Bluebeam PDF Revu

[Frank]

1. Freehand lines stay connected.

What do you mean exactly? You could group several lines or use the polygon tool instead. Doesn't this solve your problem.

2. A fullscreen reading mode.

Yes, that would be nice. But in some way I hope that they used the ribbon interface or a different toolbar which is then fully customizable.

3. An easier way to make straight lines using the shift key/button. It's damn near impossible to consistently draw a vertical or horizontal line.

Don't understand it too. You could activate snap to grid which works perfectly (and set the grid size to a useful size for you) or you could hold the shift button or press the "lock shift" button in the toolbar which allows you to draw a horizontal or vertical line or even ink a straight line. I think drawing a straight line is one of easiest parts in PDF Revu and almost impossible in OneNote, I just don't know how it works in PDF Annotator because I don't use it any longer.

[leaftye]

What do you mean exactly? You could group several lines or use the polygon tool instead. Doesn't this solve your problem.

If I draw a continuous line, I want to be able to delete it with one tap of the eraser. This was one of the first, if not the first, issue I had with PDFRevu.

Don't understand it too. You could activate snap to grid which works perfectly (and set the grid size to a useful size for you) or you could hold the shift button or press the "lock shift" button in the toolbar which allows you to draw a horizontal or vertical line or even ink a straight line. I think drawing a straight line is one of easiest parts in PDF Revu and almost impossible in OneNote, I just don't know how it works in PDF Annotator because I don't use it any longer.

The snap to grid option sounds tedious to switch back and forth. The shift button should be easy, but it draws lines in the wrong direction nearly half the time. I'd like it to wait for the pen to move a little before PDFRevu restricts it to being either a vertical or horizontal line. Highlighting lots of text in PDFRevu really sucks because of this.

[jhoff80]

Okay I bought this recently, and I do really like it much more than PDF Annotator once I got the toolbars and everything into a view I liked.

There are a few annoyances though. For one, no save as in the toolbar or when you right click on the open file's tab (I prefer to get rid of the menu bar to make it take up less room.

Secondly, the tabs take up too much space when I've got one file open, is there any option I maybe missed to only show the tabs when there's more than one? (Like Firefox does).

Third, as said above, I hate that the eraser doesn't work by strokes like mostly every other program I've used does.

Fourth, the behavior of the undo/redo seems a little odd at times, not sure why that is, but it doesn't always seem to go the order I'd expect to.

Fifth, I'd love to be able to use the lasso select with the pen button while in pen mode, click delete and then not have the pen mode switch off. An acceptable alternative would be to allow the erase to erase the strikethrough on text I've done that to.

Lastly, for some reason in edit text mode I had two issues. One is that it wouldn't let me turn off bold. I could turn on italics, so it was both, and then turn off bold so it was just italicized, but I couldn't turn off the formatting. And where is the TIP in edit text mode? The only possible way I saw to change text was to flip the screen around and use the keyboard, which was pretty annoying when I just wanted to make one edit.

It really is so much better than PDF Annotator or even Acrobat Reader on its own, and I'm happy I paid the money for it, I just feel that it could be so much better with a few small fixes. Hopefully in 7.0. (Oh, and almost forgot, I second a fullscreen mode for reading, please!)

Edit: And I see there's a few of these things that have already been mentioned a few times too.

[Frank]

4. Undo Redo: In "Preferences" - "Tablet" you can change the pen commitment interval. After you've wrote a few strokes and waited as long as the pen commitment interval is set PDF Revu combines those strokes to one markup and stores it in the markup list. Now the unao function does not undo a single stroke, but only a whole markup. If you increase the pen commitment interval your markup list will not grow as fast but more strokes will be collected in one markup. If you decrease the value, it's possible to give every stroke a markup, so that the undo works as you know it from OneNote, sadly PDF Revu will get slow very fast, because of the huge markup list. Also keep in mind, that the undo function does not work reliably. If you use a higher pen commitment interval, write and undo imediately after you've stopped writing, then the current written thing is not added to the markup list yet and the undo undoes the last added markup, this disorders the whole undo system. Finally I don't use the undo, I only use the eraser.

6. Or you open the TIP, not the floating TIP but the TIP near the task bar.

I also have the same problems you've mentioned and hope that the fix them in version 7.

[3DWizard]

Hi,
I'm new to the forums and I just wanted to say, that I have exactly the same problem as carter has, which means: I open a pdf document from outside pdf revu (e.g. double click in windows explorer with pdf extension associated with pdf revu), then pdf revu starts up, but doesn't show the file. It's exactly the same if I'd just start the application without passing a file to it. If pdf revu is already open nothing happens. If I drag an drop a file, everything works fine. Also Opening a file withing pdf revu via the open dialog works fine.
@Carter: Have you already solved your problem?

Greetings,
Wizard

My system specs:
Lenovo X61t, Core2Duo 1,6 GHz, 2GB Ram, Windows Vista SP1 32bit, Pdf Revu 6.5.4

[Frank]

Hi,
I'm new to the forums and I just wanted to say, that I have exactly the same problem as carter has, which means: I open a pdf document from outside pdf revu (e.g. double click in windows explorer with pdf extension associated with pdf revu), then pdf revu starts up, but doesn't show the file. It's exactly the same if I'd just start the application without passing a file to it. If pdf revu is already open nothing happens. If I drag an drop a file, everything works fine. Also Opening a file withing pdf revu via the open dialog works fine.

you have to do following:
Close PDF Revu,
open C:\Documents and Settings\*user name*\Local Settings\Temp\
and delete the 'Bluebeam Software' folder.

The problem is caused by the recovery files, which are saved in the folder you have to delete, which are in some way broken and cause PDF Revu to not start properly.
After you've deleted this folder PDF Revu will create this temporay folder again, this time without the broken recovery files.

[3DWizard]

@Frank: Thank you very much, that really helped me out.

@All:
I don't wanna bother you by posing question after question, but as there seem to be some pdf revu experts around here I have to ask one more thing:
Does anybody know command line parameters to use with pdf revu?
What I'd like to do is open a pdf file with pdf revu and tell revu what page of the document to show.
I know how to do that with acrobat reader or foxit reader, but regarding pdf revu I couldn't find anything about that on the web or in the revu help file. The only thing I found working so far is passing the filename of the file one wants to open directly as the first argument, which looks like this:
"C:\Program Files\Bluebeam Software\Revu\Revu.exe" "d:\documents\acrobat pdf parameters.pdf"

[Carter]

@3DWizard:

Hi, sorry I could not post earlier, but anyway, it is thanks to frank that I could get pdf revu fixed again!

Don't forget to give him rep! ;-)

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Does anyone know when pdf revu's new version is coming out?
I love this program and their support, but there are many things that I would like to get improved as well!

E.G., I wish there was a continuous page mode like in one note!
And that there would be some options to make tables, charts, or even some more sophisticated text formating! Like enumeration, etc.!

-------------------------

I have a question myself:
I liked about Annotator, that I had my favourite pens where I could see them and could change them quickly. Now I have to click on the type of pen, first, and then change the colour...

[3DWizard]

I have a question myself:
I liked about Annotator, that I had my favourite pens where I could see them and could change them quickly. Now I have to click on the type of pen, first, and then change the colour...

Well, that's a feature, that is of course implemented. Take a look at the so called Tool Chest. There is an entry called My Tools. Now comes the only tricky part (at least thats the way I know): To add your own tool to My Tools you have to use the tool you want to add first. After using the tool a new entry shows up in the Recent Tools list (also in the Tool Chest). Drag and drop this entry from the list Recent Tools to the list My Tools and double click the entry to switch to the tool you actually used instead of the shape you have drawn. The double clicking is in my eyes the only tricky thing about that. All of the tools in My Tools can of course be suited to your needs afterwards by using the property menu for the tool.

Greetings,
Wizard

[Frank]

As 3DWizard already said, you can create custom pens, tools, shapes, ...
To keep everything organized you can also create a new tool set, first, which maybe only contains your custom pens. Then add all the pens you need, as 3DWizard already said and then you can lock this tool set.
This is, at least for me, important, because else the pen color changes if you select the pen from the tool set and then change the color of the pen in the normal toolbar and after a while your whole tool set got disordered. So you can lock it, to avoid it.
You can also define where to save the file which contains the informations about your tools, so if you move to a different PC you don't have to create everything again.

This way you can also create tables, ..., just create the object and send it to a tool set. (I know, a table is a bit difficult, but possible, and not too awkward, just add a few text boxes and group them (don't forget, if you have a group and hold down "Shift" then you can edit the elements in the group without ungrouping it first))

@command line: Sorry, but I also haven't found anything about the command line. Maybe you write Bluebeam a mail and ask them if they have implemented something like that. (and report it us )

@new version: Because they've announced it already and said that they plan to release it in early 2009 I expect it to come out something around March-April. I'm also excited about the new version and hope that they've fixed a lot of bugs and added even more features