Sync PDF

[ For iStorm 3.0 or later running on Panther 10.3 or later versions of OS X ]

PDF document format has become the standard across most digital platforms and your fruit of collaboration will assume its form at one stage or another. Current OS X (Panther) allows in-line viewing of a pdf document. Just drop one in the main text view of iStorm and you will be able to see it right away without having to open a pdf viewing program.

iStorm 3.0 and later versions go one step further, by allowing users to add shared annotations and synchronize page navigation on the fly. (A blue-laser pointer is included.)

Definitions and Descriptions of the PDF Annotation Tools

PDF Viewer

This is the window that opens up when you double-click on a pdf content which was dragged into the main iStorm document window. Only one pdf viewer can be open at a time. To view a different pdf content, double click on it in the main document and it will automatically switch to display the newly chosen content.

Mother Document

You can drag in pdf files into a single iStorm document, which will be displayed inline without having to open a separate PDF Viewer (such as Preview or Acrobat) program. Typically, one may have several iStorm documents open, each containing a few imported pdf files. One opens a particular pdf file by double clicking on it in the iStorm document window. The mother document is the iStorm document from which the pdf file was double-clicked on. When another pdf file is double clicked on, the PDF Viewer will automatically change its display and also updates its knowledge about the mother document for the current display. Only the person who has control of the mother document (who sees the blue button at the bottom of the mother document) may modify annotations during a collaboration.

Annotation Tools toolbar item

This includes Text Annotation, Line Annotation, Box Annotation, Arrow Annotation, Details Tool, MoveView Tool, Scale and DragPage Tool, LaserPointer Tool, Selection Tool. When none is selected, the tool defaults to the Selection Tool, which allows you to select annotations and move or delete them. (This is active only when you have the control of the document.)

If the mother document is in the collaboration mode with other users connected to it, only the user who has control of the mother document (that is the iStorm main window from which the current pdf content was taken) will be able to use some of these tools to change annotations.

When you are done with a chosen tool, press the button again to switch back to the selection mode (with the regular arrow cursor).

Sync/NoSync toolbar item

This switches on or off the synchronized navigation of pages. During a collaboration, if each user wants to follow the page navigation performed by the others automatically, you need to do the following: First, PDF viewer should be open with the same PDF content. (Use the chat feature to reach an agreement beforehand. One can verify by comparing the PDF title displayed in the bottom of the PDF viewer window.) Second, the Sync/NoSync toolbar item should be switched on to Sync (indicated by the yellow thunderbolt image).

Once these two conditions are met, whenever a user presses a page navigator button (see below), the viewer in each machine will display the target page. Zooming and rotation of the document will not be synchronized as it is more of individual preferences.

Page Navigator toolbar item

This bar contains the standard page navigation buttons. Note that the functions in this item may or may not be synchronized over network if the users meet the requirement described above regarding Sync/NoSync item.

Annotation Cosmetics toolbar item

You can change the color of annotations using the two color wells in this item. The first color well controls the main (foreground) color of the text, line, box or arrow. The second well controls the background color of the text annotation. The slider changes the transparency of the annotations.

Details and Secrets of Annotation Tools

Select Annotations

When none of the annotation tool in the bar is selected, it is in the default Selection tool state. The Selection tool allows you to select an annotation or group of annotations to move or delete. Note that during collaboration, this will not be allowed unless you are in control of the document. (meaning either local mode (gray button) or blue button in the main iStorm document, which we call mother document here.)

Text Annotation

You use this to add postIt like annotations. Select this tool and click on the location of the PDF page in the PDF Viewer. Type a few words and press Return key to add the line. Type more and keep adding lines. When you are done for the annotation, press Return again with the input box empty. It will finish and add the particular annotation. You can do the same by pressing Esc key. Pressing Esc key will add whatever words you have in the input field to the end of the message before finishing the annotation off. If you have extra hand, you may use mouse to de-select the text tool to finish off. But in this case, the words in the input box will not be added to the existing annotation.

Line Annotation Box Annotation Arrow Annotation

These tools allow you to add simple geometrical shapes as a way to accentuate or to accompany a text annotation. You have control only over their color and position. Just click on the location you want its base point be and drag to the end point. With any of these tools selected, when you choose Select-All in the menu bar, all annotations of the same type in the page, if any, will be selected. You may delete (by pressing delete Key) or move the selected annotations.

Details

The text annotations scale up or down as you zoom in and out the page. Sometimes you may find the text too small to be legible. Choosing this Details tool and clicking on the text annotation will give you its content in legible form as well as by whom and when the annotation was made. Option-clicking will copy the content into clipboard.

Move View

If you have a small monitor, you may want to use this tool to move the displayed PDF page around at a given magnification to show part of it displayed in the center of the PDF Viewer window.

Scale and Drag Page

You added a few annotations on a page, and you want to copy the page the way it looks and drag into the main iStorm document as an image. Choose the scale and Drag Page tool. With the Option key pressed, drag the mouse off the PDF Viewer window into the main document window or into other Applications such as the Finder. You will find that the content of the window as shown will be copied into an image. If part of the page looks truncated, note that it copies only what is visible in the PDF Viewer window. Adjust the window size to accommodate the whole page or use the zoom tool to resize the document. Now try dragging the mouse without option key pressed. Notice that this time, it will draw a lasso rectangle. With the lasso displayed, drag mouse again with option key this time. Notice that the displayed page is now scaled to fit inside the lasso rectangle. This gives you a way to quickly scale down a page and move into other applications as an image.

Laser Pointer

With synchronized PDF page tracking, it naturally occurred to us that iStorm may now function as a presentation tool. With built-in chatting, one can point at a location in the pdf page and talk about it, rest assured everybody else is following you. Unlike other annotation add tools (text, line, etc), laser pointer is communicated immediately whether you are in control of the mother document (blue-mode) or not. Just click here and there. You will see red dots appear and gradually fade away over about 5 seconds. Want to add a quick comment right on the spot to accompany the laser beam? Option-clicking will attach a quick comment input field next to the beam spot so that you can type a chat message. Just like the text annotation tool, pressing return key on the empty line or Esc key will send off the message to the other side. If you hate having to press option key, just drag the mouse a bit to the side when you click the mouse to indicate that you want to add a message. The message accompanying the laser beam is ephemeral. They will flash next to the beam and gradually wear off. So make it concise. These messages will be archived in the usual chat history view of the chat drawer of the mother document. So, if you missed the message since you had Sync off or was looking at a different PDF page, you will still have a chance to browse all PDF related chat messages later. If you happen to be looking at a PDF document all in red color, (are you working on a Hollywood movie script?) or want to try the cool blue-laser pointer (not available yet at your local Sharper Image store), just press Control key when pressing the mouse.

Frequently Asked Questions about PDF

I dragged in a pdf file into my iStorm document and double-click on it to open the pdf Viewer. Nothing happens ?
You are probably using an old version of iStorm (2.xxx or earlier) or on a pre-Panther System (OS X 10.2x or earlier). Please update both iStorm and OS up to date.
How do I save the annotated pdf document as a stand- alone, standard pdf file ?
As long as you keep the original pdf file in the main text of the saved iStorm document, the annotations are active for modifications and sharing by opening in the pdf Viewer window. Often, you may want to save it into the standard pdf file to give to your poor friends who can not run iStorm. In that case, do the following: Make sure that the pdf file is open in the pdf viewer window of iStorm. If not, double click on the pdf file displayed inside an iStorm document to open it in the built-in pdf viewer. Then choose print in the menu bar. In the print sheet, you will find options to preview, save as pdf or even fax (Thanks, Apple.) the annotated pdf content.
How do I turn the laser pointer to blue?
With the laser pointer tool selected, press Control key when you click on the pdf document.
Why can't I continuously drag the laser pointer around like in real life?
We consider the laser pointer waved all across the screen during presentation more distracting than useful. It also floods the precious bandwidth available for iStorm. Therefore we had to disable the line of code ... ;-)
OK. So I have 121 arrows, 244 boxes, and 1023 text annotations added by adviser in page 12 of my thesis. He now asks me to move all text annotations just by a quarter inch to the left. I have other pressing things to do... Should I kill him?
Normally, choosing select-all (Cmd-A) in the pdf Viewer will select all annotations in the displayed page. Then you can shift-click items to de-select, should you refine selection. A short cut for an extreme case like yours is to select the Text Annotation tool in the toolbar first and then choose the Select-All menu item. It will select the text-annotations only in the page. The same applies to lines, boxes... Then drag them to the desired position. As for your last question, we hope you only meant it figuratively.
Sometimes, I can not add or delete an annotation ?
This is probably because the mother document is being modified by another person. Remember that the annotations for pdf are treated like other contents of its mother (iStorm) document and subject to the same blue-green-red button rules. But also note that some other functions which do not change the content of annotations, (such as laser pointers and transient chat messages attached to the pointer, or moving or zooming of the viewing area ) remain free of this constraint.
I had worked on a pdf content locally, adding 100s of annotations. Then I joined a collaboration using the same document, only to find that all those are wiped out by what the on-going collaboration had at the time I joined. Isn't this brutal?
Yes. It is. But it is also designed to be that way, following the behavior already established for other content of an iStorm document used in a collaboration. When you join an on-going collaboration, there are limited logical possibilities. Whether you will accept from the group or you will enforce your stuff on the group. As a late-comer, it seems more natural to assume that you will take whatever the rest of the group is at the moment. Given this, it is always a good idea to start (host) a collaboration yourself, rather than joining one, if you have worked on a document a lot in the local mode already. Of course, merging everything is another possibility. In some cases, this may be preferable, but in most cases, it will lead to confusion whenever a new person joins a group, keeping everybody in suspense.
How are the annotations saved? Are they compatible with annotations standards available with Acrobat Pro?
The annotations added in iStorm PDF Viewer is proprietary and will not be recognized as annotations. When you create a new pdf document with annotations using the Print as PDF method described earlier, the annotations will be all incorporated into a regular PDF document, barring any modifications henceforth. Also note that if you delete the dragged in pdf file from the iStorm document window, all annotations associated with the particular pdf file will not be saved.
How does iStorm recognize pdf files uniquely?
Good question. Suppose, out of curiosity, you create a situation (will require some ingenuous thinking and lots of experience with iStorm collaboration...) where user A has a pdf document named "aPDFDocument.pdf" in a shared iStorm session, while user B has a different pdf document but named just the same. Will it break consistent synchronized page tracking as well as annotation attachment? iStorm identifies each pdf document by the combination of its original name and the last modification date. So, different pdf documents, even with the same name, will most of the time will be recognized as different as long as the modification dates are different. In a shared iStorm session, since any source pdf file in the iStorm document is synchronized anyway, the chance that an exception occurs is little. Of course, this is not totally water tight. In our recent test with researchers at Caltech, we found that the time stamp function we use was too clever: it automatically converts to the format of local time zone, therefore beating our initial expectation. Therefore, we had to make a small remedial correction (v3.3) to use the universal time format for it to work across the continent. If any further inconsistency arises due to wrong identification of pdf documents, please let us know. You may win a free license for that!