[Okular-devel] Advice about adding functionality to Okular

[Jonathan Schultz]

Hello folks,

Could I ask for any opinions on how best to approach adding
functionality to Okular? In brief, what I want to do is use Okular as an
engine for coding/tagging sections (text or rectangular) for Qualitative
Data Analysis (QDA). What this means is that when a section of a
document is selected, the option would be made available to code that
section. The actual codes and coded sections would be dealt with through
an abstraction layer so that eventually different back-ends could handle
them.

Although this functionality bears some resemblance to the 'Annotations'
currently available, it seems different enough to me to warrant being
implemented separately.

So, what it seems to me I need to do is:

1. Add an item to the pull-down menus to en-/dis-able the coding
functionality.

2. Add an item to the context menu that appears when a selection has
been made that would summon a coding dialog. (Perhaps some shortcuts for
commonly performed actions could be directly on the menu, that's a small
detail).

3. Add a new tab to the Navigation panel for visualising the coded
sections in the document, and write the code for displaying that panel.

4. Extend the document rendering to indicate (via shading or such-like)
the sections that have been coded.

None of this seems so complicated to be beyond my powers of reverse
engineering, but that might be my naivety speaking! So I thought I'd ask
whether anyone had any advice for Okular development newcomers.
Specifically, is there any 'correct' way to add functionality of this
kind to Okular? And any other suggestions would be most appreciated.

Finally if anyone is interested in where I want to take this project,
I'd be more than happy to share.

Thanks in advance,

Jonathan