This is not a back-end programming question. I can only modify the markup or script (or the document itself). The reason I'm asking here is because all my searches for appropriate terms inevitably lead to questions and solutions about programming this functionality. I'm not trying to force it via progrmaming; I have to find out why this PDF is behaving differently.
So:
I have a bunch of links to PDFs on a page. Most of them open in new tabs, but one of them, the most recent, starts to open in a tab, but then the tab closes and the PDF gets downloaded as a file instead. All markup is consistent - there's nothing differnt about the odd-man-out except the actual URL.
You can see this here:
http://calwater.mwnewsroom.com/Investor-Relations/Financial-Reports/Annual-Reports
All annual reports up to 2012 open in a new tab, but 2013 downloads instead.
This leads me to believe that there is some meta-data property of the PDF itself that tells it how to open, and that, in this case, the 2013 PDF was created using different settings.
Apparently, the PDF was saved out to PDF from InDesign.
Does anyone have any insight?
Problem solved. There was simply an error in the string (like an extra period) that references the attachment such that it couldn't tell it was a PDF. Fixing the reference fixed the problem.
Related
So that the link can be used in some external applications, and users in that application can click the link and navigate to that specific location (text or area) in the pdf.
Is this possible?
There are several different URL # (fragment) constructs that were introduced by Adobe for use with their web browser PDf viewer plug-in. The current accessible list is at https://pdfobject.com/pdf/pdf_open_parameters_acro8.pdf
Many newer competing PDF enabled browsers may use similar, but there is no guarantee one URL.pdf#Fits all. Most will respect #page=number&zoom view or fit but it is very variable, thus you need to check each feature across browsers.
Important to switch off any PDF remember my view settings
For your previous request using Bookmarks can be unreliable (as can the comments ID) unless you are using Acrobat and can check the bookmark function. By far the more reliable may be the use of zoom at a scroll location so here using MS Edge:-
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge\Application\msedge.exe" file:///C:/Users/.../Desktop/CEI-PID-Sample-Rev4annotsC.pdf#zoom=300,200,200
I support SumatraPDF however its browser plug-in whilst still functional is way past EOL thus unsupported, it had a limited support for those fragments even though the CLI was recently extended for some Acrobat /Action commands.
However related to your desire the one single portable EXE can jump to well formed text blocks. Here I call "V 4508" in a fairly similar fashion
"C:\Program Files\SumatraPDF\SumatraPDF.exe" "C:\Users\WDAGUtilityAccount\Desktop\SandBox\apps\Graphics\CEI-PID-Sample-Rev4annotsC.pdf" -zoom 300 -search "V 4508"
And if I press A then the text will be highlighted for comments
I would like to ask the following if possible. We have a client that wants a separate pdf document, embedded in a main pdf document and opens when you click it. Like the function in MS Word where you can attach another Word document inside a Word document (Word-ception, lol) and you can still open it.
I've tried it in Acrobat Pro with the Attachment and Link tools. Another option was to put the link document in an ftp server for accessibility. but our client really wants this functionality. Is this possible in Indesign?
Thank you!
Using Word as your example vehicle there are several ways to link 2 documents.
One is an appendix to the other, in PDF terms is a merge or binding but its one flowing document with separate sequential sections/chapters.
Another way is to link to an external file, in PDF terms a hyperlink to a relative second file, which can be locally folder relative or a web absolute reference. You have tried that.
In Word we can add objects internally with icons, in PDF that can be an annotation comment attachment to save externally and action accordingly. You also seem to discount that approach.
Finally PDF offers an Adobe Specific Structure where multiple PDFs attachments can be imbedded in an overall PDF wrapper. These are called Portfolios and not! to be confused with their portfolio service
They are unpopular since in a browser without Adobe Reader they should only offer the cover page.
Whilst in securer offline readers the files may well be shown as attachments that you need to save or independently open to view them.
Only some non Acrobat viewers may view them as a collection. And in the past that required runing insecure SWFlash, But I understand that has changed ?
Here is how the 3 internal PDF files seen above were shown in older Acrobat 9.
Possibly the best experience is using Foxit Reader
I am creating a separate question, stemming from this one. The used code is almost the same. The reason is that the original problem was about subsetting a font with pdfbox, which I kind of dealt with. I got faced though with another problem, which is : the annotations, and how the fonts used in them are interpreted by particularly Acrobat Reader DC.
I tried different combinations of fonts and embedding options and got rather desperate. The fact is that I had a feeling that in particular the way these things are handled by the programs that interpret the PDF files is non-standard. I think I read somewhere that the annotations and the way they are displayed is on purpose non-standardized by the PDF format, to give freedom to the interpreters to handle them in their own way, since the main purpose of the annotations is the interaction with the user. TL;DR I cannot understand why Acrobat Reader DC doesn't like the annotations I have created and saved with PDFBOX. I even opened a question on friendly and helpful Adobe's User Community forum. But as I expected, someone suggested me to better investigate this question with the PDFBOX team.
Everything is possible, but rather than writing a question on PDFBOX mailing list (I could never get used or understand the efficient use of the mailing lists btw), I want to open a question here because I hope that it could help others to understand the PDF format better.
I basically rephrase the above question from the Adobe's forums here: Here is an example (Google Drive link) with FreeText annotations (but it seems to make no difference if I use Stamp annotations instead), it causes problems when open by Adobe Acrobat Reader DC (file) version 21.001.20149.37945 (I think this corresponds to April 16th '21 update). Specifically the problem happens when the Comments pane is opened by the user, either manually or automatically.
Manually:
link
Automatically:
link
While experimenting, I also tried to unset the "Use local fonts" option in Preferences -> Page Display. I had the impression that maybe Acrobat Reader will be more eager to show the error message once it is not allowed to substitute the erroneously embedded fonts with the possible local fonts. I am not sure if this is true.
The error that I get is the infamous "Cannot extract the embedded font XXXXXX+SomeFontName" as seen in the below picture:
link
The same problems happen also if I use full font embed (subsetting option set to false when using PDType0Font.load). I also tried to embed OpenSans font instead of LiberationSans, also tried to manually convert LiberationSans to a TTF font with fewer glyphs using FontForge, even tried to use Windows ARIALN.TTF, thinking that maybe the font is the problem. All cause the same behavior in Acrobat Reader DC. I have also tried to run Acrobat Reader 2019 Pro Preflight on the document and in the profile that scans the document for the possible font inconsistencies, it reports no errors.
Of course, when I use e.g. PDType1Font.HELVETICA instead of custom TTF font, I do not get the above errors. But I cannot use it because it does not contain the glyphs for the Unicode characters that I use. Does anybody have a better idea?
Thank you very much!
EDIT: to make myself clear - the error does not appear ALWAYS. it appears on some machines constantly (e.g. I am using Windows 7 64-bit with latest Acrobat Reader DC installed to reproduce it fairly well), while on my Windows 10 64-bit with the same version of Acrobat Reader DC it sometimes appears, and sometimes not - I haven't figured out why or in what cases.. - which makes me think - but no - I checked that too - the font I am using opens up alright on the machine where the problem is fairly constant)
UPDATE: at my wits ends again, I created a blank page with Apache OpenOffice, exported it to PDF, opened it with Acrobat Reader DC (last version), added a FreeTextTypewriter annotation (View -> Tools -> Comment -> Open) with 4 greek letters in ArialNarrow font, saved it, reopened it with Acrobat Reader DC, and it gives me the same error (cannot extract the embedded font...).. So this could be the Reader problem? But they made this so difficult to diagnose.. Here is the file, but I do not expect it to show errors on other machines. It's one of those moments that you start to believe in magic and the power of prayer (and a good sleep)
UPDATE 30/04/2021
So, to sum things up, I haven't come with a solution yet, but I came up with three files created with PDFBOX, OpenPDF (iText5 fork) and Acrobat Reader DC itself (can append annotations and save - just adding a simple Text box with greek text through Comment pane) - and they all issue the above error message, when open by Acrobat Reader DC. I have posted details in the Acrboat Reader forum here (same link as in comment)
I have added the code that I used to create the OpenPDF example file here and the example 3 files are in the same repository here
I created a browser extension that lets you look up words in Wikipedia or Wiktionary without needing to open a new tab ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/in-page-lookup/ , almost done porting to Chrome). It is very useful when you are doing research and come across a word you don't know or want to know more about. The only thing is, a lot of research content is in PDF format. A long time ago (~2013ish) I had an older version of the app based on the old Firefox add-on framework and that did let iframes show up over pdf documents but this has not been the case for many years. I don't think the extension is even recognized in pdf documents, I get "Error: Could not establish connection. Receiving end does not exist" and there is no extension content script on the pdf page. So, my question is, is it possible to put an iframe over a pdf document? Do I need to work on the background side, and if so, how? Thanks.
In my iOS app, I would like to regenerate an existing pdf into another pdf after the users are done annotating on the existing pdf.
My regenerated pdf should be an exact replica of the existing pdf but should have embedded annotations and highlights etc which can be opened and viewed on desktops as well.
I have done some research on this including the solutions proposed on other SO posts. I have tried libharu etc.
But somehow I am not able to convert an existing pdf into a replica pdf. I am able to add annotations to a new pdf I create using libharu.
Now my problem is to copy the existing pdf as is to my regenerated pdf. Any pointers will be much helpful.
My understanding is that a library that can save back out a PDF with "true" annotations (those that can be hidden in Acrobat, for example) is not something that exists in a FOSS solution.
LibHaru, for example, only supports creating new PDFs, not editing or appending existing PDFs. From their homepage:
At this moment libHaru does not support reading and editing existing
PDF files and it's unlikely this support will ever appear.
You can render the PDF on a page by page basis, and then re-save it with some additional information. This S.O question has a reasonable looking piece of code. That will save any "annotations" more as an image in the PDF itself, though.
You might try a paid library like PDFNet.