Annotations
There are two different kinds of annotations in PDFClerk:
- Dynamic Annotations: Proper PDF annotations, as specified in the PDF file format.
- Static Annotations: these often offer more flexibility at the cost of not remaining editable in the final PDF documents.
Which kind of annotation to use depends on your needs. Some annotations do not have a counterpart of the other kind, but if they do, the matter is often one of whether it is important that the annotation remain editable in the final PDF document. If that is not an issue then using static annotations usually provides a more customizable object. In many cases which option to use is moot and will be a matter of personal preference.
When editing either type of annotations you can display a grid to aid with object placement (Tools➤Grid➤Show Grid). You can also force objects to snap to grid lines when dragging them on a page (Tools➤Grid➤Snap To Grid).
Dynamic Annotations
Dynamic annotations remain editable by capable PDF editing software after generating the PDF document.
To edit dynamic annotations activate the Edit Dynamic Annotations work mode [⌘2]. When the mode is active all dynamic annotations are marked with a magenta rectangle along their border. Selected annotations will also show manipulation handles, which can be used for resizing the annotations directly on the page. Different annotation properties can be edited on different inspectors, and options are enabled or disabled according to the type of the selected annotation. Properties that are unique to dynamic annotations are available under the Dynamic Annotations Inspector. Other properties are available under the Metrics and Appearance Inspectors.
When a dynamic annotation is created the work mode is automatically set to dynamic annotation editing.
All dynamic annotations have a modification date and an optional user name that can show either the creator of the annotation, or the last user that modified the annotation.
The visual aspect of an annotation can optionally be set not to print, and/or not to be displayed on-screen.
Markup Annotations
Used for drawing attention to lengths of text. There are three types of markup annotations:
- Highlight: highlights (parts of) lines of text. Defaults to yellow.
- Strike Through: draws a line through the middle along the length of (parts of) lines of text. Defaults to blue.
- Underline: underlines (parts of) lines of text. Defaults to red.
To markup the length of selected text with a markup annotation select the text and then issue one of the markup commands (Text work mode) or issue one of the markup commands first and then draw the selection area ('Edit Dynamic Annotations' work mode).
To markup blocks of text, rather than whole lines, first issue the markup command and then drag a selection on the page. When you release the drag any part of lines of text that fall under the selection are marked up.
If the selection rectangle does not cover any textual content a markup will be created the exact size of the selection rectangle.
Note Annotations
Note annotations put a small icon on the page, that, when clicked, pops up a post-it style note to the left of the page. There are different types of note annotations whose only practical difference is the type of icon used for the popup button: Comment, Key, Note, Help, New Paragraph, Paragraph, Insert.
The textual content of the note can be edited in the Dynamic Annotations Inspector. You can also choose whether a note annotation defaults to opening its popup or not. To close an open note annotation click the small close button at the top right of the popup.
Link Annotations
Link annotations create hyperlinks to other parts of the same document, to pages in other PDF documents, to web addresses, email accounts or to other files on your system.
You can create link annotations by issuing the a command from the menus and dragging a selection on the page over the content that you want linked. If the content contains text, the link will be made to fit the text neatly. You can also select some text first and the issue on of the link creation commands. Once the link is created you can set its destination in the Dynamic Annotations Inspector.
If you want to highlight a link annotation by underlining the link object you can do so quickly by selecting the annotation, then bringing up the contextual menu of the view and selecting Frame Selected Annotations➤Underline.
Automatically linking table of contents style entries to their target page
For most standard format table of contents style pages it is easy to have PDFClerk automatically create a hyperlink for each entry (i.e. each line) in the table. Simply select the text in the table of contents and control click, or right click, the content view. At the bottom of the contextual menu that pops up is an option to Link Selection To Corresponding Pages. After selecting that command PDFClerk analyses the contents of the selection and for each line on which it finds a label which matches a page label in the document it will create and superimpose a link to that page over the full length of the entry. Note that the link will always point to the top of the target page. PDFClerk takes a simplistic, unsophisticated, approach when analysing the selection. It is advisable to check the results for small inconsistencies, although in the majority of cases no modifications are necessary, unless you want to further specify the location on the target page each link points to.
Automatically Linking Index Style Entries To Their Target Page(s)
If the entries in an index table are not hyper-linked to their target pages, you can let PDFClerk Pro attempt to quickly link each page reference through the Link Index Table Entries To Target Pages option under the Outline And Link Automation menu item under the Tools menu.
Enter the numbers of the first and last pages of the Index Table.
Select a representative page in the preview area and then drag on the page to select the area that contains the table, excluding any headers or footers.
Click Detect Columns And Offset to have PDFClerk automatically detect columns and the offset between even and odd pages. If the results are not correct you can re-select the overall area, adjust the Inter Column Gap setting and try again. The Inter Column Gap setting hints to PDFClerk the minimum distance between two columns. Dragging the slider to the left decreases the minimum distance, dragging it to the right increases the minimum distance.
The Even Pages Offset field allows manual adjustment of the offset (the distance of the text from the left margin) between even and odd pages.
The Skip Regular Expr field allows entry of plain text or a regular expression, which will be ignored if it occurs at the end of an entry, this is necessary for entries like: “Circle Tool 24, 34-35. See also: Tools.” Where there is additional text after the page references. For such circumstances you would enter a regular expression like: “\. See also:.*”, which would find each occurrence of text starting with a period, followed by a space and the formulation “See also:” plus arbitrary text following it, and ignore it while analysing the line.
Link Indexes Only controls whether the whole entry is linked, or only the page indexes themselves.
Locate targets tells PDFClerk to look for the first occurrence of the relevant text in the entry on the target page and to link directly to that section of the page. If you switch this option off PDFClerk will always create the links to the page itself, rather than to a specific location on the page. Index table entries do not generally lend themselves very well for this option to achieve good results across the board, but it may still be helpful.
Automatically Linking Cross-Document References To Their Target Page
You can have references to other pages that occur randomly within the text of the document, with fixed formulations, automatically linked to the page(s) they reference. To do so use the Link Cross-Document References To Target Pages… menu item under the Outline And Link Automation menu item under the Tools menu.
Enter the page range(s) you would like to be analysed and linked and enter a regular expression that describes the formulations that contain references to other pages in the document. The element(s) of the formulation that indicate the page reference need to be enclosed in a capture group (= enclosed in parentheses). Additional capture groups may be used for other elements, as needed to construct an adequate regular expression.
Expressions that contain exactly two capture groups may be defined with one of the capture groups indicating the location on the target page to link to. You can specify whether the first or the last capture group indicates the location. See the first example.
When Link Whole Match is selected, the complete match is linked, rather than only the page number.
Example regular expressions:
section\s+([a-zA-Z0-9\.]+)\s+on\s+page\s+([0-9]+)
Finds occurrences like: section 5.1.4 on page 27
In addition, if Location On Target Page is set to Location First, it will link to the first occurrence of the text “5.1.4” on page 27.
on page ([0-9]+)
Finds occurrences like: on page 24
(see|on)\s+page[s]?\s+([0-9]+)\s*(,|and|through)?\s*([0-9]+)?\s*(,|and|through)?\s*([0-9]+)?\s*(,|and|through)?\s*([0-9]+)?
Finds and links occurrences like:
see page 12
on page 15
see pages 61, 119
on pages 40 through 43 and 167 through 170
on pages 108 and 123 through 124
see pages 148, 150 and 157
For more information on regular expressions see the section on Using Find and Replace For Outlines in Outlines (Bookmarks).
Shape Annotations
Shape annotations draw primitive shapes. When you create a dynamic shape annotation by dragging (select one of the shape creation options from the menus first, then drag a selection recangle), PDFClerk will attempt to fit the shape neatly around text under the selection (if it can). To avoid this behaviour you can hold the command key while dragging to have the shape exactly match the selection rectangle.
Freetext Annotations
Freetext annotations draw post-it style notes directly on the page on which they are created. To create a freetext annotation select the freetext annotation option from the menus and either click on a page, or drag a selection rectangle on a page. The first method will create a default sized annotation, the latter option will create an annotation sized according to the selection rectangle. Editing is done in the Contents field of the Dynamic Annotations Inspector or by double clicking the annotation and editing inline.
Form Field Annotations
Form field annotations allow the creation of interactive PDF forms which consist of a collection of fields for gathering information interactively from the user. PDF documents may contain an arbitrary number of fields appearing on any combination of pages, all of which together make up a single interactive form spanning the entire document.
Field names: Field names are used to allow multiple form field annotation objects to be independent of each other: form fields with the same field name always have the same text associated with that field name. When text is entered into one of the objects, the text associated with that field name is changed in all objects. To ensure unique text for a form field, you must give it a unique field name.
Form fields can have a maximum number of characters allowed in the field. By default form fields are set a Maximum Length value of 0, which indicates there is no limit. Any positive value will be used as the upper limit of allowable number of characters in the field.
It is possible to specify the font and font size and text alignment individually for each form field.
When a form field is being edited, the tab key will tab to the next field in the form. The tab order between form fields can be controlled by dragging any field’s yellow sequence number (visible when in Edit Dynamic Annotations mode) to another field. This will swap the order of those two fields. The Clear All Form Fields menu item under the Dynamic Annotations menu is useful to clear any and all text currently in form fields in the document, prior to exporting the document to PDF.
Form fields can be reset with a reset form action. Usually this action is assigned to a button widget annotation that is appropriately named.
If you want to highlight a form field annotation by putting a frame around it you can do so quickly by selecting the annotation, then bringing up the contextual menu of the view and selecting on of the options under Frame Selected Annotations.
Currently (up to Mac OS X 10.5.6) a limitation in the system software prevents filled out forms to be exported to PDF while retaining the data entered by the user. To retain the data you need to print to PDF. This option is issuing the print command and then, in the print dialog, clicking the PDF button at the bottom left and choosing the option Save as PDF… This limitation is likely to be lifted in the future. It is however currently possible to save a filled out form as a regular PDFClerk Pro document, and open it later with user entered data intact. This enables the filling out of a form over the course of several session.
Button Widget Annotations
Button Widget Annotations provide user interactivity on a page of a PDF document. There are three types of buttons available: push button, radio button, and checkbox. Depending on the type of button there are different values that may be defined:
- be defined: The button’s caption. Available only for push buttons. This is the text displayed in the button.
- The field name. Available to all button styles.
- The on state text. This is the string that is associated with the on state of a radio button or checkbox control. This text is not shown to the user, but is important when retrieving information on submitted forms. The off state text is always “off”.
For check boxes, to have the buttons behave independently they each need a unique field name.
For groups of radio buttons, each individual button in the group should have the same field name as the others, but a different on state value. This is required for the group of radio buttons to work correctly as a unit.
Choice Widget Annotations
Choice widget annotations provide interactivity in the form of pop-up menus and lists. You can set the type of list in the inspector. New choice widget annotations default to pop-up menu style.
Each choice widget annotation can define a list of possible choices and a default value that is shown when the document is opened. This value need not be, and often is not, an available choice in the list. It may for instance be a text prompting the user to choose an entry from the list.
Static Annotations
Static annotations are burned into the page when the PDF document is created. Most software (including PDFClerk) cannot alter this content, or only offers limited editing capability. (Note however that these annotations always remain editable in the PDFClerk file.
To edit static annotations activate the Edit Static Annotations work mode [⌘3]. When the mode is active all static annotations are marked with a red rectangle along their border. Selected annotations will also show manipulation handles, which can be used for resizing and/or rotating the annotations directly on the page.
Static annotation properties can be edited in the Metrics and the Appearance Inspector. As with other annotations you can either tell PDFClerk you want a new static annotation and then drag a selection to size an annotation, or click on a page for an annotation to appear, or you can select some text and then select one of the static annotation shapes from the menu. This will create an annotation whose bounds neatly enclose the selected text.
Sticky Sketch Annotations (for hand writing)
You can place sketch annotations in sticky mode by holding down the option key when you select the option from the menu. The effect is that you can issue multiple strokes for the same sketch annotation. To exit sticky mode press escape, enter or return on the keyboard. This feature is especially useful if you want to write text with a tablet pen onto a PDF page.