Convert Irex Notes of new firmware 2.0 BETA

[Mr. X]

Here's a sample pdf from the workflow my papers go through... pdfinfo says it's 1.4 which pdfsharp's FAQ says is fully supported. Not sure which is lying, but for your debugging here you go.

[garywitscher]

Originally Posted by GodzillaNL

I have created a little application which can convert the .note version to XPS or PDF documents so they can be read on a desktop computer.

The .NET framework 3.5 SP1 is required to run, just extract the RAR file and run. To associate the application with all .note files, you must run it as administrator once.

Looking at the archive I see ".exe" files, which means this is a windows only solution? I hope not ... as I run linux ;-). Seeing as how the DR800 runs linux is there any way to do the same thing on a linux platform?

[GodzillaNL]

Originally Posted by garywitscher

Looking at the archive I see ".exe" files, which means this is a windows only solution? I hope not ... as I run linux ;-). Seeing as how the DR800 runs linux is there any way to do the same thing on a linux platform?

Maybe, I hope it will run with Mono on Linux (sometime). Someone with a Mac computer is/was testing this.

[CoolDragon]

Currently I am working on a feature to add the scribbles made on the iRex on PDF files to PDF files, so you can save the PDF with the scribbles on top of it as PDF. And maybe a feature to change the note pages itself. Moving pages in the note deleting pages etc. And of course the option to select the paper size and type . Everything is now A4 paper.

What's the progress on this?

[GodzillaNL]

Originally Posted by CoolDragon

What's the progress on this?

I didn't had a lot of time to work on this project. There isn't much changed. The biggest problem is that I haven't found a free solution to add the scribbles to the PDF files created in later Acrobat versions like 7+. Opening older versions is working.

I am waiting for the final release of firmware 2.0 to finish the latest things for the note scribbles, the current version is working OK.

In the summertime I have some free-time, hopefully I can use some of it to finish this project.

[Mackx]

Hi GodzillaNL,

Xournal also has some code to merge scribbles with PDF, but also seems to have problems with newer pdf formats. Can you share some code or pointers to open source code, it would be good to align the code between the merge code in the PC-tool and Xournal. I think both tools have their own value.

Marcel.

[CoolDragon]

Excuse me, how can I "merge" the scribbles with PDF? I can rename metadata.db to metadata.note and convert it to PDF and it looks good, but where is the option/user interface to merge the scribble with PDF?

[CoolDragon]

OK, I saw the scribbles/annotation in the converted PDF file, it's just in the different page and seems to have a different zoom factor. I don't know what caused this, since this is a "Letter" sized PDF, and I am using DR1000's uds on my DR800.

Anyway, I have attached the PDF with metadata.db, maybe you can have a look at it when you have time.

By the way, GodzillaNL, do you have any plan to open source your code?

[CoolDragon]

Ah, IREX has confirmed that the position and scale information in Beta are screwed up, so they fixed it in the RC releases. And looks like you have to make your changes accordingly.

[CoolDragon]

The latest build of Xjournal does a good job of merging my annotations. But I still prefer to do this on the PC...

[Mackx]

Disadvantages of Xournal are that only up-to version 1.4 of the PDF format is supported for merging (for rendering it uses poppler) and that the merge code, reads the complete pdf file into, the limited, memory of the DR before merging.
Xournal code (see xo_print.c) could be used as a basis for a PC-based program.

[CoolDragon]

Hi Mackx, where is the source code for your port of Xournal?

[GodzillaNL]

Originally Posted by CoolDragon

...

By the way, GodzillaNL, do you have any plan to open source your code?

I think so, I just don't have a lot of time, so finishing the project will take some time. Hopefully someone will take over the project and finishes the merging and maybe adds some additional features.

If a person is willing to take over, the project will be open source: D

[Mackx]

Originally Posted by CoolDragon

Hi Mackx, where is the source code for your port of Xournal?

The last sources that I posted to the forum are here. The difference with the last releases for R2.0 is not that big. If you want I can also send the sources with the next update that I am going to make?
I looked a little deeper into the xournal code for merging annotations. It consists of two part, one to import scribbles from metadata.db files (the part I added) and one to export xournal files, including background pdf as a new pdf file (which already existed in the original code).
I am now not sure if the approach that was choosen for xournal is also a good appraoch for a PC app. Xournal creates a new pdf file and adds to each page the original page as a bitmap (rendered with poppler) and all objects that are created with xournal (including the imported annotations). A PC app should probably keep as much of the structure of the old file and only add extra parts for the annotations. (I.e. create extra objects for the annotations and add them to the /Contents of the original doc. )

B.t.w. the pdf format documentation of Adobe is really good if you want to learn the details of the format. I am looking into it now to see if I can support some of the pdf 1.5 features in the exporting code of xournal, currently only pdf 1.4 is handled correctly as far as I can see.

[CoolDragon]

What I am thinking for PDF annotation merging is that if there are PDF library out there that allow you to annotate the PDF file, so that you can parse the BLOB, and apply that via the SDK.

Quite a few PDF readers have this "pencil markup" feature, and I these markups seems to be like an additional "layer" on top of the original PDF file.

Well, it looks like GodzillaNL's tools is using this method, using PDFsharp.