[pdftex] pdfpageattr and reuse of annotations

[Tobias Haustein]

Leo Brewin wrote:

> Is this valid pdf code? Acrobat Reader 5.0.5 under Linux ignores both
> /Annots while Reader 4.0 on Windows reads only the first /Annots.

As far as I recall, the PDF standard says that the behaviour is undefined. So
the PDF code is invalid.

> Is there a way to fix this problem? Am I using \pdfpageattr correctly?

I've already described the problem in a mail to this list but describing a
different context (fonts, patterns etc.). This is a problem of pdftex since it
does not interpret the page attributes. Therefore, it cannot merge the
annotations. One could argue, that this behaviour is correct, but then we
would need a macro package that allows to define page attributes. The
\pdfpageattr would then be a command that should no longer be used. However,
this does not solve the whole problem, since pdftex also makes use of page
attributes and therefore could override the attributes defined by the package.

Even though I'm a software developer I haven't yet figured out how to program
"good" TeX packages or even how to program in web. Therefore, I don't feel
that I could provide a patch for this... Is there a quick guide to TeX
programming somewhere?


Yours,

Tobias Haustein

--
Dipl. Inform. Tobias Haustein

aixigo AG - financial training, research and technology
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