Add Review Annotations

Use Recipe annotations to add comments, FreeText boxes, or highlights to a new or existing page. Use numeric coordinates for placement.

var pdfDoc = new Recipe("input.pdf", "output.pdf");

pdfDoc
  .editPage(1)
  .comment("Please review this section.", 300, 100, {
    title: "Review",
    replies: [{ text: "Confirmed.", title: "Reviewer" }],
  })
  .annot(100, 200, "Highlight", {
    width: 200,
    height: 14,
    color: "#ffff00",
    opacity: 0.45,
  })
  .text("Reviewed", 100, 250, {
    title: "Review",
    underline: { text: "Approved", color: "#00aa00", opacity: 0.8 },
    strikeOut: { text: "Superseded", color: "#ff0000" },
  })
  .endPage()
  .endPDF();

annot(x, y, subtype, { width, height }) takes the annotation rectangle's top-left corner, like rectangle() and link(); the rectangle extends width to the right and height down from it.

Set opacity from 0 (transparent) to 1 (opaque, the default). Recipe writes the annotation's /CA value; the color option sets its RGB color separately. It takes #rrggbb, %r,g,b, a color registered with chroma(), a CSS color name, or a gray, RGB, or CMYK array of numbers from 0 to 255; any other value throws a TypeError. Both comment() and annot() accept replies, an array of objects with text and optional title, date, subject, richText, flag, and opacity. Each reply is a separate annotation linked to its parent through /IRT and /RT /R. Replies inherit the parent's title, subject, date, flags, open state, and icon. Set a reply's own title, subject, date, or flag to override that metadata. Each reply's opacity defaults to 1, and rich text remains opt-in per reply. Text options highlight, underline, strikeOut, and squiggly also create markup annotations. Their nested object sets text, color, opacity, and replies; put shared metadata such as title, date, and subject on the outer text options. In html: true text, <u> and <del> draw lines in the text color instead of annotations.

Set flag to a Recipe.AnnotFlag value, such as Recipe.AnnotFlag.PRINT, or to a numeric bit mask such as 4; flag names match case-insensitively. An unknown flag name throws Error: Unknown annotation flag (<name>) when annot() or comment() is called. Subtypes are Recipe.AnnotSubtype values, matched case-insensitively and written with their PDF casing.

With textBox.wrap: "clip", text-markup rectangles and quadrilaterals are limited to the line's visible clipping region. Hidden portions of the text do not create markup outside that region.

Markup also works on pages created while modifying an existing document. Justified text uses markup bounds that include the expanded spaces between words.

Set richText: true on a comment to use supported HTML formatting.

title, subject, and contents are written as PDF text strings, so non-ASCII characters display correctly in PDF viewers. 0 and false are preserved as "0"/"false" rather than becoming an empty title or subject.

To change or remove an annotation that is already in a document, see Edit or Remove an Existing Annotation.