Why are annotations in assignment downloaded form Speedgrader INCOMPLETE and UNPRINTABLE?

[MatthewDunn]

Could someone, please, explain to me:

(1) why annotated files downloaded from Speedgrader do not contain the full text of the annotations?

and

(2) why it is not possible to print out a downloaded PDF in SpeedGrader with its included annotations?

Speedgrader allows an annotated PDF to be downloaded to one's computer.

But, when I look at the file in any PDF viewer (no matter which one I choose), some of the annotations are cut off, and incomplete.  So, it doesn't contain everything I wrote.

Further, when I try to print out said file, no annotations are showing.  Highlighting will show.  Drawing will show.  But, no written annotations will show to be printed.  I figured out that the "Printable" property for annotations in the downloaded PDF's from Speedgrader is set to "No" by default!  And, it's locked!

Could someone at Canvas, please, explain both of these issues?

[chriscas]

Hi @MatthewDunn,

While I can't comment on the hundreds of PDF-viewers available at this point, I can pretty confidently say that Adobe Acrobat / Adobe Reader can print the annotations.  In the PDF file, the annotations are created as comments, so when printing in your programs, look for options about including comments.  Adobe will print pages at the end with the comments on them with references on the original pages (similar to how footnotes look).  So the view won't be the same as it is online in SpeedGrader, but all of the info will be printed.

I hope this info helps a bit!

-Chris

[MatthewDunn]

Thank you.  I appreciate the reply.

I do not, however, use Adobe.

But, let's say that I did.  Then, my question becomes: Why does Speedgrader still not allow someone to print out the file "as-is"?  You can see the screencaptures above, and how it displays.  But, Speedgrader's settings do not apparently allow one to print it out exactly as displayed.

Could someone at Canvas, please, explain the rationale for this?

[chriscas]

Hi @MatthewDunn,

In all honesty, this may be something to inquire about with the vendor of your PDF software of choice.  Since Adobe can render everything, it seems the PDF Canvas generates should be workable.  It may just be something your PDF software doesn't currently support fully or has a bug interpreting.  I don't think there is much Instructure could do about that, but perhaos someone else will have other suggestions.

-Chris

[MatthewDunn]

Thanks again for the reply.

There are two issues here:

(1) The file downloaded from Speedgrader does not display the full length of the annotations given on the file.  A number of them are cut off.  Why is this?

(2) The settings for the PDF files as downloaded from Speedgrader are set to NOT make annotations printable (see screen capture above).

So, I don't think this has anything to do with whatever PDF viewer I'm using.  As you write above, even in Adobe the downloaded file will not print out as displayed in the file.  Why not?

I use PDF-XChange, which is a reliable program.  However, to test it out, I also opened the PDF using Google Chrome's built-in viewer.  Same problem: annotations not fully displayed and I couldn't print out the document with them.  So, this seems to be a CANVAS issue -- not apparently a problem with my PDF viewer.

[chriscas]

Hi @MatthewDunn,

I'm not a PDF expert, but I did want to show what Adobe outputs when printing an annotated download from SpeedGrader...  Maybe the comments I made for this totally made up example are shorter than what you do, but I wanted to at least show they do print without being cut off from Adobe in my situation.

Please see the attachment here, which I made form using adobe to print the original PDF from speedgrader as another PDF.

-Chris

-Chris

[MatthewDunn]

Thanks.  I really appreciate the reply.

However, I'mnot seeing how any of this addresses my two questions.

(1 ) When an assignment is shown in Speedgrader, all the annotations are displayed.  After I download the file to my computer and open the PDF, NOT all of the annotations are displayed.  Some are cut off.  Why?

(2) Also, the file is set to NOT allow annotations to be printable.  So, they don't show up when trying to print out the PDF.  Again -- why?

I'm sorry, but I don't see how your using Adobe and my using something else answers this question.  In fact, it just further demonstrates my issue, since not even your Adobe viewer is displaying or printing out the PDF file as it appears in Speedgrader.

So, . . . could someone at Canvas please explain this?

[chriscas]

Hi @MatthewDunn,

I guess a couple things here...

First just in case you're not aware, the community is mostly a user-to-user space.  While there are some Instructure employees who monitor and occasionally post here, it's not a common practice so I don't know that you'll get a direct answer from an employee here.

Second in regards to your questions about display, I don't think you're ever going to see an exact replication of the view in Speedgrader/DocViewer as a download.  Those views are interactive HTML, where things can scroll, move around, etc as needed.  A PDF is meant to be a rather static format.  The PDF download, as far as I cna tell, is trying to maintain the original document formatting, size, etc.  In order to make comments display exactly as they do in Speedgrader, the document would have to be shrunken down, which some people may not like.  Long comments also scroll in Speedgrader, and you can't realistically have something that scrolls in a print format since you can't scroll on paper. That's why the PDF just works differently.  Now with that being said, when viewing in Adobe (not the printed version), the annotations do look more similar to speedgrader with the full comments on the side:

This is why I think part of the issue may be in certain viewers.  Because this is really taking PDFs to the next level, I don't think there's a standard way the comments.annotations are displayed.  Some PDF viewers may handle it better.different than others.

I'm not a PDF expert at all, but I have a feeling that "not printable" flag your viewer is showing is more about preserving the document formatting and just the way PDFs work with comments more than anything Instructure is deliberately doing to reduce functionality.  I think it's up to each PDF viewer program to decide how they'd print comments, and I did show the example of how Adobe does it.  It's clearly not the same exact view as shown in Canvas, but everything is there.

Maybe someone else with more expertise in PDFs can chime in here, I'm just trying to help out as much as I can.

-Chris