Saving annotations

Bug #1514295 reported by Luc C.
6
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
qpdfview
Opinion
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

There is a problem with saving annotation: when doing files->save, it does save a copy of the PDF but without the annotations!

However, when closing the PDF, there is a message asking if one wants to save the PDF, this one works well. The annotations are saved correctly with the PDF.

Revision history for this message
Adam Reichold (adamreichold) wrote :

Hello Luc,

thank you for taking the time to report this. Maybe this is a translation issue? The two actions in the file menu are called "Save copy" and "Save as" where the first saves an unmodified copy of the original file and second one also saves any modifications made. (The question upon closing a modified document of course triggers the second action.)

So could you check that using "Save as" saves annotations? If so, everything seems to work as intended.

Best regards, Adam.

Changed in qpdfview:
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Philipp (murks-z) wrote :

Adam, for me it works as you describe, but that is by no means what I expected.
I think that 'Save Copy' should preserve modifications.
IMHO having two save options is superfluous anyway, just "save as" is sufficient. If you want a unmodified copy, just copy the original using a file manager or before annotation.

The way it is now is unexpected and will cause users to lose annotations.

Version 0.4.16

Revision history for this message
Adam Reichold (adamreichold) wrote :

Hello again,

having the separate Save copy action is rather useful for example when directly opening a document from web browser, sometimes one wants to permanently save the file, sometimes not. The naming itself is rather customary for PDF reader, I would say which is why I would like to keep it as it is.

Best regards, Adam.

Changed in qpdfview:
status: Incomplete → Opinion
Revision history for this message
LH (lh89) wrote :

Guys - the "ctrl-s" behavior of qpdfview is incredibly non-intuitive.

It is a widely accepted convention that when using an editor (text editor, document editor, photo editor, etc), a user can press "ctrl-s" to save their latest edits to the currently open file.

Many users do this frequently, e.g. "I've just made multiple changes, better save my work."

qpdfview currently goes directly against the grain on this convention.

Pressing ctrl-s in qpdfview saves a clean copy of the file WITHOUT all your recent edits.

I almost discarded qpdfview after several usages because I thought it wasn't working (e.g. spend 20 minutes adding various annotations to a PDF, ctrl-s, exit... can't see my annotations on the PDF - where'd all my work go?).

Perhaps the most common use case in any editor is:

 1. open existing file
 2. make edits to file
 3. save changes to file

     (repeat 2 and 3 many times)

 4. close file

The current setup makes 3 more painful than it should be.

Currently when saving your edits to the current file, you have to go a "save-as" type dialog, select the current file (again) and overwrite it.

Suggestion: As a general principle - make the most common use cases easy. Don't buck accepted convention.

I would suggest either:

Option 1) Make ctrl-s work like every other editor I know of - save the latest edits to the currently open file

Option 2) At least add another menu item that is "save state of current file", so I don't have to go through the save-as workflow just to save edits to the currently open file.

---

You can still have the "Save copy" functionality, just don't wire it to ctrl-s. You might also consider rewording it to something like "Save Clean Copy" or "Save Without Annotations" so its clear that your annotations are NOT being saved for this operation.

Revision history for this message
Adam Reichold (adamreichold) wrote :

Hello LH,

the keyboard shortcut is not hard coded, you can "wire" it any way you like. I am open to adding a third option that basically does "Save as" with the current path as the target, i.e. "Save" instead of "Save copy". But please file a separate wish list bug for exactly that purpose instead of reusing this one.

Please also note that qpdfview is not an editor, it is primarily used to view content and annotating this content is not the most common use case. From my own experience and discussions with an unrepresentative set of users, the web browser use case is more common.

Best regards, Adam.

Revision history for this message
Ryan (rviertel) wrote :

Hi Adam,

Can you explain to me the rational behind the "save copy" functionality? Presumably if you are viewing the document, you already have a copy of the file, so why save another copy? It doesn't prompt to save to another location so presumably its saving to the same place? Perhaps I am misunderstanding the intended functionality.

Either way, I agree with the other comments that this is incredibly unintuitive, if changes are made (whether the software is primarily an editor or not) one expects those changes to be saved.

Revision history for this message
Ryan (rviertel) wrote :

As an edit to my comment, save copy does prompt for a new save location

Revision history for this message
Adam Reichold (adamreichold) wrote :

Hello Ryan,

as explained above, the "Save copy" action is for example used when you open a temporary file that was created by your web browser and you decide to keep the document and save it to its final location. For a lot of people, this is a very common work flow when searching for PDF documents on the web.

Also have a look at the latest source from trunk, e.g. via the dailydebs, which does provide "Save", "Save as" and "Save copy" with configurable keyboard shortcuts as usual, which should make everybody happy enough.

Regards, Adam.

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