Tweet
I need to be able to navigate between many open PDFs in PhantomPDF on Windows, and so far I can't find an efficient way to do so. Here's my use-case:
1. I have to refer to a lot of technical documents that need to be open all at once, and where I need to have several visible at once. I have a large 4k monitor, plus two additional monitors, so literally several PDFs are open full-page and visible at once.
2. Because I need several visible at once, I have Settings > Documents >Allow multiple instances enabled. I make considerable use of the ability to drag tabs from one PhantomPDF window to another. [But see later message. Apparently you can only drag tabs between windows that originated within one instance.]
I have have 10 PhantomPDF windows open at once, each with two to 10 PDFs open.
So far, so good. Nice job, PhantomPDF. But...
3. Now, I need to somehow find and show the already-open document named ABC.pdf that is not currently showing. How do I do that?
Here's what doesn't work:
a. The Windows Taskbar shows the 10 instances of PhantomPDF that are open, and displays the names of the docs that are in the selected tabs of each window. But unless ABC.pdf happens to be the selected tab of its window, the Taskbar doesn't show it.
b. The Recent Documents listing (shown when clicking on PhantomPDF's File menu) seems pretty much useless for this or any purpose.
That list never seems to have a useful list, I think because it's somehow limited to what that instance knows about, or initially read in when it started up, or something. At any rate, it's not at all helpful for locating the currently-open window and tab that holds ABC.pdf. (Also, it's visually hard to scan this list because the filenames are interleaved with their folders in a single column, like this is a vertical phone app, instead of showing as a two column table using the vast ocean of adjacent whitespace. And it's not sortable, so visually scanning it is the only way of using it.
And that's about it.
Have I missed something? What I'm looking for is a listing that shows all the loaded PDFs in all running instances, and click to navigate to a particular document. And that list should be sortable at least by name, and preferably by directory\name, by date, how recently opened and so on, and preferably searchable. And provide an indication of whether the doc has unsaved edits. But just the plain list would be a big help compared to the current situation.
Assuming I didn't overlook such a feature, this might be easier to implement if the multiple windows were within the same instance so that the whole experience acted like a single program. But maybe the one-instance-per-window has some programming and performance benefits, so that's OK. The multiple instances just need to be able to share info enough to make dealing with a large number of open PDFs tractable.
1. I have to refer to a lot of technical documents that need to be open all at once, and where I need to have several visible at once. I have a large 4k monitor, plus two additional monitors, so literally several PDFs are open full-page and visible at once.
2. Because I need several visible at once, I have Settings > Documents >Allow multiple instances enabled. I make considerable use of the ability to drag tabs from one PhantomPDF window to another. [But see later message. Apparently you can only drag tabs between windows that originated within one instance.]
I have have 10 PhantomPDF windows open at once, each with two to 10 PDFs open.
So far, so good. Nice job, PhantomPDF. But...
3. Now, I need to somehow find and show the already-open document named ABC.pdf that is not currently showing. How do I do that?
Here's what doesn't work:
a. The Windows Taskbar shows the 10 instances of PhantomPDF that are open, and displays the names of the docs that are in the selected tabs of each window. But unless ABC.pdf happens to be the selected tab of its window, the Taskbar doesn't show it.
b. The Recent Documents listing (shown when clicking on PhantomPDF's File menu) seems pretty much useless for this or any purpose.
That list never seems to have a useful list, I think because it's somehow limited to what that instance knows about, or initially read in when it started up, or something. At any rate, it's not at all helpful for locating the currently-open window and tab that holds ABC.pdf. (Also, it's visually hard to scan this list because the filenames are interleaved with their folders in a single column, like this is a vertical phone app, instead of showing as a two column table using the vast ocean of adjacent whitespace. And it's not sortable, so visually scanning it is the only way of using it.
And that's about it.
Have I missed something? What I'm looking for is a listing that shows all the loaded PDFs in all running instances, and click to navigate to a particular document. And that list should be sortable at least by name, and preferably by directory\name, by date, how recently opened and so on, and preferably searchable. And provide an indication of whether the doc has unsaved edits. But just the plain list would be a big help compared to the current situation.
Assuming I didn't overlook such a feature, this might be easier to implement if the multiple windows were within the same instance so that the whole experience acted like a single program. But maybe the one-instance-per-window has some programming and performance benefits, so that's OK. The multiple instances just need to be able to share info enough to make dealing with a large number of open PDFs tractable.
Comment