[Okular-devel] Re: Possible GSOC project

[Pino Toscano]

Hi,

Alle mercoledì 6 aprile 2011, Jonathan Verner ha scritto:
> I was contemplating to submit a GSOC project to enable okular to
> store annotations in pdf files. My idea was to use the podofo
> library to write the annotations back into the file.  It could
> either be implemented in okular itself (say as a separate menu-item,
> or an option when 'Saving As', or even saving it automatically when
> closing a file --- though that might well be problematic) or as a
> separate program which would be able to convert between the xml
> storage and the 'pdf' storage.
> 
> I have already played with the podofo and poppler libraries and have
> created a simple proof-of-concept viewer/annotator
> 
> https://github.com/jonathanverner/comment
> 
> so I think the suggested approach is feasible, however I am not sure
> if it is optimal (or even ok ;-) ).
> 
> What do you think?  Would there be demand for such a project? Is it
> a good idea?

(replying as a whole)

The general idea - writing back annotations in PDF documents - is okay.
Given that slowly poppler is starting to support editing, it would be a 
better idea to just continue the work there, instead of read using a 
library and write using another one. For some reasons, see comment #105 
in bug #151614 -- add to that also the fact that you could not have 
"real time sync" between what you edit and document saving done by the 
user.
In general, working with a PDF library is a pain, I personally do not 
look forward in having to deal with two at the same time...

Note also we have a system to save modified files (used at the moment 
only for form fields), see the SaveInterface.

-- 
Pino Toscano
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 190 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part.
Url : http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/okular-devel/attachments/20110406/b1774368/attachment.sig