[okular] [Bug 394620] New: Annotations don't work in other PDF readers.

[Kevin Burton]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=394620

            Bug ID: 394620
           Summary: Annotations don't work in other PDF readers.
           Product: okular
           Version: unspecified
          Platform: Other
                OS: Linux
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: normal
          Priority: NOR
         Component: PDF backend
          Assignee: okular-devel at kde.org
          Reporter: burton+bugs.kde.org at inputneuron.io
  Target Milestone: ---

Annotations are not working in other PDF readers.

There seems to have been a bug open for this before.

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=353400

And changed to 'invalid' .  I strongly disagree with the resolution in this
bug.

Here are the steps to reproduce:

1. start with a fresh PDF
2. add annotations (highlights, notes, etc).
3. save the PDF
4. re-open the PDF in Okular to show that they are still present.
5. open the PDF in various other readers.  About half of them fail. 

The important ones seem to fail too. Note that they work with all the other
apps. I can use Preview (the mac OS PDF viewer), Adobe Acrobat, PDF.js, Foxit
Reader, etc all interchangeably and the annotations work.  


Okular is the one that exhibits this behavior consistently.


Here's Okular showing three annotations:


https://imgur.com/q4BuC68


(sorry it's a little small)


Here is Foxit Reader (only two shown):


https://imgur.com/KgdTIOF


Here is the output from PDF.js (no annotations visible)

https://imgur.com/o3i5D1C


If you don't have 3rd party PDF software installed you can easily use PDF.js to
verify:


https://mozilla.github.io/pdf.js/web/viewer.html


I think the argument here is that 'appearance streams' in PDF are optional as
part of the spec.

However, what's happening is that this is the dejure vs defacto specs.

The annotations are pointless if the user can't see them.

One of these, the 'note' annotations, is completely invisible. I can't see it
so I can't click on it to read the note.  

I agree with you that by dejure standards the appearance streams are optional. 
However, by defacto standards they are *not* because all other PDF editors are
using appearance streams.  

Invisible appearance streams might be good for machine readable annotations but
not for humans.  I have no idea where on the page to click for my annotations.

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