Introducing an All-New Annotation List, Viewer and API Improvements, and More

Our PDFTron iOS SDK continues to grow -- faster than we can report! So in this post, we do a little catch up, combining news of the latest changes in back-to-back releases, version 9.0.1 and 9.0.0, each giving developers more options to build professional mobile solutions tailor-fit to your requirements.

Major additions include:

• All-New Annotation List Replies
• Crop Pages Control
• Viewer and API Improvements

For the complete list of improvements, visit our detailed changelogs !

All-New Annotation List Replies

The PTAnnotationViewController now supports viewing and replying to comments in discussion threads, which is especially useful for collaboration. This feature can be automatically enabled when using a PTCollaborationDocumentController or programmatically enabled with the annotationRepliesEnabled API.

Crop Pages Control

Also new is a PTPageCropViewController to let users crop pages. By default this can be accessed from the Document View Settings Controller. The viewer provides two options for crop: one can perform an automatic crop based on the page contents or have the user specify a region of the document's pages to crop manually.

Viewer Improvements

Next, we touched up the viewer to make the experience more intuitive:

• The PTThumbnailsViewController has the added ability to export selected thumbnails as a new document.
• The Navigation Lists Controller (that displays the outline, bookmarks, annotation, and OCG layer lists) can now be user-resized on iPads.
• The view settings dialog now optionally includes a switch to enable right-to-left viewing, automatically enabled if running on a device with a RTL UI. This feature can be programmatically controlled via the viewModeRightToLeftHidden API.
• Added a new cloudy border option when creating rectangle annotations.

API Improvements

We also added more options to the APIs for greater control over the look, feel, and behavior of applications.

• A number of new APIs have been added to the Document View Settings Controller allowing for easy customization.
• There is a new admin mode for the collaboration viewer. Users can typically only modify and delete annotations they created, but now admins can modify and delete any annotation by any user.
• Added a new PTPencilDrawingCreateDelegate protocol which provides a strokeAdded: callback when a new stroke is added using the PTPencilDrawingCreate tool.
• The annotations in the PTAnnotationViewController can now be hidden via the new annotationsHidden property.
• There is a new API, pageIndicatorAlwaysVisible, to allow the page number indicator to always remain visible.

And More....

Other enhancements in 9.0.0 and 9.0.1 include:

• XCFrameworks are now available via CocoaPods . This is the recommended way of integrating the PDFTron SDK when using CocoaPods — please update to the latest version of CocoaPods.
• The popover menu no longer shows every time an annotation is moved, but only when the annotation is tapped.
• The eraser tool will delete whole objects instantly, rather than on a touchUp event.
• When the PDF is rendered in dark mode, creating and editing annotations will now use the same dark-mode rendered colours (as opposed to the light-mode colours).
• The PTDiffViewController now supports text diffs (similar to a source-control diff, showing added and deleted text), in addition to the existing pixel-overlay diff functionality.
• Improved the visibility of the Complete Annotation button when creating Polyline, Polygon, and Cloud annotations.

We hope you like these changes and any feedback is greatly appreciated. Please don't hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or suggestions for future updates. As always, we have some great new features coming soon so please stay tuned!