[reportlab-users] PDF "pop-ups" considered forgotten?

[Dinu Gherman]

Hi,

reading the PDF 1.4 specification it seems to me like there is no
way to create a "pop-up annotation" like with Canvas.linkURL(), but
*without* a destination to jump to. On Windows and Macs these are
pretty common GUI elements named "baloons" or "tool-tips". Although
the specs name "Pop-up Annotations" in section 8.4.5 (p. 508), the
concept behind them is a different one:

   Pop-up Annotations

   A pop-up annotation (PDF 1.3) displays text in a pop-up window
   for entry and editing. It typically does not appear alone, but
   is associated with another annotation, its parent annotation,
   and is used for editing the parent's text. It has no appearance
   stream or associated actions of its own, and is identified by the
   Popup entry in the parent's annotation dictionary [...].

Does anybody know if there are *really* no pop-ups in the GUI sense?
If so, this is a real shame, because theses things can be incredi-
bly useful.

My first idea for a workaround in that case was to use a normal link
annotation jumping to whereever it already is in the document (by
adding a companion bookmark to the same place/page! But as it turns
out, after changing the action from URI to GoTo in Canvas.linkURL()
the pop-up disappears... which probably had to be expected... but...

It's a real shame!! More and more often I wish PDF had more features
of SVG...

Regards,

Dinu

--
Dinu C. Gherman
......................................................................
"There are causes worth dying for, but none worth killing for."
(Albert Camus)