Max Lumi (Boox wide?) annotation mixup problem

[kodomo]

Hi all!

I came across a bug with the associations between annotations and documents in firmware version 2020-11-19_13-50_3.0_88a2f03 on the Onyx Boox Max Lumi.
Given the bug characteristics (seemingly systematic) and the shared code base across models, I suspect it may be more widespread.

Annotations seem to be associated with all copies of a given file on the device. So annotations done on one of the copies will be shown on all of them.
One modification done to a file copy on an external source (e.g. the PC) dissociates it from the annotations.
I would therefore surmise the association is based on a hash value (which would imply that (albeit unlikely) mixups might even happen between unrelated documents, should their hash values coincide.

Procedure to verify whether your device is affected:
- copy 3 copies of any PDF or DocX form on the device (2 identical, 1 partly filled in on the PC)
- open one of the clear forms on the Boox and annotate it
- close this copy (by tapping on the 'X' in the tab listing, should you have enabled ' multiple documents' in the NeoReader) and open the other ones

In my case, the second identical file now sports the annotations I have done on the first, while the partially filled one does not show the annotations (only what was done on the PC).
Please note that if you have opened multiple copies simultaneously, it seems to work at first, but you'll get weird effects after, e.g., a reboot.

Can you folks please confirm this behaviour? It makes it factually impossible to fill in multiple versions of a form on the Lumi.
Maybe someone has a suggestion for a workaround, waiting for a potential fix. (Using Notes does not really work, either, for partly landscape multi-page forms)

[kodomo]

Reality seems more complex than I surmised
I tried the following:
- placed a single PDF form copy [0] on an SDCard and inserted it into the Lumi
- created a subdirectory and copied it into it [1]
- renamed [1]
- edited [1] with Xodo Docs
- copied [1] into another directory [2]
- annotated [2] with NeoReader and closed it
- copied [2] into another diretory [3]
- [3] (shows the annotation from [2]) annotated further
=> [2] and [3] now show both the same annotations, as if they were the same ; [1] , however, does not.
- copied [2] to the internal memory [4]
- ejected the SDCard
- annotated [4] further
- remounted the SDCard
=> [2],[3],[4] now share the same annotations

On the other hand,
- downloaded a PDF form from a website and annotated it with NeoReader
- downloaded it a second time (saved with another file name)
=> both copies sport the annotations.

With the other files I originally noted the problem on (which I edited in parallel - having multiple copies open), it seems a bit random which annotations I'm shown.

Either way, something's really amiss, here... :-/

[yokos]

I can reconstruct your problem. You can see scribblings which belong not to your pdf file copy.
All scribbling before embedding are saved in a SQLite database. Please don't mess up your files with using SD cards and then remove them and so on.

I found this solution. After first opening of a copy file you can delete all scribblings that you see from other files this way:
(TOC/scribbles/check box to select all scribbles on all pages and delete.)
After this you can start your scribbling, because pdf file isn't connected anymore to others.

I hope this helps.

Edit: I thought that it does work. Now it is all mixed up. I can't help you.

[yokos]

Dear kodomo, please edit the PDF metadata ”title” to get individual files.
Any app which can edit this data should work. Like Xodo.
You can do this with the app pdf creator from the open source store fdroid.

After this all mixup is gone.

[kodomo]

Dear Yokos!

First: Thank you very much for the replies I'll diddle around a bit with different editors.

Out of curiosity: I was surmising there might be a DB... do you know for a fact that there is or do you simply assume the same?
I'm asking because I've had a couple of additional weird effects that make me quesiton my original assumption. Aside from a situation where Xodo editing did _not_ dissotiate the files and another one where deleted annotations were found in the merged PDF (but not shown in NeoReader), I've had the following most fun and stupefying result:
- Searching for a pdf metadata modification tool, I stumbled across "PDF Utils", which also allows for the merging of documents.
- I merged two annotated documents (not the merged versions, although I previously had created some)
- The resulting files _contained_ all annotations, which were visible in XoDo, but _not_ in NeoReader
...so PDF Utils must have seen the annotations in the PDF (I would be surprised if PDF Utils implemented an interface to Onyx's SQLiteDB) and must've reencoded them in the merged document in a way that NeoReader would not display them.

Overall, I have the (frustrating) feeling that there are a bunch of bugs in the annotation functionality... moreover, trying to fix things by using additional software seems to rather generate more inconsistencies than to reduce them :-/
Does anyone have experience with the Onyx support - whether or where it makes sense posting bugs, these days?

[yokos]

Dear komodo,
we have to be precise when talking about pdf files.
There are two different ways.
First way is the neoreader scribbling connected to a source pdf file which uses a SQLite dB to handle file formats like epub or pdf which have having nothing in common. Only neoreader can see and edit this. You can backup this db in neoreader settings and with root rights sneek into the files directly.
Editing the source pdf with others editors like removing pages will mess up your scribbling because the page information in db isn't correct anymore.
Second way is a exported pdf file (your BOOX device creates output file) with pdf standards scribbling and markup. All others pdf viewers can see this.

Your starting point was annotating identical pdf files as a copy several times. The crux was that your copies had got the same "uniqueid" in the neoreader database. I mentioned to solve this by editing the metadata of title information. Every copy gets an unique title. After this you can get different uniqueids in db. See attached Screenshot of Xodo.

You can use the official Boox forum or the feedback section under settings on your device.

[suenteus]

Hi @kodomo
I am encountering a similar bug on my Boox Note Air.
All of my pdfs are two-way synchronized over Dropbox. I have one pdf that became 'unsynced' from its annotations somehow... so that the annotations do not show up on my PC but they do show up in neoreader, even when I've renamed the file!

I opened the pdf on my PC and changed the title metadata as described above, then synced it again via Dropbox Sync. All the annotations were gone in neoreader ... I made some new ones, saved and synced again. Now the annotations appear on my PC.

So, that process seemed to fix the problem. However I would like to know if it would have been possible to resynchronize my existing annotations with the document, so that they wouldn't be lost!