Annotations and Links in PDF Files
From Scribus Documentation Project
Contents |
Creating a PDF Annotation
PDF annotations can be useful for many purposes, and their advantages aren't limited to PDF forms. For instance, it's possible to send a PDF proof to customers and add annotations to get some feedback or to tell them you need a different file.
Here is a summary of what we need to do:
- Create a text frame, enter text
- Check context menu, PDF Options > Is PDF Annotation
- Context menu, open Annotation Properties
- Select "Text" from drop down list
To create a PDF annotation, create a text frame where you want the annotation to be displayed. Open the Story Editor and type your text. Note that you can't choose any text formatting for annotations.
In our example we want to tell someone that we need an image at a higher resolution.
After typing the text, close the Story Editor. Don't be scared when you see unreadable text above the image. Annotations won't be visible in a PDF viewer, and they won't print either:
Next, open the context menu and check PDF Options > Is PDF Annotation:
Open the context menu again and click PDF Options > Annotation Properties:
Choose "Text" from the drop down list:
Now export your document as a PDF file and open it in Adobe Reader. There you see that the annotation is indicated by a page symbol. If you hover your mouse over the icon, the annotation is displayed:
Internal Links
Another feature of PDF annotations is their use as links, like you are used to from web pages. You can create links within a document, links to external PDF files or hyperlinks.
To create a link within a document, select "Link" from the drop down list in the Annotation Properties. Under "Destination" you can choose the page to which you want to link to. Scribus will display a preview of the selected page, so that you can easily select a destination with the mouse. If you need more precision, you can set the X and Y coordinates.
External Links
If you are using Scribus for presentations, it can be useful to link to another PDF file which could be opened in the same viewing application. Choose "External Link" from the drop down list. Scribus will now open a file dialog from which you can choose the file. Once you have selected a PDF file, Scribus opens the Annotation Properties, where you can choose the page to link to as well as the X and Y coordinates on the page:
Note that Scribus saves the absolute paths to external files.
External Web Links
If you select "External Web Link", Scribus lets you insert a hyperlink. In most cases you will enter a web adress, like www.scribus.net, but you can also enter an email address. Just like in HTML pages you have to insert "mailto:" before the email address, eg. mailto:person@address.net. If properly configured, your email program will be opened through your browser.
Some Additional Notes
- Regardless of the size of your annotation frame, the clickable area for the Text type will be a small area near the page icon.
- In contrast, for a Link, External Link, or External Web-Link the clickable area is determined by the size of your frame – you will see the pointing hand icon appear.
- Consider these as special text frames, since any text frame can become an annotation or link. The text content becomes your annotation for text type. For links, any text is invisible. For all types, any background or line color is invisible.
- You can, of course, convert an image, shape, or polygon frame to a text frame, then to an annotation. The image will disappear in Scribus and in the PDF. For shapes and polygons Scribus will continue to show the shape and its associated colors. When you export to PDF, however, the colors disappear, and the clickable area is the rectangular bounding box, not just the shape or polygon.









