Retain annotations when embedding pages

[juanludlf]

Annotations are retained by using copyPages but they are not retained with the embedPage method.

Is there any way to retain annotations when embedding pages?

[acoyfellow]

I ran into the same issue. I also needed a way to add more annotations on the fly. Here was my solution:

const existingAnnots = page.node.Annots().array;
const annots = [ ...existingAnnots ];
/* create new annots, push into array */
await page.node.set(PDFName.of('Annots'), pdfDoc.context.obj(annots));

[juanludlf]

Hi @acoyfellow,
Thanks for the solution. The point is we need to scale the embedded page (and all included objects, like annotations) before call drawPage.
If we copy annotations after page has been scaled, how can we scale them according to the new dimensions of the page?

[Hopding]

https://pdf-lib.js.org/docs/api/classes/pdfpage#drawpage can't (and won't) preserve annotations. You should use https://pdf-lib.js.org/docs/api/classes/pdfdocument#addpage instead.

[juanludlf]

Hi @Hopding,
But addPage doest not accept a PDFEmbeddedPage. What if I need to scale the page before adding it to the document?
Thank you

[juanludlf]

I've just seen a PR in progress that will solve this problem: #991

[wildhart]

I don't think PR #991 completely solves the original problem: How to embed PDF at given cooridinates and scale on a page and retain annotations. This requirement comes from needing to embed an external pdf into my document, but I need my own border around the embeded pages, and my own header, footer and page numbers as the embeded pdf is part of a larger document.

Here's the problems:

• Using page.drawPage() only takes an embeddedPage, not another page instance, and as per this original bug report, embedded pages do not retain their annotations.
• Using doc.addPage() retains annotations. Then it's possible to use page.scaleContent(); page.scaleAnnotations() and then page.translateContent() but there is no page.translateAnnotations() method, so it's not possible to scale and translate the embedded pdf annotations into the center of my own page.

@Hopding can you suggest a work-around for this?