The Problem
In the Preview app in macOS (or the Files app in iOS and iPadOS), when a user selects a radio button to "On", the radio button appears to behave as expected (with related radio buttons, sharing the same parent form field, appearing to turn "Off"). Also, as expected, the app indicates that the user has edited the PDF and, as such, is able to save and close the file as normal. On re-opening the file, the radio buttons seem to have been reset and user input lost.
What is Happening
Related radio button annotation widgets share the same parent form field. In the PDF 1.7 specification (ISO PDF32000-2008, s. 12.7.4.2.4), the parent form field object holds the field name property (T), the name object of the appearance state of the kid object currently selected (V), as well as an array of the references to the related radio button kid objects (Kids). Each kid object holds a reference to the parent object (Parent). When the user selects a radio button to be on, the V property is updated in the parent object accordingly.
On saving the PDF, an incremental update to the file is made with an updated copy of the kid object, corresponding to the selected radio box, created. The kid object created for the updated radio box, however, is updated incorrectly with the Parent object reference removed and the properties that ought to reside with the parent object (for V, T, and FT), instead, incorrectly written/merged into the kid object itself. The original parent object (belonging to the shared field form) is not updated with the incremental update in any way.
Impact on User Experience
Radio buttons are not functional, with user-input not properly saved. As such, using Preview to complete a PDF form with radio buttons is not possible. On re-opening the PDF, user input to the state of radio buttons appear not to have been saved.
Affected Apps/OSs:
Preview (macOS 12 and above) and Files (iOS 16 and iPadOS 16)
Related Sample of Code
Radio button annotation widget object (11 0 obj) and form field parent object (16 0 obj) in original PDF file:
11 0 obj
<<
/Border [ 0 0 0 ]
/Rect [ 433 405 453 425 ]
/F 4
/BS 13 0 R
/Subtype /Widget
/DA (/Helvetica 13 Tf 0 g)
/MK 14 0 R /C [ 0 ]
/AP 15 0 R /M (D:20230803164805Z00'00')
/AS /Off
/Parent 16 0 R
/Type /Annot
/Ff 32768
>>
endobj
16 0 obj
<<
/V /
/Kids [ 10 0 R 11 0 R ]
/T (button2)
/FT /Btn
>>
endobj
15 0 obj
<<
/N 17 0 R
>>
endobj
17 0 obj
<<
/Ted 18 0 R
/Off 20 0 R
>>
endobj
Copy of object (11 0 obj) created with incremental update of PDF, included in saved file following user selection:
11 0 obj
<<
/C [ 0 ]
/FT /Btn
/F 4
/BS <<
/W 0
>>
/Subtype /Widget
/DA (//Helvetica 13 Tf 0 g)
/Type /Annot
/Border [ 0 0 0 ]
/M (D:20230803164805Z00'00')
/Rect [ 433 405 453 425 ]
/MK <<
/BG [ 0.75 ]
>>
/AP <<
/N <<
/Off 53 0 R
/Ted 57 0 R
>>
>>
/T (button2)
/AS /Ted
/Ff 32768
/V /Ted
>>
endobj
A bug report, describing as much, was submitted to Apple (FB9978281).
Post not yet marked as solved
Currently I am displaying a pdf in one of my apps using the PDFKit. When I tap on the pdf view there is a strange crash happening related to the the text ranges conversion. No issues with iOS 16, seems to happen only in iOS 17
0x0000000117092fa1 in void PageLayout::ConvertTextRangesToStringRanges<std::__1::span<CFRange, 18446744073709551615ul>, std::__1::back_insert_iterator<std::__1::vector<CFRange, std::__1::allocator<CFRange> > > >(std::__1::span<CFRange, 18446744073709551615ul>&&, std::__1::back_insert_iterator<std::__1::vector<CFRange, std::__1::allocator<CFRange> > >&&) const ()
Post not yet marked as solved
I use PDFView to show PDF files. A PDFView has several editmenu items in advance. Among them, I want to remove the highlight from the item. So, I made PDFView subclass and overrode canPerformAction and buildMenu respectively, but I could not remove the highlight item from the editmenu. If you know how to remove the highlight item, please let me know. Thanks for reading my post.
Post not yet marked as solved
I have the following code in a prototype application that displays text with a link and presents it in a PDFView.
let a4SizePageRect = CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: 595.2, height: 841.8)
let renderer = UIGraphicsPDFRenderer(bounds: a4SizePageRect)
let title = "Some Title Link"
let attributedTitle = NSMutableAttributedString(string: title, attributes: [
.font: UIFont.boldSystemFont(ofSize: 24),
.link: "<insert here some correct link>",
.underlineStyle: NSUnderlineStyle.single.rawValue
])
let data = renderer.pdfData { ctx in
ctx.beginPage()
attributedTitle.draw(in: a4SizePageRect.insetBy(dx: 25, dy: 25))
}
pdfView.document = PDFDocument(data: data)
The link only works on iOS 15 versions, but does not work on iOS 16.4 and iOS 17 RC.
Based on the documentation for the property and NSAttributedString, the link attribute should still work.
Has NSAttributedString stopped supporting NSAttributedString.Key.link in recent versions of iOS?
I have a problem with the Notes app on ios17. When I open a pdf file that I created from scanning a document with my iPhone 14, I can't select any text from the pdf. This makes it impossible to copy and paste anything from my pdf. Is anyone else having this issue?
Post not yet marked as solved
I have a 52-page document authored in Pages that contains many equations, most of them pertaining to matrix algebra with many subscripts. Using Pages v13.2 on macOS 14.0 Sonoma (23A344), the exported PDF version of the document does not render the equations correctly. In particular, equations containing a vertical bar "|" are rendered without the vertical bar in the PDF document. For example, an equation for a probability expression of "P(x|y)" gets exported to PDF as "P(x y)".
In particular, the Pages "blahtex" form for a discrete-time system equation is
\mathbf{x}_{k+1} = \mathbf{\Phi}_{k+1|k} \mathbf{x}_k + \mathbf{u}_k + \mathbf{\Gamma}_{k+1|k} \mathbf{w}_k
In Pages, this gets correctly rendered as
whereas, in the exported PDF document, it gets incorrectly rendered as
Also, using \vert or \mid to generate the "|" in the equation does not help; the PDF export is still missing the "|" symbol.
If I save the document in Microsoft Word format and then export to PDF, the equations are rendered correctly.
Reverting to Pages v13.1 from Time Machine does not fix the issue; the exported PDF is still wrong. It should be noted that when I used Pages v13.1 in Ventura, exported PDF equations rendered correctly.
There may be other formulations that are broken that I have not yet encountered. In addition, my equations in Keynote suffer from the same problem when I export them to PDF. I know that macOS Sonoma removed EPS support, but it looks like other things got broken with this change.
I don't want to convert all of my Pages documents to Microsoft Word, but unless this gets fixed, Pages has become useless to me for technical documentation. I'm an engineer with a lot of documents, so this has pretty much brought my workflow to a halt.
I've submitted a bug report to Apple (FB13208972), but I am interested if anyone else is experiencing this problem.
Post not yet marked as solved
Recently, our app crash monitor detect a lot of PDFKit crash problem at iOS 15.3:
MACH_Exception EXC_BREAKPOINT EXC_ARM_BREAKPOINT fault_address:0x00000001809a52d8
Thread 67 name: PDFKit.PDFTilePool.workQueue
0
CoreFoundation
_CFRetain (in CoreFoundation)
1
CoreGraphics
_CGColorRetain (in CoreGraphics)
2
PDFKit
-[PDFPage _drawWithBox:inContext:withRotation:isThumbnail:withAnnotations:withBookmark:withDelegate:] (in PDFKit)
3
PDFKit
-[PDFPage drawWithBox:inContext:isThumbnail:] (in PDFKit)
4
PDFKit
-[PDFView drawPage:toContext:] (in PDFKit)
5
PDFKit
-[PDFTilePool _renderTileForRequest:] (in PDFKit)
6
libdispatch.dylib
__dispatch_call_block_and_release (in libdispatch.dylib)
7
libdispatch.dylib
__dispatch_client_callout (in libdispatch.dylib)
8
libdispatch.dylib
__dispatch_lane_serial_drain (in libdispatch.dylib)
9
libdispatch.dylib
__dispatch_lane_invoke (in libdispatch.dylib)
10
libdispatch.dylib
__dispatch_workloop_worker_thread (in libdispatch.dylib)
11
libsystem_pthread.dylib
__pthread_wqthread (in libsystem_pthread.dylib)
12
libsystem_pthread.dylib
_start_wqthread (in libsystem_pthread.dylib)
It crash at the thread: PDFKit.PDFTilePool.workQueue
Anyone got the same problem? Is there any solutions for this problem?
Post not yet marked as solved
Hello,
We have functionality in an existing app, have to generate a pdf and it should be printable in the A4. The PDF is almost 8 to 10 pages
I have applied below solution:
Loading the HTML template on the WKwebview and doing a few operations on the content and converting it into a pdf.
Converting the HTML into a string
Replacing a few data with dynamic content
Issue:
The solutions worked fine in the previous OS(14.5,15.5,16.1), it is not working on the latest os 16.6
The Table background CSS is not Rendering. I have tried both Inline and external CSS loading but still facing the same issue.
Approch1:
func createPDF(formmatter: UIViewPrintFormatter, filename: String) -> String {
let attributedString = NSAttributedString(string: "This is a test", attributes: [NSAttributedString.Key.foregroundColor: UIColor.red])
let printFormatter = UISimpleTextPrintFormatter(attributedText: attributedString)
let render = UIPrintPageRenderer()
render.addPrintFormatter(printFormatter, startingAtPageAt: 0)
// 2. Assign print formatter to UIPrintPageRenderer
//let render = UIPrintPageRenderer()
render.addPrintFormatter(formmatter, startingAtPageAt: 0)
// 3. Assign paperRect and printableRect
let page = CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: 595.2, height: 841.8) // A4, 72 dpi
let printable = page.insetBy(dx: 20, dy: 20)
//let printable = page.inset(by: UIEdgeInsets(top: 10, left: 10, bottom: 10, right: 10));
render.setValue(NSValue(cgRect: page), forKey: "paperRect")
render.setValue(NSValue(cgRect: printable), forKey: "printableRect")
// 4. Create PDF context and draw
let pdfData = NSMutableData()
UIGraphicsBeginPDFContextToData(pdfData, CGRect.zero, nil)
for i in 1...render.numberOfPages {
UIGraphicsBeginPDFPage();
let bounds = UIGraphicsGetPDFContextBounds()
render.drawPage(at: i - 1, in: bounds)
}
UIGraphicsEndPDFContext();
// 5. Save PDF file
var dst = self.getDestinationPath(1)
if dst.contains("file://") {
dst = dst.replacingOccurrences(of: "file://", with: "")
}
//let path = "\(NSTemporaryDirectory())\(filename).pdf"
pdfData.write(toFile: dst, atomically: true)
print("open \(dst)")
return dst
}
}
Approach2:
But the pdf is Generating in a single page not multiple and it's not printable using the below solution.
func createPDFMethod(webView: WKWebView, title:String="samplepdf"){
let pdfConfiguration = WKPDFConfiguration()
/// Using `webView.scrollView.frame` allows us to capture the
// entire page, not just the visible portion
pdfConfiguration.rect = CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: webView.scrollView.contentSize.width, height: webView.scrollView.contentSize.height)
webView.createPDF(configuration: pdfConfiguration) { result in
switch result {
case .success(let data):
// Creates a path to the downloads directory
DispatchQueue.main.async {
let resourceDocPath = (FileManager.default.urls(for: .documentDirectory, in: .userDomainMask)).last! as URL
let pdfNameFromUrl = "\(title).pdf"
let actualPath = resourceDocPath.appendingPathComponent(pdfNameFromUrl)
do {
try data.write(to: actualPath, options: .atomic)
print("pdf successfully saved!")
} catch {
print("Pdf could not be saved")
}
}
case .failure(let failure):
print(failure.localizedDescription)
}
}
}
It seems the issue is with UIGraphics or WKwebview formaters.
could you please help me to resolve this issue?
Post not yet marked as solved
Hi there,
I am currently facing an issue with PDFKit page rendering. In one of my application, I have to open annoted PDF for reading and when user tap on particular annotation, I have to jump certain number of pages in same PDF to open the new desired page.
Example: User is on page 2 and when user tap on menu button, I need to navigate directly on page number 8.
With above scenario, my application takes a while to load page number 8 and User can see white screen before loading PDF page. When I checked console log, I can see following as an error.
F.I: App requires to use usePageViewController for pagination.
I am using as per following:
_pdfView = [[PDFView alloc] initWithFrame:[UIScreen mainScreen].bounds];
[view addSubview:self.pdfView];
self.pdfView.delegate = self;
[self.pdfView setAutoScales:true];
[self.pdfView setDisplayDirection:kPDFDisplayDirectionHorizontal];
[self.pdfView usePageViewController:true withViewOptions:nil];
[self.pdfView setBackgroundColor:UIColor.whiteColor];
Warning: Unable to complete drawing page index 24 on time as a request to forceUpdateActivePageIndex:withMaxDuration: 0.02
I hope if someone can help me on that
Thanks.
Post not yet marked as solved
Crashed: com.apple.main-thread
0 CoreFoundation 0x7c59c CFArrayGetCount + 8
1 CorePDF 0x28c1c CGPDFTaggedNodeEnumerateChildren + 52
2 CorePDF 0x28b70 CGPDFTaggedNodeGetBounds + 244
3 PDFKit 0x6400 (Missing UUID 4dedb563f2df3dceae5066d6b4718b9f)
4 UIAccessibility 0x818e0 ___axuiElementForNotificationData_block_invoke + 56
Post not yet marked as solved
PDFKit's PDFPage.characterBounds(at: Int) is returning incorrect coordinates with iOS 17 beta 5 / Xcode 15 beta 6. Worked fine iOS 16 and earlier.
It breaks critical functionality that my app relies on.
I have filed feedback (FB12918701).
Post not yet marked as solved
PDFKit’s characterIndex(at:) method consistently returns the incorrect character index on iOS 17. It seems to get worse the further down the page you get. This breaks critical functionality that my app relies on. Prior to iOS 17, it would be wrong sometimes but not as consistently.
This is the method in question:
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/pdfkit/pdfpage/1503775-characterindex
I've filed feedback FB12951475 with a sample project attached.
Post not yet marked as solved
I've noticed that edit menu with Copy, Look Up, Translate options doesn't appear when I select some text in pdf file loaded in WKWebView. This issue is reproducible on the latest iOS 16 and 17 beta versions.
Additionally, these two WKUIDelegate methods are called for all types of documents except PDFs.
func webView(_ webView: WKWebView, willPresentEditMenuWithAnimator animator: UIEditMenuInteractionAnimating)
func webView(_ webView: WKWebView, willDismissEditMenuWithAnimator animator: UIEditMenuInteractionAnimating)
Is this a bug or is there a new WebKit/PDFKit API I could use to enable this menu?
Feedback ID: FB12759407
Post not yet marked as solved
Hello there, I am trying to follow along with the video and copy the example shown here in SwiftUI. I am given the error Cannot assign value of type 'UIView' to type 'PKCanvasView?' on this line: resultView = overlayView
It is totally possible that I am botching the whole thing up but I would appreciate it if someone looked over my code. Thanks.
code:
// ContentView.swift
import SwiftUI
import PDFKit
import PencilKit
import Foundation
import UIKit
struct PDFUIView: View {
let pdfDoc: PDFDocument
let pdfView: PDFView
init() {
let url = Bundle.main.url(forResource: "example", withExtension: "pdf")!
pdfDoc = PDFDocument(url: url)!
pdfView = PDFView()
}
var body: some View {
VStack {
PDFKitView(showing: pdfDoc, pdfView: pdfView)
}
.padding()
}
}
#Preview {
PDFUIView()
}
struct PDFKitView: UIViewRepresentable {
let pdfDocument: PDFDocument
let pdfView: PDFView
init(showing pdfDoc: PDFDocument, pdfView:PDFView) {
self.pdfDocument = pdfDoc
self.pdfView = pdfView
}
func makeUIView(context: Context) -> PDFView {
pdfView.usePageViewController(true)
pdfView.autoScales = true
pdfView.pageOverlayViewProvider = context.coordinator
pdfView.displayMode = .singlePageContinuous
pdfView.isUserInteractionEnabled = true
pdfView.document = pdfDocument
pdfView.delegate = context.coordinator
return pdfView
}
func updateUIView(_ pdfView: PDFView, context: Context) {
pdfView.document = pdfDocument
}
func makeCoordinator() -> Coordinator {
Coordinator()
}
}
class Coordinator: NSObject, PDFPageOverlayViewProvider, PDFViewDelegate {
var pageToViewMapping = [PDFPage: UIView]()
func pdfView(_ view: PDFView, overlayViewFor page: PDFPage) -> UIView? {
var resultView: PKCanvasView? = nil
if let overlayView = pageToViewMapping[page] {
resultView = overlayView
} else {
var canvasView = PKCanvasView(frame: .zero)
canvasView.drawingPolicy = .anyInput
canvasView.tool = PKInkingTool(.pen, color: .systemCyan, width: 20)
canvasView.backgroundColor = UIColor.clear
pageToViewMapping[page] = canvasView
resultView = canvasView
}
let page = page as! MyPDFPage
if let drawing = page.drawing {
resultView?.drawing = drawing
}
return resultView
}
func pdfView(_ pdfView: PDFView, willDisplayOverlayView overlayView: UIView, for page: PDFPage) {
guard let overlayView = overlayView as? PKCanvasView else {
return
}
guard let canvasView = pageToViewMapping[page] else {
return
}
let page = page as! MyPDFPage
page.drawing = overlayView.drawing
pageToViewMapping.removeValue(forKey: page)
}
class MyPDFAnnotation: PDFAnnotation {
override func draw(with box: PDFDisplayBox, in context: CGContext) {
UIGraphicsPushContext(context)
context.saveGState()
let page = self.page as! MyPDFPage
if let drawing = page.drawing {
let image = drawing.image(from: drawing.bounds, scale: 1)
image.draw(in: drawing.bounds)
}
context.restoreGState()
UIGraphicsPopContext()
}
}
class MyPDFPage: PDFPage {
var drawing: PKDrawing?
}
}
Post not yet marked as solved
I'm trying to use PDFPageOverlayViewProvider by copying the code provided in the "What's new in PDFKit" WWDC22 session here: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2022/10089/
I've copied the method implementations and set my pdfView's pageOverlayViewProvider property to the view where I implemented the protocol. However, when I try to run my app, the pdfView(_ view: PDFView, overlayViewFor page: PDFPage) method is never getting called.
Has anyone been able to get this working successfully?
Post not yet marked as solved
Hi,
I'm trying to use PencilKit over PDFKit as described in https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2022/10089/. The thing is I open my custom UIDocument and initialize all its content to feed PDFView. Everything seems to work, I Input sketches in the canvas, PDFPageOverlayViewProvider's overlayView(for:) generates canvas correctly (it seems) but when editing finishes : willEndDisplayingOverlayView never gets called, and when I save the UIDocument (I use document.close(completionHandler:)) contents(forType:) never sees my custom PDFPages and I get no content for sketches.
Does anyone of you have an idea of the lifecycle we should follow to get the methods called ?
Sincerely yours
Post not yet marked as solved
https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2022/10089/
I am trying to run codes about PDFPageOverlayViewProvider, but the codes are not working. I cannot see what I wrote or annotate. Anyone know how can I solve and make this code working?
func pdfView(_ view: PDFView, overlayViewFor page: PDFPage) -> UIView? {
var resultView: PKCanvasView? = nil
if let overlayView = pageToViewMapping[page] {
resultView = (overlayView as! PKCanvasView)
} else {
let canvasView = PKCanvasView(frame: .zero)
canvasView.drawingPolicy = .anyInput
canvasView.tool = PKInkingTool(.pen, color: .yellow, width: 20)
canvasView.backgroundColor = .clear
pageToViewMapping[page] = canvasView
resultView = canvasView
}
let page = page as! WatermarkPage
if let drawing = page.drawing {
resultView?.drawing = drawing
}
return resultView
}
func pdfView(_ pdfView: PDFView, willEndDisplayingOverlayView overlayView: UIView, for page: PDFPage) {
let overlayView = overlayView as! PKCanvasView
let page = page as! WatermarkPage
page.drawing = overlayView.drawing
pageToViewMapping.removeValue(forKey: page)
}
Post not yet marked as solved
I am using QLPreviewController with SwiftUI using UIViewControllerRepresentable. If I try to delete or insert pages of large size PDF, QLPreviewController is not calling delegate methods (didUpdateContentsOf, didSaveEditedCopyOf).
struct QuickLookController: UIViewControllerRepresentable {
@Environment(\.dismiss) var dismiss
weak var delegate: QLPreviewControllerDelegate?
weak var dataSource: QLPreviewControllerDataSource?
func makeUIViewController(context: Context) -> UINavigationController {
let controller = context.coordinator.controller
controller.delegate = delegate
controller.dataSource = dataSource
controller.navigationItem.rightBarButtonItem = context.coordinator.dismissButton
return UINavigationController(rootViewController: controller)
}
func updateUIViewController(_ viewController: UINavigationController, context: UIViewControllerRepresentableContext<QuickLookController>) { }
func makeCoordinator() -> Self.Coordinator {
.init(parent: self)
}
@MainActor
class Coordinator: NSObject {
var parent: QuickLookController
init(parent: QuickLookController) {
self.parent = parent
}
lazy var controller: QLPreviewController = {
let controller = QLPreviewController()
return controller
}()
lazy var dismissButton: UIBarButtonItem = {
let button = UIBarButtonItem(
title: NSLocalizedString("Done", comment: ""),
style: .plain,
target: self,
action: #selector(rightButtonTapped(_:))
)
button.tag = 2
return button
}()
@objc func rightButtonTapped(_ sender: Any) {
controller.dismiss(animated: true)
}
}
}
// MARK: QuickLook
extension ViewerModel: QLPreviewControllerDataSource, QLPreviewControllerDelegate {
public func numberOfPreviewItems(in controller: QLPreviewController) -> Int {
1
}
public func previewController(
_ controller: QLPreviewController,
previewItemAt index: Int
) -> QLPreviewItem {
let title = self.document
.documentURL?
.lastPathComponent ?? ""
let url = PDFManager
.directory
.appendingPathComponent(title) as NSURL
return url as QLPreviewItem
}
public func previewControllerDidDismiss(_ controller: QLPreviewController) {
}
public func previewControllerWillDismiss(_ controller: QLPreviewController) {
}
✔️ It's same even if I set it to updateContents
public func previewController(_ controller: QLPreviewController, editingModeFor previewItem: QLPreviewItem) -> QLPreviewItemEditingMode {
.createCopy
}
✔️ Not called with Large Size PDF
public func previewController(_ controller: QLPreviewController, didUpdateContentsOf previewItem: QLPreviewItem) {
}
✔️ Not called with Large Size PDF
public func previewController(_ controller: QLPreviewController, didSaveEditedCopyOf previewItem: QLPreviewItem, at modifiedContentsURL: URL) {
}
}
Post not yet marked as solved
Hello. There is a "Highlight" context menu option that shows up when a user right-clicks some selected text in a PDF. There is no way to get rid of this menu item and clicking it does nothing. How do I get rid of it?
I tried overriding buildMenu(with builder: UIMenuBuilder) to remove it but that doesn't work. Help!
Post not yet marked as solved
XCode - Swift
private var mPdfView = PDFView()
private var mDocumentData: Data?
mDocumentData = MakePdfDocument()
mPdfView.document = PDFDocument(data: mDocumentData!)
let printInfo = UIPrintInfo(dictionary: nil)
printInfo.outputType = UIPrintInfo.OutputType.general
printInfo.jobName = “JobName”
let printController = UIPrintInteractionController.shared
printController.printInfo = printInfo
printController.printingItem = mPdfView
printController.showsNumberOfCopies = true
printController.present(animated: true, completionHandler: nil)
**When print is executed, only the blank screen is output, not the generated PDF.
How can I print the generated PDF content?**