Hack 72 Share PDF Comments Online (Even Without Acrobat)

Use our PDF skins to add commenting features to PDF pages .

Using Acrobat, you can add various comments and annotations to PDF pages. You can also share these comments via email or by configuring Acrobat's Online Comments. These collaboration tools require all contributors to have Acrobat; they do not work with Reader. And, in general, all contributors must have the same version of Acrobat.

Instead, add online commenting features to PDF pages with our PDF skins [Hack #71] and a couple PHP scripts. Users don't need Acrobat, so it works on Mac and Linux as well as Windows. And, you can integrate PDF comments with your site's current commenting system. Our Comments skin, shown in Figure 5-18, will get you up and running. View our online example at http://www.pdfhacks.com/eno/skinned_comments/.

Figure 5-18. The Comments skin, which adds another pane (left) for reader comments

5.23.1 Skinning PDF, Adding Comments

See [Hack #71] to learn how to skin a PDF. Instead of using the template pdfskins_classic_php-1.0.zip , download pdfskins_classic_comments-1.0.zip . This Comments skin is the same as the php skin except it adds showannot.php and saveannot.php .

Skin a PDF with our comments template and move the results into a directory on your web server. Your server must have permission to write in this directory so that it can create and maintain comments. Point your web browser to this URL and the commenting frame should be visible on the right. Enter a comment into the field and click Add Comment. Your comment should appear above.

5.23.2 Hacking the Hack

Our commenting script saves page comments in text files. To reduce the chance of a file access collision, it copies the current comments to a temporary file before appending a new comment. When it is done, it replaces the original comments file with the updated temporary file. Even so, if two users submit comments simultaneously , they still might collide. Consider adapting the script so that it stores comments in a database instead of a text file.