[Okular-devel] [okular] [Bug 353677] New: Improve annotation system

[Simone Gaiarin]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=353677

            Bug ID: 353677
           Summary: Improve annotation system
           Product: okular
           Version: 0.23.60
          Platform: Other
                OS: Linux
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: wishlist
          Priority: NOR
         Component: general
          Assignee: okular-devel at kde.org
          Reporter: simgunz at gmail.com

I would like to report here some considerations I've first post on the VDG
section of KDE forum regarding Okular annotation system. As I said in the post,
Okular is a great tool, probably the best linux pdf viewer, but for me to reach
the perfection it needs a new annotation system. Since the VD group is doing a
great job on many components of KDE in this period I hope they could
contribute, together with Okular maintainer, to make this software even better.

Original link:
(https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=285&t=128361&hilit=okular)

-----------
Okular is a great tool, but for me the annotation system is still very poor,
and extremely user unfriendly. Here I'll point out some issues in order to
stimulate the discussion.

Issues: 
- One can select one annotation tool in a sticky way (so that it is not
deactivated after the first use) by double clicking on the annotation tool
icon. This is an hidden feature that is not intuitive to use. At least a
tooltip should suggest this possibility or maybe the feature can be exposed in
a more clever way.

- Inline notes: 
- The text is not entered inline, but a popup to input the text appears. In
this way we cannot have a live preview of how the note will look like
- If the rectangle that defines the note we drew is to small, the note is
expanded in an unpredictable way which may cover the underlying text. 
- Cannot be resized. This is probably the biggest problem. (connected with the
previous one).
- When we double click on the inline note, it's opened as a popup note for
editing (but the first time we entered it we need to do it via a different
popup dialog box). Should be edited inline.
- Sometimes the inline note rectangle is not expanded and some text is not
visible.

- It's not possible to insert text to compile forms fields (I mean in static
pdf). One can tweak the inline note to display a transparent background but a
frame will be displayed around the text. Moreover since the inline note is not
rescalable, it's difficult to match the font required to fill the fields
without going above the surrounding text. 

Popup notes:
- The point we click to add a popup notes is assumed to be thee upper left
corner of the icon that will be added. I would expect that the point I click is
considered the central point of the icon. With the current behaviour the icon
is often placed over the text. (See example http://imagebin.ca/v/2G3ed3WI3ueh)
- The note icon size is too large and not configurable.
- The note icon displayed in the configuration dialog of the popup note is
different from the icon used in practice (at least on my system).
- I would prefer something like this for popup notes: An icon is diplayed when
the note is collapses. When the icon is clicked the popup appears with an
arrow-like line pointing to the point where the icon was before (the icon
disappears when the popup is open).

Polygons:
- The shape of the polygon (an ellipse for example) is not previewed, so that
it's pretty difficult to draw it where we want without going above the
surrounding text.

- It's not possible to add a custom image to the pdf. As an example I often
would like to add my signature to the pdf. (This would require the image to be
rescaled).

Problematic annotations made with different software.
- An odd behaviour I often face is that I find some popup notes that are
rendered in okular as very small triangles, so that to open the popup note a
super high mouse pointing precision is required. Moreover the "browse mode"
pointer has a shape of a hand (and not an arrow) so that it's even more
difficult to hit the correct point to open the popup note. I don't exactly know
how annotations are stored in the pdf, but okular should be able to process
this notes in order to make it easy to open them (somehow the original software
must be able to do this I guess). [I need to find an example of this to show
you].

- Add ability to draw arrows

- Add the ability to change colour of the highlighter on the fly. Currently we
need to configure a new annotation tool for each highlighter colour. The same
applies to other tools like shapes.

Another issue is that when we search something, the match is highlighted in
yellow making it impossible to find where is the match in an highlighted text. 
A possible solution may be to add a border of a different color to the match
and possibly animate the matching with a pulse like animation.
Here's an example from Mendeley:
http://imagebin.ca/v/2G3Z2BJgH7rG

To fix these things a full rethink of the whole annotation interface is
required. I hope that the guys in the VDG can devote some time on it, because I
think that a tool like a pdf reader is a central application in everyone's
daily life, so making it user friendly is very important.

Reproducible: Always

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