Printed annotations not always displaying text

[andy]

Which product are you using?
PDF.js Express Plus

PDF.js Express Version
8.7.0

Detailed description of issue
We noticed a strange behavior when printing a document, sometimes the annotation text appears with its highlighted text displayed and sometimes it does not. Example: If you highlight text on a document, and then goto print and include annotations / comments, the highlight annotation includes the text which you highlighted. But it doesn’t always work, sometimes the highlighted text annotation doesn’t show anything.

Expected behaviour
Is it supposed to include the highlighted text in the print? If so we would like it to always show up, as sometimes it does not.

Does your issue happen with every document, or just one?
It happens randomly on any document.

Link to Document
https://storage.googleapis.com/dev-myindago-sba-pdfexpress/APP_215256_215256ORIG1S000LTR.PDF

In the example above you can see the first Highlight by Kara Smith showing the highlighted text. Then look at the last Highlight by Andy Herman and you’ll see nothing is displayed.

[system]

Hello, I’m Ron, an automated tech support bot

While you wait for one of our customer support representatives to get back to you, please check out some of these documentation pages:

Guides:

• Saving a document with annotations
• Merge & extract annotation in PDF.js Express
• XFDF format - In PDF.js Express Web Viewer

APIs:

• Core.Annotations.TextHighlightAnnotation - new TextHighlightAnnotation( [initializer])
• Core.Annotations.PolylineAnnotation - new PolylineAnnotation( [initializer])
• Core.Annotations.FreeTextAnnotation - new FreeTextAnnotation( [intent] [, initializer])

Forums:

• Highlight text and persist before rendering pdf
• Highlight tool trigger as left click
• PDF.js Express showing hidden from fields?

[dfelix]

Hello @andy

Could you send me the file with annotations that trigger this behavior? This might be related to the actual text that is being selected, so it would be great to have that file.

[andy]

Hello @dfelix I just included a link to the document.

[dfelix]

Hello @andy

Yeah, yeah, I’ve noticed that, but the document does not have the annotations that triggered that screenshot/behavior that you mentioned.

Could you annotate the document in a way that would trigger that behavior and send it over?

[andy]

@dfelix Its just a simple highlight and print, the only difference I can see is the older annotations were done back in Feb 2022, which would mean an earlier version of the plugin.

When you annotate any document and goto print can you see the highlighted text indicated in the document?

[dfelix]

Hello @andy

I was not able to reproduce this issue on our online demo (PDF.js Viewer Demo | PDF.js Express). It is consistently not showing any text.

Here is the resulting print saved as PDF: print-test-comment.pdf (742.4 KB)

What might be not so clear is that the text below the annotation metadata is actually a comment made on those annotations, not the text that was annotated. You can comment on annotations by opening the notes panel.

Let me know if this clarifies the behavior or if I missed something.

[andy]

@dfelix Yes I see it doing the same on the demo. Is this supposed to be the way it performs? Or did it used to include highlighted text in older versions of the app?

[dfelix]

Hello @andy

Yep, that’s expected. The highlighted text is not supposed to go into the comment area when printing. I can’t remember it being included at any point.

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[andy]

Okay thanks, I’m going to put in a request and see if your team is willing to add it in.