qpdfview team mailing list archive

[Adam Reichold <adamreichold@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Hello again,

Am 19.10.2013 18:33, schrieb Dmitrij Lisov:
> Hi Adam,
> 
> I apologize for my late reply. University and job were very
> demanding the last months.
> 
> So do you "approve" creating "bug requests" for the
> bellow-mentioned proposals:

First of all, the bug tracker is open to anyone. But with everyone on
a limited time budget, it is just not useful to create big
out-of-the-blue and into-the-sky wishlist bugs. Try to be as concise
and concrete as possible when creating a feature request as this will
improve the changes of it being implemented. Also it seems sensible to
agree to a strategy for continuing to develop a program instead of
just listing everything would could possibly want.

> 1. Make the annotations' text icon movable 2. An undo/redo function
> regarding annotations, triggered by Strg+Z and Strg+Y respectively

Wishlist bugs for these seem alright, but as I said, implementation
will probably depend on whether any new contributors will show up.
(Especially the second one, as while it sounds simple, implementing it
probably isn't.)

> 3. Different highlighting colours

I would not put it this way, as it is already possible to have
different highlighting colors on a per-user basis. I think what you
mean is to have the option to change various properties like color on
a per-annotation basis.

> 4: I've noticed, that it's possible to add some notes to a
> highlighted area. Isn't it redundant, since the text annotation
> function does exactly the same? Maybe the problem with the
> ellipsoid boarders would go away, if another highlighting method
> would be added? Additionally, the text within a highlighted note
> isn't shown in Adobe Reader anyway.

Redundant does not mean useless, e.g. highlight some text and also
spell out the reason for doing so. And there is one "highlight"
annotation type with the mentioned properties which won't go away
until the PDF specification changes. Supporting additional annotation
types won't change that.

> As for 6 and 7: Students and other knowledge workers would
> immensely benefit from this feature, since it's not always easy to
> remember on which page an often valuable thought was noted. The
> sidebar could show them at a glance, completely, with a reference
> to the according page. There is no need to reference to highlighted
> passages though.

I'd advise a wishlist bug as well, but try to make it concise and
describe and well-defined implementable feature, e.g. a dock with a
list of all annotations in the document which link to the
corresponding page. Interesting question is how to "list" highlight
annotations that contain no text though. (Also the side bar could
probably some day be used to hold an extended interface for working
with annotations if anybody picks it up.)

> 9: I can only speak for myself, but I'm using the highlight option
> far more than the text annotation one. Therefore the text
> annotation feature slows the highlighting process, because you have
> to select between these two, when triggering the annotations
> function. So, imho, they should be separated for usability and
> speed reasons.

At the moment, there are two opinions and no code. The most probable
result of that is that nothing will change. I'd say that this would
possibly make sense if someone took up really expanding the annotation
support, probably as a part of implementing point 1. As then, a better
way of organizing more options would be neccesary anyway.

Best regards, Adam.

> Best regards!
> 
> D
> 
> 
> 2013/9/4 Adam Reichold <adamreichold@xxxxxxxxxxx 
> <mailto:adamreichold@xxxxxxxxxxx>>
> 
> And there is the solution...
> 
> Am 04.09.2013 19:20, schrieb Adam Reichold:
>> Oh, I almost forgot one point:
> 
>> Am 04.09.2013 12:21, schrieb Adam Reichold:
>>> Hello Dmitrij,
> 
>>> Am 04.09.2013 11:56, schrieb Dmitrij Lisov:
>>>> Hello!
> 
>>>> Qpdfview is a very convenient and fast pdf viewer,
>>>> especially with the implemented annotation feature, which,
>>>> nevertheless, could be improved. Therefore I suggest the
>>>> following:
> 
>>>> 1. The annotation text icon should be moveable and
>>>> deletable. 2. The highlighted text should be deletable.
> 
>>> Making the text icon movable seems useful, but I am not I
>>> would currently find the time to do this. Maybe someone else
>>> would, so this would probably be a useful single wishlist bug
>>> report to be triaged in the bug tracker.
> 
>>> Concerning deletable annotations, they are already deletable
>>> but we had until a bug report preventing that context menu
>>> from being shown until recently. [1]
> 
>>>> 3. Ideally, there should be an undo/redo function regarding 
>>>> annotations, triggered by Strg+Z and Strg+Y respectively.
> 
>>> This also seems useful, but a rather voluminous undertaking
>>> and way beyond my current time budget. Not sure if this on a 
>>> suitable scope for a wishlist bug yet.
> 
>>>> 4. Currently, the borders of the left and right highlighted 
>>>> area are round. Please make them, so that you can highlight 
>>>> chosen passages with a vertical line. This isn't possible
>>>> now, since a vertical line will look ellipsoid.
> 
>> While this is true, I am not sure whether the problem lies in 
>> qpdfview as the capStart/capEnd/feather properties of the
>> highlight annotation in the Poppler API do not seem to be
>> respected... This *may* be a bug in Poppler's Qt frontends or it
>> could be that my usage is just wrong. Definitely something that
>> I'll continue to investigate...
> 
> ...to this problem: From the Poppler source code:
> 
> quad.capStart = true;       // unlinked quads are always capped 
> quad.capEnd = true;         // unlinked quads are always capped 
> quad.feather = 0.1;         // default feather
> 
> So since unlinked quads are supposed to always be capped, I am not 
> sure there is anything we can do about this. (There are other 
> annotation types for drawing lines and such which could be added
> to qpdfview, but again this undertaking would, well, take some time
> I am not sure I have at the moment.)
> 
> Best regards, Adam.
> 
>> Best regards, Adam.
> 
>>>> 5. It would be very useful to have different highlighting 
>>>> colours, but I think this will be difficult to implement.
> 
>>> This should already be possible in current versions: There is
>>> a setting called "Annotation color" on the behavior tab where
>>> each user that is part of a collaborating group can choose a 
>>> different color.
> 
>>> Of course another useful improvement would be an extended 
>>> annotation dialog where not just the text but also properties 
>>> like author, date and color can be changed for each annotation 
>>> individually. This seems like a useful wishlist bug to be 
>>> triaged as well.
> 
>>>> 6. There should be a sidebar (F9), that will show all 
>>>> annotations in a document. 7. Annotations should also be 
>>>> indexed and found by the search function (Strg+F) or maybe
>>>> only in the sidebar - this should be easier to implement.
> 
>>> Not sure these two a within qpdfview's scope as the project
>>> aims to keep it rather simple. (Even though we have like a
>>> gazillion settings by now... :-\)
> 
>>>> 8. That's the most important feature request: Show a save 
>>>> dialogue when closing a document, if annotations were added 
>>>> before.
> 
>>> This is already planned and will probably be tracked in the
>>> bug report [2] when/if there is any feedback there. (Or I'll
>>> just reuse the bug report after preparing the 0.4.5
>>> release...)
> 
>>>> 9. Split the annotate function into two independent functions
>>>> - highlight text and annotate - so that separate shortcuts 
>>>> could be defined.
> 
>>> I am not so sure whether the additional interface clutter is 
>>> worth the slight reduction in access time.
> 
>>>> I think, that these suggestions will hugely improve
>>>> qpdfview. Please let me know, what you are thinking of them
>>>> and if it's possible to implement them.
> 
>>>> Thanks in advance and a huge thank you for maintaining and 
>>>> improving qpdfview!
> 
>>> Best regards, Adam.
> 
>>> [1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1214526
> 
>>> [2] https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1217470
> 
> 
> 
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