Scroll though all images in an item

[mhedstrom]

I love the feature of combining images into a single item -- after, say, I've photographed a multipage document. And I love that this item then gets one set of metadata.

But I'd like to be able to read through the entire item -- which might be 20 or 30 or more pages/images -- in a single scroll.

I'd also like to be able to create one note on the document as a whole, rather than have to take separate notes on the separate pages/images.

I assume this is a "Feature Request" and not something I'm missing -- but I'd love to be told otherwise!

[greggm]

I second both of these feature requests, especially the option to create a single note for a multi-image item.

[abbymullen]

We are working toward item-level notes; look for something in our next big development cycle.

We'll definitely consider alternate ways of looking at the photos in an item, as well.

(BTW, apologies, @mhedstrom--somehow your original question slipped through the cracks.)

[mhedstrom]

Thank you. The "single note per document" feature would be nice, but much more significant would be the ability to scroll continuously through multiple images from a single document, rather than have to select them one at a time.

I could also imagine the ability to use the arrow keys to quickly move to the next image in a document, and then from the last image in a document to the first image in the next document. When I come back from the archive I often have many hundreds or thousands of images to sort through. Speed, ease of navigation, workflow -- these are keys.

For me this is a near dealbreaker -- I find Tropy very awkward to use without it. I need to be able to fly through images quickly!

[inukshuk]

You can move through the photos of the current item using the keyboard using Alt-Arrow Left and Alt-Arrow Right; and Alt-Arrow Up and Alt-Arrow Down to select the next or previous item (while in the item view).

[mhedstrom]

That helps a lot! I see that on a Mac it works with Option-Arrow. Too bad it involves two keys, though I see that the arrow keys are used to pan around an image.

A second problem is that each item reverts to the default zoom, and I typically size the image to fit the window. Not the end of the world -- just an extra click for each image after switching images -- but would be good if the zoom state persisted.

[inukshuk]

The zoom/pan state is persisted for each image individually, but you can change the default zoom (fit/fill) in Tropy's preferences. That said, we will be looking to add more options there (e.g., position at the top, not the center for photos of text). Since zoom state is stored in percent (as opposed to pan position, which is stored using absolute coordinate offsets) we could consider an option to store it globally -- we'll have to give that some thought!

[kutne]

Seconding how helpful it would be to change position preference to be top instead of centering on the document. Regarding zoom, are there any plans to make that feature compatible with touch screen devices? I find the slider to be HYPER sensitive and would love to be able to pinch on the screen of my Surface Pro to get it just right.

[inukshuk]

We're considering adding at least some level of touch support, but it's not clear yet how much effort we'll be able to put into this.

In the meantime, we'd definitely like to optimize the controls for mouse + track pad + keyboard as much as possible. When you say the slider is hyper sensitive, that is if you're clicking and dragging the slider? We should add keyboard steps to the zoom slider, that might help. But there are also other ways to zoom:

• You can double click (hold shift to zoom out); we could make the step size customizable.
• You can hold Ctrl and then use the mouse wheel or track pad scrolling to zoom in and out.
• There is the 'Photoshop' method: click into the image, hold down space (this activates panning), with the space bar down, hold down Ctrl (this activates zooming in) and Alt (this activates zooming out). Here too, we could make the step size customizable.

Do you have better results with any of these methods?

[kutne]

That's totally fair re how much effort it might take.

I'm usually clicking and dragging the slider. I'll try those other ways this morning and let you know if they work better for me!

[kutne]

So, the double click to zoom is is too dramatic, but the holding Ctrl and then using the trackpad definitely allows for finer tuning. Thank you!