I think that PDF Nomad has great potential and there’s lots about it I like. Please regard the following as constructive feedback.

Bugs:

- Tile Pages: I’ve tried to use it twice and on both occasions PDF Nomad hangs so that eventually I have to resort to force quitting it.

- Merge Pages: when I try to merge two pages, vertically or horizontally, all I get is a large blank page with no visible content.

- Export text fails to export most of the text in a .pdf’d PowerPoint presentation. Perhaps this is a demo limitation?

Questions and suggestions:

- When I click a tool, it seems to remain active until you select another one. I’d prefer a convention by which a single click on a tool selects it for one ‘action’, a double click selects it for multiple actions until deselected.

- When I create a comment, the dialogue box opens with the user field highlighted. In practice, I’ll almost never need to change this. It would make much more sense for the comment field to be highlighted so I can immediately start typing in my comment.

- Why is the first comment I create numbered ‘0’ rather than ‘1’?

- I find it difficult to work out how to move and resize objects (text boxes, etc) around the page. It would be really useful to have a pointer button to simplify this.

- When I want to create a hyperlink, I’d expect the destination dialogue box to appear automatically after I use the link tool to highlight the area I want to link.

- When I create, say, a radio button, the associated dialogue box doesn’t open automatically. If I double click it, PDF Nomad creates a second radio button on top of the one I’ve just created and want to edit.

- It would be really helpful to have a colour picker so that when trying to correct a typo against a colour background, you could quickly find the colour fill you need for the text box.

Tile Pages: I’ve tried to use it twice and on both occasions PDF Nomad hangs so that eventually I have to resort to force quitting it.

I cannot reproduce this issue. Possibly it is dependent on the file you are trying to tile? Could you possibly send us the file you are trying to tile with a description of the tile settings you are trying to apply? This might make it possible for us to reproduce the issue and try to find a fix.

Merge Pages: when I try to merge two pages, vertically or horizontally, all I get is a large blank page with no visible content.

This I can reproduce. We will look into the issue.

Export text fails to export most of the text in a .pdf’d PowerPoint presentation. Perhaps this is a demo limitation?

Trial mode has no limitation other than stamping a watermark on any generated output. Usually the reason text cannot be extracted from a PDF document is due to the way the text has been encoded. The PDF format allows a lot of freedom as to how text and fonts are encoded, and there are quite a few documents around that do not allow faithful text extraction. PDF Nomad will also not extract text from scanned pages.

When I click a tool, it seems to remain active until you select another one. I’d prefer a convention by which a single click on a tool selects it for one ‘action’, a double click selects it for multiple actions until deselected.

To exit the tool hit the escape key. Alternatively click the tool again to toggle it off.

When I create a comment, the dialogue box opens with the user field highlighted. In practice, I’ll almost never need to change this. It would make much more sense for the comment field to be highlighted so I can immediately start typing in my comment.

That certainly makes sense. I’ll put this on the list of things to consider.

Why is the first comment I create numbered ‘0’ rather than ‘1’?

This is the real index number ‘under the hood’. It is not impossible to change it to show from ‘1’ up, but we’ve never had any indication that the numbering might be confusing to users.

I find it difficult to work out how to move and resize objects (text boxes, etc) around the page. It would be really useful to have a pointer button to simplify this.

What do you mean by a “pointer button”? The cursor changes shape depending on where you hover over objects to indicate in what way it will affect it.

When I want to create a hyperlink, I’d expect the destination dialogue box to appear automatically after I use the link tool to highlight the area I want to link.

That makes sense too. The current method makes it easy to add many links one after another and then edit them afterwards, but what you suggest may be a more often desired approach.

When I create, say, a radio button, the associated dialogue box doesn’t open automatically. If I double click it, PDF Nomad creates a second radio button on top of the one I’ve just created and want to edit.

Opening the dialog straight away makes sense, as above. To avoid creating another button by clicking hit the escape key to toggle off the tool.

It would be really helpful to have a colour picker so that when trying to correct a typo against a colour background, you could quickly find the colour fill you need for the text box.

Open the color menu on the annotation toolbar and select the bottom menu item “Fill Color…”. This opens the color picker.

Thanks, Antonio. I’ll email you to document I’ve been experimenting with.

Your tip about using the Esc key to stop using a tool is really helpful. Having said that, I find that having, say, created a comment, I have to hit the Esc key twice to get to the point where I can move it to a new location on the page (this is what I had in mind in referring to the pointer button). I do feel I’m going to be making a great deal of use of the Esc key and wonder if there’s a better way?

Sorry, when I referred to the colour picker, what I was hoping for was a dropper tool that would enable me to sample the background colour for a perfect match if the page background isn’t either black or white.

Thanks and best wishes

Philip

And thanks, too, for such a quick response

That is available in the color picker. It looks like a looking glass, placed to the left of the color well. Click it, and select the color you want.

Perfect, thank you.

Philip

Both the issue with merged pages appearing blank and the issue of a hang when tiling pages have been found and fixed. The next update will incorporate the fixes.

That’s brilliant, thank you Antonio. I’m really impressed by how quickly you are responding to issues. I’ll look forward to the next update.

Philip

tatami - 22 January 2012 08:29 PM

Your tip about using the Esc key to stop using a tool is really helpful. Having said that, I find that having, say, created a comment, I have to hit the Esc key twice to get to the point where I can move it to a new location on the page (this is what I had in mind in referring to the pointer button). I do feel I’m going to be making a great deal of use of the Esc key and wonder if there’s a better way?

Yes, turns out there is. I made changes so that, starting with the next update, clicking the bar doesn’t enter sticky mode. Sticky mode is still available by double clicking, for those situations where it comes in handy. (E.g. drawing individual rectangles around words or phrases.) Seems to me the most efficient solution.

I also incorporated a few other of your suggestions. Notably, for many annotations, when you add them they will now immediately pop up the inspector.

I’m really looking forward to trying out the next version. Bring it on!

Philip