vpdf v amipdf

vpdf is a great addition to Amipdf, I use them both now
It would be useful to compare vpdf with Amipdf


this could be done by editing this post if you post additionaal points

VPDF Plus points
1ability to rotate pages(1)
2 able to read the PDF bank statements that you can't read with AmiPDF (1).
3 outline with thumbnails of pages
4 more than one file accessible through tab
5 different page views (1, 2 side by side, 2 below each other, 4 pages )possible
6. Rudimentaire arexx port
7. History of loaded files maintained: you can select a recently loaded file

VPDF lacking

1 saving as textfile
2 textin gadget to jump to a page by number
3 button to jump to first and last page

VPDF Not working well:
1 search results ared rectangle) are not positioned correctly
2 clipboard selection of text

Remarks
(1) both possible with AmiPDF enhancer software AEON

Quote:

1. works but is a bit buggy, grab a larger bit of text then use notpad or similar to refine your clip.

2. agreed

3 & 4. use the slider at the bottom, click left or right of the current page to move 1 page in that direction or drag the page number in the same slider or of course you could always use the thumbs to navigate...

@JosDuchIt

vpdf is ultra fast, makes a pdf readable.

@JosDuchIt
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It works, please edit your first post so to not mislead others :) Are you use os4depot release or older betas ? You just press "mark" button, then mark area you need, press "ctrl+c" (or use RMB menu "copy") and it is in clipboard. Even different languages supported (like german with umlatus, etc).

The only problem there is whole marking thing, its a bit blinking, and feels not very fluid.

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Yep, can be handy indeed.

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What Severin said, but yes, something more intuitive like buttons for will be good.

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Search results a bit buggy yep, enough to do search to end, then to begining, and search stop working for that word. But what you mean about "not positioned correctly" ?


@Severin
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Why you need to refine anything ? You just mark area you need, and be sure that its "black". Then ctrl+c and only what is black will be in clip. Sure, marking a bit unfriendly, and author know about it as i see, but i understand logic of marking quite fast : what is black after marking, that will be copied.

Even in AmiPDF the marking of text - especially with small font or multiple columns - is a little cumbersome since it's not immediately clear where the hotspot is.

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Note: Both of these are now working (fonts now ok for my bank)
with the newest version of AmiPDF delivered in the
AEON Enhancement Pack.

@Severin
I don' see what you mean "drag the page number in the same slider"

@JosDuchIt

Can you also describe more deeply what you mean by "copy to clipboard don't working well". You mean blinking of that red rectangular area when do marking ?

@kas1e
edited the comparison.
Quote:

The red rectangle is positioned e few lines below the text found

@kas1e
I missed the "mark" button,

@JosDuchIt

I for myself not very understand why there is Mark and Scroll buttons at all, as for me somehow logical to have scrolling work by default as well as marking without needs to press buttons.

ps. By that "search results ared rectangle) are not positioned correctly". You mean that when you do search, its sometime out of visibly area on 2 strings up so it looks like it didn't find anything and user need to scroll up a bit to see result ?

@kas1e
I found a new bug related to saving some MUI prefs in vpdf. Here is how to reproduce:

1. Delete or move to backup location the ENVARC:MUI/vpdf.1.prefs file if it exists.
2. Open vpdf and select the Settings/MUI menu.
3. Go to the MUI "Screen" settings and select the "frontmost public screen" option.
4. Save the MUI prefs and quit vpdf.
5. Open vpdf by double-clicking the icon and select the "Project/Open FIle..." menu.
6. Nothing happens. No requester opens. You can't load a PDF file.

I noticed this when testing if I could make vpdf my default PDF viewer. Since I can open PDFs from my Dopus4 screen and Internect screen, I needed to have vpdf open on the sereen where I was working. Until this problem is fixed, I'll have to leave AmiPDF as my default PSF reader.

I also noticed in Snoopy that when the "Open FIle..." menu is selected vpdf looks for the file: "Catalogs/english/sys/libs.catalog". It doesn't hurt anything if it fails but it's strange that it's looking for it.

@kas1e
The search works fine, the red rectangle always appears but is positioned too low. (some 4, 5 lines)

@JosDuchIt

Drag the |page xx| gadget in tyhe long slider to jump to any desired page, clicking either side of it in the slider 'area' give next or previous page options.

@Severin

yes ok i see what you meant

i was aware of this. dragging possibility.

Also clicking in the slider lets you jump to next or previous page. That is as good as a next or previous button

Dragging the slider completely to left ot right gives you a "first" & "last" page possibility, which i like a bit less. than corresponding button buttons.


Typing in the desired page number in a textin gadget as in AMiPDF is really usefull if you are studying a large pdf document.
AmiPDF has also a back button that works well together with this direct pagenumber jump possibility


Neither VPDF nor AmiPDF has an arexx port. This is not Amigalike and would be very usefull for prepring a giving presentations., adding a gui.

In their present states dding a decent port will be somewhat less work for AmiPDF than for VPDF

In this evaluation & comparison we should also remember Ghostscript possivnities where you can switch pages from the shell; Here too you can add a gui (eg written in Gui4Cli - i think i did this some years ago before starting to use AmiPDF)

=== Some more general considerations

I use my Amiga OS4 machine mainly for gathering information, studying, organizing my thoughts and editing webpages.and programming , mainly in Gui4Cli or in C to maintain Gui4Cli

The Amiga is still a very good "learning & info organizing machine" thanks to pdf support . As we don't have pdf editing possibilities I will (very often) save the pdf document as text, work on the text , add html formatting tags and save it with links to internet files, to local iles

Odyssey is part of this,it has excellent html 5 & canvas support:you can have graphical and mathematical representations in your pages, and you have javascript programming support built in .
With online libraries (eg mathjax) you are able to produce Latex pages with nice mathematical constructs.

What i really miss and what wouldn't be a big deal to add to the OS is automatic indexing of text pages, so that local searches would be as usefull as say google searches. I

@JosDuchIt
As i see in VPDF source code:




And there is relevant part, to see what is aleady implemented:



In other words, REXX_OPEN should work already, all others didn't implemented.

@JosDuchIt
Just tested right now: it works. Through a bit unlogical:

To open file in the same current tab:
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To open file in newtab:
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Probably "NEWTAB" should be just replaced in code for "CURRENTTAB", and then all will be logical.

@kas1e

The 'newtab' logic is inverted

should be

(newtab == FALSE)? MUIV_VPDFWindow_OpenFile_CurrentTab : MUIV_VPDFWindow_OpenFile_CurrentTabIfEmpty

@broadblues

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Egad! Please don't use conditional equalities with Booleans! It might not matter with "FALSE", which is defined in the C Spec as zero, but if you say "(something == TRUE)", you are asking for trouble when "something" is not exactly equal to unity.

@kas1e
Great,
If jumping to a geven page number can be added to the arexx port that would-be be splendid