sumatrapdfreader / sumatrapdf

SumatraPDF reader
http://www.sumatrapdfreader.org
GNU General Public License v3.0
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How to select text use keyboard. #4116

Open soluty opened 8 months ago

soluty commented 8 months ago

i read documentation but cant find a way to select text use keyboard, pdf viewer sometimes looks like web browser, because it has no cursor by default, now web browser has plugin whick can press v to enter visual mode for selection, can this oporator done in sumatrapdf? Or any other way can copy some text in pdf without use mouse?

GitHubRulesOK commented 8 months ago

if you Control A+C you should get all the searchable text and images (there may be exclusions if outside but referenced into a page) however paint will only show the first page of a selection and Notepad may choke on a whole file so it is best to be in single page mode before select all

The issue with selecting single characters or lines is there is no basic use of tabs or other in page key navigation (page contents internally do not have to be where you think they are as there are offsets that may interfere when under the surface of a page) When text is shown on screen or in a clipboard it has been adjusted into orderly parts of lines.

I dont know if there may be some third party selectors but you could consider writing one in AutoIt or AutoHotKey

soluty commented 8 months ago

I can not write one in AutoIt or AutoHotKey if there is no api support in sumatra itself. no dde command and no command i can find in document such as SelectDown or else. The only command i can find is SelectAll.

i dont know what is the issue with selecting single characters or lines, we can select text with mouse, why
we can not select text with keyboard. the only problem i think is that there is no start point to select, because there is no keyboard cursor. but this can be solve like web browser's vim plugin's way.

GitHubRulesOK commented 8 months ago

If you spend a long time working with PDF you will come to find that the smallest sensible unit is one page (Atom) all those can be in any order within the outer carrier (PDF structure) so there is no such thing as a page break or continuity between pages.

The same goes for the components inside a "Page" it is a collection of random references much like electrons spinning around in an Atom so ILLOGICALLY all the A's could be written first then all the B's and no need to keep them in PDF charting order where a page is based on a concept of bottom left. We do darn well to be able to rapidly position all the object in a single boundary while the parts come from allover the whole file starting at the end and working backwards via file addresses.

PDF is nothing whatsoever like a WORD file or others that have a top to bottom arrangement. It was designed for Laser Beams burning drums of Apples.

In a badly written PDF the Audio Descriptor can dance about in any order but most writers and readers try to convert into some sensible human output sequence. You may notice the odd way selections can go wrong in tabular data when the writter was trying to maintain a semblance of cellular.

soluty commented 8 months ago

PDF is nothing whatsoever like a WORD file or others that have a top to bottom arrangement. i see maybe this is the main reason that let it is hard to use keyboard to walk arround document, thanks.