Development Information about merging pdf with annotations

Hi
Recent developments have moved us closer to the posibility of being able to merge the pdf annotations to the pdf as it should have been from the beginning (as separate layers the way most pdf editors work)
Specifically

• kenjennings discovery of the library database that contains all the information about the annotations done in books
• Luntz work on dealing and converting handwriting done with the wacom digitizer

So I talked to the author of the pdf annotation merger for the EEENote and he gave some really good information which I would like to share.

Hi Fred,

I don't like to publish the source code because I have invested much time to extract the placing information for the annotations in the pdf. However, I can tell you how I've done it.

I've used Visual Studio 2008 to write a C#.Net program, because it has some features such as LINQ that I can use to easily query on XML files (what I needed) and different databases, which I maybe will need in future to access the SQLLight databases.

To copy the original pdf and add layers for handwritten notes to the PDF and place the comments, I have used the iTextSharp API.

At the Eee Note only some information is stored in accessible databases. Most information lies in the user directory of the internal SD card. At first I've used the backup of the Eee Note where the handwritten annotations are stored as png images. There is an "remark" file that stores the information about the zoom level and the page the png belongs to. At first I copy the content of the original pdf page (content and size) to a new page of the new pdf. Because the png has additional margins for annotations, I have to place the layer at the correct position and scale the resolution to the page resolution. Then I add the layer (as canvas) to the new pdf page.

For comments this is much more difficult to find the right position, because there are some margins that are wacom dependent and not stored in the database. Maybe this is easier at the entourage.

To access the Eee Note directly, I use a telnet connection to the Eee Note in sync mode. Therefore, I have used the information provided in the "peek within" threat in this forum (the python script in one of the first pages). So I received the folder ids and the commands needed to get an xml describing the folder structure and the paths to the files.

I don't know how to receive the data from the entourage edge, but accessing a database should be possible if the protocol of the entourage edge is known.

If particular problems during implementation occur, you can contact me

I hope this helps.

TheTwo

I probably won't be looking into this until June so if anyone wants to take the lead please do so!