Workaround, please! 359 Bug: Copy and paste comments between docs can misplace sticky notes

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chrisjj
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Workaround, please! 359 Bug: Copy and paste comments between docs can misplace sticky notes

Post by chrisjj »

Can anyone suggest a workaround for the bug below? I need to copy all comments (or all types) from one doc to another of same page qty and size. Thanks.

1 Create a two-page doc with one note on each page e.g.

Image

2 CTRL+C to Copy the notes

3 Create a second two-page doc and CTRL+V to Paste.

Expected: notes on two pages
Observed: two notes on one page, both wrongly positioned:

Image

EDIT: Update: This fails to show the problem.

What does is: 3 Create a second two-page doc, click on the second page to make it current, and CTRL+V to Paste.

("3 Create a second two-page doc and CTRL+V to Paste." leaves the first page current.)

Which is a big clue to the solution! As explained in posts above, selection is critical.

EDIT: Solution below.
Last edited by chrisjj on Sun Oct 09, 2022 10:07 am, edited 2 times in total.
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David.P
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Re: Workaround, please! 395 Bug: Copy and paste comments between docs can misplace sticky notes

Post by David.P »

Make sure that before pasting your comments, (only) the page on which the first comment is located is displayed. That way it will work.
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rakunavi
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Re: Workaround, please! 395 Bug: Copy and paste comments between docs can misplace sticky notes

Post by rakunavi »

Hi chrisjj,

PDF-XChange Editor copies the comments so that their relative page relationships in the source document are preserved in the destination document. It is important to be aware of the current page number when pasting in the destination document.
Page Navitaion on Document Toolbars
Page Navitaion on Document Toolbars
CurrentPage.png (1.54 KiB) Viewed 856 times

In the above example you show, you are trying to copy comments that spans two pages in the source document. Presumably you did a Ctrl+V paste when the current page number of the destination document is the second page.

The application attempts to paste the two-page comment across the second page to the third page, but the third page does not exist, so the application has no choice but to paste the comment that would normally be pasted on the third page pasted onto the second page. Therefore, the comment that was originally pasted on the second page and the comment that was supposed to be pasted on the third page were pasted on the same page.

Therefore, even if the destination document is displayed on multiple pages, if you change the current page number to the first page, it should copy as you wish. If you try this with a sufficient number of pages, you should be able to figure it out.

I captured the copying of two pages of comments into a total of six-page document with changing the current page each time. Note that the current page number is changed each time before pasting in the video. When copying to the sixth page at the very end, you can see that the comments for the two pages are copied together on one page. This is an unavoidable behavior and I believe it is not a bug.

  • CapturedVideo.zip
    Here is a video at the verification with build 359. The latest build 364 has exactly the same results.
    (2.1 MiB) Downloaded 17 times
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rakunavi
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Re: Workaround, please! 395 Bug: Copy and paste comments between docs can misplace sticky notes

Post by Tracker Supp-Stefan »

Hello rakunavi,

Many thanks for the great post and video! I do hope this is helpful to Chris JJ.

Kind regards,
Stefan
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Re: Workaround, please! 395 Bug: Copy and paste comments between docs can misplace sticky notes

Post by chrisjj »

David.P wrote: Sat Oct 01, 2022 6:37 pm Make sure that before pasting your comments, (only) the page on which the first comment is located is displayed. That way it will work.
Taking that as "Make sure that before pasting your comments, (only) the page on which the first comment is to be located is displayed. " ...

It worked. Thanks!

That's e.g.
image.png
image.png (8.07 KiB) Viewed 745 times
orange box being the current page indicator, whereas blue indicates the selection which is ignored by this operation!

Thanks again.
Last edited by chrisjj on Sun Oct 09, 2022 10:06 am, edited 4 times in total.
chrisjj
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Re: Workaround, please! 395 Bug: Copy and paste comments between docs can misplace sticky notes

Post by chrisjj »

> It is important to be aware of the current page number when pasting in the destination document.

> Presumably you did a Ctrl+V paste when the current page number of the destination document is the second page.

I did! I've updated the report to show this.

> the application has no choice but to paste the comment that would normally be pasted on the third page pasted onto the second page.

Well, on that I disagree. It could and should tell reject the operation.

> This is an unavoidable behavior

Avoidable.

> and I believe it is not a bug.

... in the code. Agreed.

>
  • CapturedVideo.zip
Many thanks for the effort in making that video for me but in the event your words were more than enough!

Thanks again.
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David.P
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Re: Workaround, please! 395 Bug: Copy and paste comments between docs can misplace sticky notes

Post by David.P »

chrisjj wrote: Sun Oct 09, 2022 9:45 amTaking that as "Make sure that before pasting your comments, (only) the page on which the first comment is to be located is displayed."
That's it!

:)
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rakunavi
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Re: Workaround, please! 395 Bug: Copy and paste comments between docs can misplace sticky notes

Post by rakunavi »

Hi chrisjj,
chrisjj wrote: Sun Oct 09, 2022 9:58 am > the application has no choice but to paste the comment that would normally be pasted on the third page pasted onto the second page.

Well, on that I disagree. It could and should tell reject the operation.
If it involves a code change, it would of course be possible, but the decision would be based on consideration of needs. In this case, we are talking about the behavior of fitting within the document pages when pasting comments across multiple pages. In a similar topic, when pasting a comment that exceeds the page boundaries, it is copied so that it fits within the page boundaries. The design philosophy may be consistent between the two in terms of "fitting within ...". The latter is discussed in the following topic, but if I imagine Tracker Software's design philosophy from the answers, it seems difficult to do so in this case as well.

Off topic, but when you have time, I suggest you take a look at the exterior of Tracker-Software's office via Google Maps Street View. The address is publicly available and easy to find.

The more you learn about Tracker-Software's amazingly generous support and PDF-XChange Editor's amazingly rich features, the more you will probably be surprised by the small elite that you can imagine from the exterior of the office. They are undoubtedly an elite few competing with the giants of the world.

There is no end to the list of future requests, but I personally try to keep my requests to a minimum, as I know that development resources are limited and I wish for the continuous evolution of the software. Instead, I report bug reports as soon as I find them. :wink:

Best regards,
rakunavi
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Re: Workaround, please! 359 Bug: Copy and paste comments between docs can misplace sticky notes

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hello everyone!

Rakunavi, Thank you very much for bringing attention to that other thread, we do keep in mind how many users are making requests for features like this, as mentioned before, the system of "nudging" items which are out of bounds is not new and was implemented due to a large number of requests. For the time being we will not be seeing a change in this vein as Chris is requesting, but we will keep our eyes and ears out for others looking to see the same. Perhaps in the future, demand will be enough to see an option or some type of "warning" popup as Chris suggested earlier.

For the time being, I hope everyone can keep in mind Rakunavi's instructions above regarding position during paste being relative to the first object.

And yes, it is no secret that we do have very small teams and offices here. There are about 10 of us in the Canadian office (accounting for both support and development teams), 3 more on the European team, and then a handful of additional developers working remotely around the world. Some of our developers also live in Ukraine, or have family there, so while we are doing our best to keep the new features flowing, there will be some days when things are a bit slower than they used to be, particularly right now, while some of Ukraine is frequently without power, making any large changes is very difficult when you are uncertain if you will be able to commit the changes safely and in their entirety before the power/internet goes out again.

We have immense respect for our Dev team here to be able to keep up with the often-sweeping changes that are required to ensure our software stays competitive in this large market, even if we sometimes do not have the manpower to dedicate to other tasks and need to delay less critical items for longer periods of time.

Kind regards,
Dan McIntyre - Support Technician
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Re: Workaround, please! 359 Bug: Copy and paste comments between docs can misplace sticky notes

Post by chrisjj »

TrackerSupp-Daniel wrote: Tue Oct 11, 2022 5:58 pm we do keep in mind how many users are making requests for features like this
For the record, I didn't make a feature request. I reported a defect.
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Re: Workaround, please! 359 Bug: Copy and paste comments between docs can misplace sticky notes

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hello, chrisjj

Perception and opinion are curious things, what one person sees as a handy feature, another can see as a bug (and vice-versa). While your personal perception of the use case for it may be different , it is working as we intended and designed the feature.
Regardless of if your intent was to report a bug/defect, the simple fact here is that you are requesting that we change the handling which is currently functioning as intended to something else entirely. That is what makes this a feature request, instead of a bug report.

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Re: Workaround, please! 359 Bug: Copy and paste comments between docs can misplace sticky notes

Post by chrisjj »

TrackerSupp-Daniel wrote: Wed Jan 25, 2023 6:28 pm Perception and opinion are curious things
And irrelevant things in this case. As the record clearly shows. the claim I requested a feature is false.
TrackerSupp-Daniel wrote: Wed Jan 25, 2023 6:28 pmthe simple fact here is that you are requesting ...
Again false. I made no request.
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Re: Workaround, please! 359 Bug: Copy and paste comments between docs can misplace sticky notes

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hello, chrisjj
chrisjj wrote: Sun Oct 09, 2022 9:58 am > the application has no choice but to paste the comment that would normally be pasted on the third page pasted onto the second page.

Well, on that I disagree. It could and should tell reject the operation.
This, is the "request" [or suggestion] that I was speaking of, which you made in a previous post.

For the purposes of our system, only two types of reports exist, "Bug Reports", and "Feature Requests", the terms you choose to use for each matter not, nor does the intent behind the report. If a new function, or a change to a functional feature is suggested in any way shape or form, it is considered a feature request, as this was. If an issue outside of intended functioning is found and passed on to us in any way shape or form, it is a bug report.

Now, as the main topic here has concluded, I will ask that you refrain from further posts in this thread if they are not relevant, as this is not contributing to the topic at hand. If you would like I can simply remove this conversation as well.

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Re: Workaround, please! 359 Bug: Copy and paste comments between docs can misplace sticky notes

Post by MedBooster »

I would support having a more smooth copy paste mechanism for comments across multiple pages, instead of having to export and import them locally
if I get the discussion here right
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Re: Workaround, please! 359 Bug: Copy and paste comments between docs can misplace sticky notes

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hello, MedBooster

The discussion here wasn't regarding import/export, but about the handling of copy/paste functions.

Currently the intended and functional handling is that if you copy comments that span multiple pages, they are all copied with page data relative to the first page with a selected object present. When you paste the selected/focused page is where the first item is pastes, and all comments from following pages are pasted to the same relative page to that one ( IE if I copy comments from pages 1 and 3 in a document, and then look at page 5 and paste it, the comments will be pasted on page 5 and 7).

The problem that Chrisjj ran into is what happens when those relative pages don't exist. In this case, we collapse all of that content onto the final available page (using the earlier example, I copy comments from pages 1 and 3, and paste on page 5, but page 5 is the final page in the document. The comment from page 3, cannot be pasted on to the non-existent page 7, and so it snaps back up to page 5, the last page in the file.) This is the intended handling, and currently we have no plans to change it to work in any other way. Chrisjj suggested that if this happens, the editor should stop the operation and simply present an error message instead.

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Dan McIntyre - Support Technician
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Re: Workaround, please! 359 Bug: Copy and paste comments between docs can misplace sticky notes

Post by chrisjj »

TrackerSupp-Daniel wrote: Wed Jan 25, 2023 10:46 pm Currently the intended and functional handling is that if you copy comments that span multiple pages, they are all copied with page data relative to the first page with a selected object present. When you paste the selected/focused page is where the first item is pastes, and all comments from following pages are pasted to the same relative page to that one

The problem that Chrisjj ran into is what happens when those relative pages don't exist. In this case, we collapse all of that content onto the final available page (using the earlier example, I copy comments from pages 1 and 3, and paste on page 5, but page 5 is the final page in the document.
Suggestion: put that in the manual.
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Re: Workaround, please! 359 Bug: Copy and paste comments between docs can misplace sticky notes

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hello, chrisjj

I have passed this on to the technical writer for his consideration.

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