Scribble PDF annotations are exported in a erroneous format

[KarlVoit]

Hi,

I've got an nasty issue with my Boox Max2 (latest updates) that is a real downer for me because I can't use PDF Scribbles which is the main purpose I invested the money in this device.

Expected: I highlight words in a given PDF file and add notes/annotations/scribbles to it. After exporting it (or choosing Scribble > Export > "Embed PDF"), the PDF gets synced (in my case via Syncthing) to my desktop and I am able to see the PDF content together with the highlighted text and the annotations.

In reality, everything works except that I don't see the manual notes/annotations/scribbles.

My desktop systems are Debian GNU/Linux boxes (stretch and Xubuntu LTS). I'm using Okular v0.26.1 (Debian) and v1.3.3 (Xubuntu) or XPdf v3.0.4.

While trying out things, I noticed that the Firefox PDF viewer *does* show me the whole story including manual notes/annotations/scribbles.

So the information is within the file, the issue is within the visualization on the desktop.

I als noticed that Okular (my main PDF tool) is writing error messages, when the PDF is opened: okular(1079) PDFGeneratorPopplerDebugFunction: [Poppler] "Error: Bad Annot Ink List"

So I guess that Boox Max2 is writing the annotations in a way that is not understood by libpoppler which seems to be used by Okular, XPdf and Emacs to display the PDF file.

I could also find the same text output when opening the PDF using XPdf: Syntax Error: Bad Annot Ink List

I also tested Okular 1.7.70 and TeXworks v0.6.3 on Windows 10: highlighting is visible, manual notes/annotations/scribbles is missing.

Chromium on Windows 10 does show everything.

Therefore: is there a process where I might report this wrong PDF format for annotations to Onyx? Is there a chance that this gets fixed somehow?

Thanks for your help!

[KarlVoit]

I've created a minimal example document demonstrating my issue.

The source is a LaTeX document which I compiled with pdfLaTeX to a PDF.

Then I was using the PDF embed and the save method to generate two PDF files that contain my annotations.

A couple of screenshots show how the files are displayed on my Debian system. The Okular screenshots also show the STDOUT output of the console.

[KarlVoit]

The thread of https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=309966 sounds like they have discovered the common reason for both issues.

However, the provided "ps"-command did not result in a PDF document that displays the handwritten annotations on my Debian machine.

The mentioned PDFedit flattening I could not test. PDFedit seems to be unmaintained since 2012 and probably dropped out of Debian some time ago. There are no deb-packages I could find.

[lensmann]

Which version of Poppler are you running? The issue's been fixed in version 0.8.0. If it's not in your distro's repos as yet, install it manually from https://poppler.freedesktop.org/

In a nutshell, issues like this keep cropping up because Onyx's software uses 'interesting' methods to produce PDFs. If you're interested in understanding what caused this specific problem (which is different from the one discussed in the earlier thread), see:

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/poppl...ler/issues/784

[KarlVoit]

Originally Posted by lensmann

Which version of Poppler are you running?

Thanks for the explanation. I assumed something like that.

My poppler version is from Debian oldstable and Ubuntu LTS (and Cygwin or Chocolatey for Windows 10) according to: https://poppler.freedesktop.org/ -> way too old.

I'm afraid that updating this library only is not possible for me because I don't want to break dependencies or fall into dependency-hell.

So: no annotation support for the next months/years until the new poppler lib version moves into my systems. Too bad. :-(

But thanks for the confirmation of the root cause.

[lensmann]

Originally Posted by KarlVoit

Thanks for the explanation. I assumed something like that.

My poppler version is from Debian oldstable and Ubuntu LTS (and Cygwin or Chocolatey for Windows 10) according to: https://poppler.freedesktop.org/ -> way too old.

I'm afraid that updating this library only is not possible for me because I don't want to break dependencies or fall into dependency-hell.

So: no annotation support for the next months/years until the new poppler lib version moves into my systems. Too bad. :-(

But thanks for the confirmation of the root cause.

Ah, I'm sorry to hear that. One last thought. Have you tried MuPDF? It uses its own rendering engine, which tends to be more forgiving of deviations from the PDF specification than poppler is. I've kept my Max 2 on firmware 1.9.1 where this problem doesn't occur, so I can't directly test if MuPDF renders annotations. But it may be worth a try, anyway.

[KarlVoit]

Originally Posted by lensmann

Have you tried MuPDF? It uses its own rendering engine, which tends to be more forgiving of deviations from the PDF specification than poppler is.

Hi,

I installed MuPDF on my Debian oldstable and ... yes ... it's showing the annotations!

So, as a workaround, I have to use MuPDF when I want to look at manual annotations within PDF files.

Thanks for this idea!

[KarlVoit]

Meanwhile, I had an OS upgrade to Debian 10 (Buster).

It features poppler version 0.71.0-5 which is still not 0.8.0 which includes the fix.

[r0bis]

Karl, could you please tell which programs exactly you are using for PDF annotation on your Boox? I have Boox Note Pro and now I am facing establishing a pipeline to my Linux desktops with syncthing. What I am most uncertain about is what is the best tool for making freehand notes on the Note Pro. I will be ok with sycing. On Linux desktop I will be using Master PDF Editor Pro.

If you have any comparison comments about different options, that would be great as well.