[suggestion] The result of the merging of pages is not at the end of the document, but at (...)  SOLVED

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Jensen Head
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[suggestion] The result of the merging of pages is not at the end of the document, but at (...)

Post by Jensen Head »

I often have to merge adjacent pages into one using the "Merge Pages" tool. It works fine, but before merging, I have to remember the page number preceding the first page of the merged pages, after merging - go to the end of the document (no matter how many pages there are), select the "Move Pages" tool, specify "Destination": = " After "(insert page number) and jumps back to where the merged page moved to continue viewing the document. It is very uncomfortable.

Please consider specifying where to insert the merged page. For example, "before the first merged page", "after the last merged page".
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Re: [suggestion] The result of the merging of pages is not at the end of the document, but at (...)

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hello, Jensen Head

Thank you for the suggestion, If you wish to quickyl merge without remembering the page numbers, you can open the thumbnails pane and select all the pages you wish to be merged (Shift+click to select a range, or Ctrl+ click for individual pages). After that is done, open the merge pages function, and you should see a "selected pages" option is highlighted:
image.png
As for exact placement. Due to the ability to specify multiple pages from various locations in the document, this may not be possible, but I will forward the request to our Dev team for consideration.
RT#5743: FR: specify output page location after merge

Kind regards,
Dan McIntyre - Support Technician
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Jensen Head
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Re: [suggestion] The result of the merging of pages is not at the end of the document, but at (...)

Post by Jensen Head »

TrackerSupp-Daniel wrote: Tue Oct 12, 2021 8:41 pmIf you wish to quickyl merge without remembering the page numbers, you can open the thumbnails pane and select all the pages you wish to be merged (Shift+click to select a range, or Ctrl+ click for individual pages). After that is done, open the merge pages function, and you should see a "selected pages" option is highlighted
I remember the page number only so that I can move the merged page to the right place.
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Re: [suggestion] The result of the merging of pages is not at the end of the document, but at (...)

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hello, Jensen Head

In that case, hopefully we can implement this as a new feature in the future, but currently I am afraid that it is simply not yet something we offer. I did create a formal feature request ticket, as you see in my post above, so hopefully that will see action in the future.

Kind regards,
Dan McIntyre - Support Technician
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PHK
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Re: [suggestion] The result of the merging of pages is not at the end of the document, but at (...)

Post by PHK »

Jensen Head wrote: Sun Oct 10, 2021 4:18 pm...
Please consider specifying where to insert the merged page. For example, "before the first merged page", "after the last merged page".
I support this suggestion.

I also want to thank you, Jensen Head, for raising this and other issues regarding the Merge-Pages function which I have just begun to appreciate as a result. These discussions have caused me to explore ways of document management that had not occured to me before. I am now starting to see the potential for broadening the layouts of some of my PDF files.

The default result of building a multi-page PDF file is a linear, seqeuntial series of pages each of which is an image of the source file. Navigating through these pages can be aided by use of Bookmarks but that is not always optimal and cumbersome files can result. For instance, take a typical file of bank statements. Those statements come to us users, usually monthly, as a package of several pages. If those pages are simply appended to one's bank statement file, you get a long string of single pages of a repetitive pattern: the statement's first page, followed that month's subsequent pages. To go from one standardized area of one month's statement to another, one has to page through several irrelevant pages to get to the page of interest. But if the user had merged all the pages of a statement month into one page, the task would be much easier. Afterall, the original statement pagination has no utility to the user once it is part of a PDF file; it just increases the clutter.

And I can imagine many more uses. If one visualizes a PDF file now as being a little bit more two-dimensional (having more width flexibility thereby reducing the height demands), new ways of document management might occur. For instance, one could create a single-page mosaic of, again say, bank statements with a single page of all one's bank statements for a single year that would be 12 rows of images deep (one for each month) and 3-7 images wide. Use of the zoom function, perhaps the magnifier might make for easier navigation than dealing with 100 single pages. Note that the Find function works well in this sort of layout whereas the Search function (which looks for pages, highlights, comments, etc.) does not.

I don't know about others, but I newly find the Merge Pages function especially intriguing.
All best,

FringePhil
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Re: [suggestion] The result of the merging of pages is not at the end of the document, but at (...)

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hello, PHK

Glad to hear you are finding some benefit from your time on our forums.

have a nice day!
Dan McIntyre - Support Technician
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Re: [suggestion] The result of the merging of pages is not at the end of the document, but at (...)

Post by PHK »

Thank you, Daniel, but you don't need to worry about how I waste my time :D . Your discussion with QuentinC below really triggered my thinking further about how to use PDF-XCE.
TrackerSupp-Daniel wrote: Wed Apr 20, 2022 6:56 pm Hello, QuentinC

This is an active decision on our part as 32-bit applications and more importantly 32-bit printer drivers cannot properly handle the reference numbers for files larger than 200 inches, there is also some relation to the history of the PDF specification in that decision. Now, very recently, PDF 2.0 has been released which, with 64-bit apps, allows for considerably larger files to exist, but as the vast majority of applications and printers in use still prioritize 32-bit software we have left this in place for now. It should also be noted that while PDF 2.0 does allow for this, most documents and application in circulation still prefer using PDF 1.9 or lower.

Bluebeam is sadly poor application to compare to, as they do not respect the PDF specification in a great many cases. They are happy to make files and features which only function properly in their own software, and do not follow any universal documentation, so others can actually damage files they have created or modified with their special features.

Until recently, even Adobe themselves only offered a 32-bit PDF application (this only changed in the past 1.5 years), whereas we have been offering 64-bit apps for well over a decade already. Because of this, though we did not have a hard physical limitation like the others did, we needed to implement an artificial restriction to ensure that files we are working with will remain compatible with all of our competition and the printers you may use. 200 inches (or 14400 points) is the 32-bit limit in this case, and will remain the limit in our software until enough of the others are 64-bit for it to be "safe" to make that change and allow items beyond this size to exist. This will likely happen when more applications start using PDF 2.0 as their default, instead of the current most popular versions, (1.7 - 1.9).

You can think of our page slicing as a reminder to you that anyone with a 32-bit app or printer will lose data if you try to send them a file that size.
Beyond that, realistically speaking, since PDF is high fidelity at any zoom level, there is no reason that pages need to be 200 inches in most situations. You can have a PDF file that is only 5 inches in each direction with a great deal of fine content, and print it to a 100 inch sheet of paper, and it will be the same quality as if you had a 100 inch PDF file and were printing in the native resolution. Simply create the file at a scaled down size (if you needed 250x250 inches, use half that instead, and "fit" the page when printing if you really need to.

Kind regards,
My "ah-ha moment" this produced was that we should think about PDFs can be compared to when Excel spreadsheets replaced Remington-Rand calculator paper tapes! It is apparent to me that the one-dimension seqeuntial conventional page PDF layout is analagous to those paper tapes whereas a single 200"x200" PDF sheet is like a more spreadsheet with two dimenstions, x and y. Sure, not necessarily useful in all applications but transformative in others. Certainly, spreadsheets have changed materially the way data is presented today and I see some scope for significant changes in the way PDF files are used, too.

Thank you, Daniel, for vectoring my thinking along these lines.
All best,

FringePhil
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[suggestion] The result of the merging of pages is not at the end of the document, but at (...)

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

:)
Dan McIntyre - Support Technician
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Re: [suggestion] The result of the merging of pages is not at the end of the document, but at (...)

Post by PHK »

Thanks, Tracker Support for fixing this! Very much appreciated!!
All best,

FringePhil
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Re: [suggestion] The result of the merging of pages is not at the end of the document, but at (...)

Post by PHK »

I notice that in Build 365 there is no longer the option box to delete the old merged pages; that is always done with no opt-out. I am not sure if I am comfortable with that. Can Support elaborate on why that was done (other than saving screen real estate)?

I'll probably get used to it this way as it is better than the having to chase the merged pages to the bottom of the stack. And I know that if I do want to keep copies of those selected pages I can copy them before the merge.
All best,

FringePhil
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Re: [suggestion] The result of the merging of pages is not at the end of the document, but at (...)

Post by Paul - Tracker Supp »

We removed that option because we doubt that it is really necessary for most of users.

We must ask, what is the practical point to keep the old pages after they merged?

The questions asked that prompted this include:
What we should do with bookmarks/links that pointing to these old pages? Should we fix their destinations to the corresponding portions on merged pages, or should we keep them as is? If we will keep them as is and user will remove that old pages later (because is no point to keep them and merged-copies in one document for a long time) - all such bookmarks/links will be broken immediately.
So that is the rationale for the change, it is indeed intentional.

regards
Best regards

Paul O'Rorke
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Re: [suggestion] The result of the merging of pages is not at the end of the document, but at (...)

Post by PHK »

Paul - Tracker Supp wrote: Tue Nov 29, 2022 11:58 pm ...
We must ask, what is the practical point to keep the old pages after they merged?
...
Uncertainty. Experimentation.

I am not always firmly committed to a merge-page set. I might want to see how a sheet of merged pages looks before I consider it final. This can be especially the case if I am pulling many non-adjacent pages together for a single sheet from vaious locations in the page stack, particularly using the forward slash key "/" with selected Bookmarks.

But this is not to say that it should be re-instated. I appreciate that it is a good idea to keep the UI as simple as possible. I can probably live without it particularly if I copy the selected pages before the merge. Or I can "undo" if I don't like the resultant sheet.

I have had one "problem" with merging pages today that I am a bit worried about but I am not ready to file a full report on it. I was trying to merge three pages out of a 16-page stack (all themselves multi-page sheets and continuously located at the bottom of the page stack) when I got this error message: "Error [PXCLib]: Invalid value or value type." I have never seen this error message before in a Merge Pages operation and the file is an "old" one to which I have added many pages over the years. It seems to be specific to this file because I have merged pages in several other files in 365 today without problems.
All best,

FringePhil
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Re: [suggestion] The result of the merging of pages is not at the end of the document, but at (...)

Post by PHK »

In the Life-Is-Too-Short category, I copied the pages and the Bookmarks from the file that was giving me the error message into a new clean file and, predictably, everything works fine. I would still like to know what created this error message but I won't be losing any sleep.
All best,

FringePhil
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Re: [suggestion] The result of the merging of pages is not at the end of the document, but at (...)

Post by Tracker Supp-Stefan »

Hello PHK,

The rationale to have the behaviour as it is now is stronger than the alternative - so we will keep things as they are, and indeed you can always use "Undo" of you are not immediately happy with the merged result.

As for the other error - likely there was something broken in the original file (say some bookmark) - that was not preventing the file from opening, but was causing the error when you try to do the merge. If you want to provide a copy of the file for us to test - we can dig a bit deeper, and maybe handle this type of error a bit better in the future. However, as you said, you have found a workaround already, so if you are happy to move on - so are we!

Kind regards,
Stefan
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Re: [suggestion] The result of the merging of pages is not at the end of the document, but at (...)

Post by PHK »

Agree.
All best,

FringePhil
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[suggestion] The result of the merging of pages is not at the end of the document, but at (...)

Post by Paul - Tracker Supp »

:)
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Re: [suggestion] The result of the merging of pages is not at the end of the document, but at (...)  SOLVED

Post by Jensen Head »

TrackerSupp-Daniel wrote: Tue Oct 12, 2021 8:41 pmRT#5743: FR: specify output page location after merge
version 9.5.365.0 release - 28-11-2022
Fixed/improved the 'Merge Pages' feature: the position of merged pages; the use of 'Select Sheets' options; retaining actions with objects. (T#6272, 6268)
Thanks for making the wish come true!
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Re: [suggestion] The result of the merging of pages is not at the end of the document, but at (...)

Post by PHK »

@Jensen Head
Jensen Head wrote: Tue Jan 31, 2023 1:18 pm
Thanks for making the wish come true!
You only just noticed? You've missed two months of operating with this new, improved modus. It is so, so much better really tidying-up the merge-pages function which I use endlessly.
All best,

FringePhil
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[suggestion] The result of the merging of pages is not at the end of the document, but at (...)

Post by Paul - Tracker Supp »

:)
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