Annotations.md

Annotations

The PDF format allows to add various annotations to a document.

Text annotations

They are rendered this way by Sumatra PDF reader:

from fpdf import FPDF

pdf = FPDF()
pdf.add_page()
pdf.set_font("Helvetica", size=24)
pdf.text(x=60, y=140, txt="Some text.")
pdf.text_annotation(
    x=100,
    y=130,
    text="This is a text annotation.",
)
pdf.output("text_annotation.pdf")

Named actions

The four standard PDF named actions provide some basic navigation relative to the current page: NextPage, PrevPage, FirstPage and LastPage.

from fpdf import FPDF
from fpdf.actions import NamedAction

pdf = FPDF()
pdf.set_font("Helvetica", size=24)
pdf.add_page()
pdf.text(x=80, y=140, txt="First page")
pdf.add_page()
pdf.underline = True
for x, y, named_action in ((40, 80, "NextPage"), (120, 80, "PrevPage"), (40, 200, "FirstPage"), (120, 200, "LastPage")):
    pdf.text(x=x, y=y, txt=named_action)
    pdf.add_action(
        NamedAction(named_action),
        x=x,
        y=y - pdf.font_size,
        w=pdf.get_string_width(named_action),
        h=pdf.font_size,
    )
pdf.underline = False
pdf.add_page()
pdf.text(x=80, y=140, txt="Last page")
pdf.output("named_actions.pdf")

Launch actions

Used to launch an application or open or print a document:

from fpdf import FPDF
from fpdf.actions import LaunchAction

pdf = FPDF()
pdf.set_font("Helvetica", size=24)
pdf.add_page()
x, y, text = 80, 140, "Launch action"
pdf.text(x=x, y=y, txt=text)
pdf.add_action(
    LaunchAction("another_file_in_same_directory.pdf"),
    x=x,
    y=y - pdf.font_size,
    w=pdf.get_string_width(text),
    h=pdf.font_size,
)
pdf.output("launch_action.pdf")