
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TrackerSupp-Daniel
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Re: Pop up box scaling

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hello, AmyTaylor

My personal recommendation would be that instead of moving these items out of the way, you hide the ones you are not currently viewing, the simplest way to do this would be to select all comments, and use the "hide popup note" feature of the comment pane:
image.png
Then you can open and close the popup notes you wish to view (which will retain their original placement) as needed, without cluttering the document.

Following that, you question about the scale. We offer scaling options in the preferences (Ctrl_K) under general:
image1.png
You can also manually set the target resolution of documents you are opening from the "page display" category:
image2.png
With this option you can use one of the presets, or you can manually type a value.

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
AmyTaylor
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Re: Pop up box scaling

Post by AmyTaylor »

Hi Paul,

When I'm working with 60-100 comments, I need to see as many of them as possible so I can see what they have written in them. That is the problem I'm facing using this software. Having to open and close them individually to find the relevant comments, for every aspect of a project, is not in the slightest bit convenient. That's precisely the reason I'm asking for help with adjusting the UI so I CAN see them.

As seen in my screenshots, the issue lies with the UI not scaling correctly on my monitor, not the content of my documents.
What I would like to know is how to scale the UI within PDF-Xchange.
It displays too large on a 24" monitor, but it's fine on my 27" monitor.

WRT to your suggestion about scaling options, as I said before I have tried all of those and had no success.

As far as I can tell the page scaling doesn't affect the UI, only the document being displayed. This function might be useful for getting a document which is at 100% zoom, to display on a monitor at the correct size IRL, but it's not a solution to my issue because it has zero effect on the UI elements. Every UI element is still shown at full scale.

It may be that one of the High DPI options could resolve my problem, but they all seem to change nothing, or make the problem worse by increasing the size of UI elements.
On that basis, I feel like I need a LOW DPI option.

Perhaps I missed something obvious, if you can provide any guidance about how to use those scaling options to good effect, that would be helpful.

Many thanks

Amy
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TrackerSupp-Daniel
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Re: Pop up box scaling

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hello, AmyTaylor

Changing the "resultion" option mentioned above will result in changes to the size of the comment elements, but some items, such as the text are rendered based on the screen size, and cannot be altered in the way you wish. As an example, at the default value of 96 dpi, on my current screen, a document looks like this:
image.png
Manually reduce that down to 50dpi, and you would see this:
image1.png
That is the closest that we can offer to help make the comment contents appear smaller for this case.

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
AmyTaylor
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Re: Pop up box scaling

Post by AmyTaylor »

Hi Daniel,

I hadn't noticed I wasn't replying to Paul, so apologies for that.

I tried the page scaling again which goes to a minimum of 50, and it does make the comment icons displayed on the page less obstructive, so that is a minor improvement to visibility in that respect.
I've also adjusted the UI fonts down to the minimum of 6 which helps in the comments pane, although it has little or no impact on other UI elements where there are large icons such as in the tool palettes.

Looking at the existing options under "manage tabs and windows", and "comment options", it seems that many UI elements are able to be removed from display. On that basis it doesn't seem unreasonable to think there may be scope for additional options such as:
  • "Display comment type icon on pop up box"
  • "Hide close (X) button on comment pop ups (The middle mouse button can be used instead)"
  • "Hide all scroll bars in UI frames (The mouse scroll wheel can be used instead)"
  • "Hide scroll bars in comment pop up boxes (The mouse scroll wheel can be used instead)"
  • "Disable large icons (Only small icons are used in ribbon tabs and tool palettes)
A functionality which seems intuitive but appears absent is the ability to apply defined or default text styles to existing comments universally. If I select a comment on the page then apply a text style it has no effect on existing text, unless I open the pop-up and select all the text first. To update the text in every comment pop up I have to repeat this manual process for each and every comment.
It seems only logical to have a function available whereby a text style can be applied to all comments (selected either on a page, or via comments pane) and accessed either by right-click context menu, or the properties pane.
image.png
image(1).png
image.png
I understand there are often limitations for most software design for various reasons, so I would appreciate if you can help me to understand what the limitations are with customising the UI in respect of the above, for PDF-Xchange software.

Is there any possibility to affect any of the above functionality via coding or scripting? Such as registry editing in windows, or Java scripts? I do know some coders so could ask them to make the changes for me, if it's a possibility.

Many thanks
Amy
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TrackerSupp-Daniel
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Re: Pop up box scaling

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hello, AmyTaylor

Regarding your requests, a few of these are possible already, in particular:

~ Hide scrollbars can be accomplish with a command line option when launching the app: https://help.pdf-xchange.com/pdfxe ... ns_ed.html
~ Disable large icons would be managed from the "customize UI" menu as detailed here: https://www.pdf-xchange.com/knowle ... ns-smaller

Now, for the other two items. I can forward these to our Dev team for consideration, but I cannot promise that they will be implemented at this time.

Finally, regarding application of text style. The difficulty here is that comments themselves are a selectable object, independent of the text they contain, which has its own styles separate from text styles. As such, simply selecting the comment "container" would not allow editing or modification of the text within, directly entering the comment to select the text, which must be done one comment at a time, would be required for this task. Likewise, applying a "style" to text, in all cases within our software, will only apply to the selected segment of text, not to all text within the selected container. This means that it is necessary to use Ctrl+A or click+drag to select the text within these comments before the text style can be applied.
I am not certain that this can be changed, but I will pass the idea on to our dev team to see if they can come up with a workaround for this limitation in the future.

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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PHK
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Re: Pop up box scaling

Post by PHK »

Seems to be a perfect case for creative use of Layers. There is so much going on in the provided example. The user could create some new layers that are specific to the comment type and then move those comments to the respective layer(s). Then, manage the layers' visibility accordingly.
All best,

FringePhil
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Tracker Supp-Stefan
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Re: Pop up box scaling

Post by Tracker Supp-Stefan »

Hello PHK,

Thanks for the input! Indeed that is a good approach for the case at hand!

Kind regards,
Stefan
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