GSoC/2019/StatusReports/JoãoNetto

Improving Okular JavaScript Support

Adobe defines a set of JavaScript functions in its JavaScript for Adobe API reference. Our plan is to support the execution of these scripts by the documents opened in Okular.

Work report

Supporting Animated PDF

Implementation

There is two LaTeX libraries that are able to produce animations, both use timers and JavaScript to do the frame switching needed for the animation, namely, the animate and TikZ beamer package.

For supporting the animate package, I had to modify Poppler to support changing the Forms AP stream. This AP stream is what says to Poppler what and where to render.

Then, to support the animation of a PDF we need to support the JavaScript functions are executed when certain actions are performed. The first thing done to support this was editing the code when a page is opened to execute the Widget opening script. This script was already given by Poppler, I only made Okular execute it.

Other features that were implemented:

• Display - This feature defines if the form is visible and printable, there are four combinations defined in the API reference with these flags.

• OCGs - These are the Optional Content Group of the PDF, or the layers, basically you can alter then to be visible or invisible and it will render different things on the PDF, they are already supported by Okular, I just made the JavaScript tap into these already existing features and using them.

• Interval Functions - The base of the animation is to execute some actions in some pre defined interval, gladly we had QTimer to support this, I implemented them with a connection to execute the script given.

Results

Now we can reproduce any animations that are produced by the animate or TikZ beamer packages:

http://www.texample.net/tikz/examples/tag/beamer/

https://gitlab.com/agrahn/animate

Merge Requests

• Base support - https://invent.kde.org/kde/okular/merge_requests/10

• Printable options - https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/poppler/poppler/merge_requests/316

• Change Icons - https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/poppler/poppler/merge_requests/297

Bugs closed

• Okular does not play animated pdf files - https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=242617

• Support animation from latex package 'animate' - https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=403772

Implement format functions for Form Fields

There are some built-in functions on JavaScript Forms, these functions are responsible to format the field in a pre-defined format which is set in the reference. It has a range of functions for format different types of fields:

Number Fields - Formats a number in a specific currency way. It adds the symbol of the currency, prepending or appending based on the parameters passed to the function. Also defines the number of decimal cases to be used.

Percent Fields - Formats a number in a specific percent way. It adds the percent symbol after the number. Also defines the number of decimal cases to be used.

Time Fields - Formats the field with one of the four specified time strings. It can be formatted to the following four strings: "HH:MM", "HH:MM ap", "HH:MM:SS" or "HH:MM:SS ap".

Date Fields - Formats the field with a specific date format which is passed with arguments. This argument is passed as a string.

Special Fields - A set of different fields which can be used. They are US based and can be, for example, the SSN or telephone number.

Merge Requests

• Implemented support for keystroke and format actions in fields - https://invent.kde.org/kde/okular/merge_requests/16

• Implemented support for AFTime_Format and AFTime_Keystroke - https://invent.kde.org/kde/okular/merge_requests/18

• Implemented support for AFSpecial_Format and AFSpecial_Keystroke - https://invent.kde.org/kde/okular/merge_requests/21

• Changed tests to be more compact - https://invent.kde.org/kde/okular/merge_requests/29

Related Work

Merge Requests

• Support app.alert and util.printd - https://invent.kde.org/kde/okular/merge_requests/23

• Add support for full name of fields - https://invent.kde.org/kde/okular/merge_requests/25

Link to Proposal

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XmPYc_wBOERBCAOxratqvvxztC9kf9B0LKrP49klLfg/edit?usp=sharing