Ok thanks!
This is valuable information. The behaviour is very confusing, because it looks like the pdf is password protected or otherwise locked, but then it is annotatable in Preview and other pdf editors. I wonder whether the UX in DT could be improved by making it apparent why the pdf is has been opened in read-only mode? Maybe a different icon and/or text overlay?
Anyway, Iām trying to better understand what the actual problem is here. At a superficial level, it seems like Appleās PDFkit is simply not a good rendering engine (or what is it?). But then Iād assume that Preview also ises PDFkit, so why are those pdf files annotatable in Preview but not in DT?
Could you explain what āpaginated PDFā means here (and why it fixes the problem)? It sounds like the document previously wasnāt divided into pages but, at least for me as a user, the pagination of the document looks the same before and after the conversion.
A downside of this workaround is that it significantly increases the file size. In my recent case, it was by the factor 4:
What does the conversion do to bloat the document in this way?
In the DT Manual, I read about this option:
ForceEditablePDFs: Some PDFs contain objects that are problematic for Appleās PDFKit. DEVONthink opens these files in a read-only state. Enable this option to disable this behavior and open all PDFs as editable. Note: This does not eliminate the potential for problems with certain PDFs.
What kind of problems are we talking about here?
Would it be correct to say that when this preference is on, DT will handle problematic pdf documents the same way as Preview does? In that case, it would appear as a rather low risk setting, given that I have never experienced any issues with annotations in Previewā¦
This workaround doesnāt seem to result in a significant increase in file size (as is the case when converting to paginated pdf). Neither does it require the ForceEditablePDFs option to be turned on. So it looks like this is a third "solution, distinct from the other two. But in what way is it different? Devonthink could be made to emulate the transformation of the file that occurs in Preview, that would probably solve the problem once and for allā¦
Itās a framework used to work with PDFs. One can, for example, use it to create annotations. The problem seems to be that PDFKit destroys the text layer of an OCRd PDF occasionally if one adds or modifies annotations.
PDF documents created by the Quartz engine of macOS are not marked as read-only, therefore a conversion via Data > Convert > to paginated PDF is one possible workaround.
The PDFkit completely creates the document on its own but in a different way, e.g. the image compression might be different.
Editing might break the (invisible) text layer, afterwards the text isnāt e.g. searchable/selectable.
Hello,
Resurrecting this old thread.
Since updating to v. 3.9.1, several PDFs now have grayed out annotating tools for me. This inexplicably includes PDFs that I have annotated in the past. Frustratingly, the old tricks I used to use (like convert > to PDF (paginated) ) no longer work. The afflicted files can be edited in other PDF software, such as preview or acrobat. But after being saved they remain uneditable in DevonTHINK, with the annotation tools grayed out.
Most PDFs in my databases remain annotatable. The problematic ones are not locked, and they do show the read only symbol.
Anyone else have this issue? If so, has anyone discovered a workaround?
The afflicted files can be edited in other PDF software, such as preview or acrobat.
Not all PDF apps use Appleās PDFKit and Preview uses their own modifications unavailable to us.
This issue has been discussed more than once on the forums.
Thanks. Adjusting the Hidden Preferences section seems to have worked.
What was strange to me was that I was getting grayed out annotation tools for documents that I had previously worked withāin DTāwith no issue.
The algorithms to detect potential issues isnāt a static thing as we try to improve them over time. Of course, this is due to Apple not just fixing PDFKit but thatās another issue altogether.
Hiu @BLUEFROG Ive just started a new degree course and have a mass of reading I need to get through, highlighting and annotating on my way. Just realised DT3 may be useful for this (have copy already) after wasting quite a bit of time chasing LiquidText (now given up as way too complex when I desperately need to be reading not playing around!)ā¦
This .pdf issue is causing angst however 
Ive tried the ā$ defaults write com.devon-technologies.think3 ForceEditablePDFs -bool TRUEā in terminal but it says command not found (I am NOT a terminal user if that helps!). Also tried the convert to paginated and other suggestions to no avail. Opening in another editor like Highlights works fine, but I really want to do in DT3. Strangely editing also works fine in DTTGā¦ but assume thats because it users a different pdf toolkit perhaps. Really would appreciate some pointers here if possible.
Thanks.
Donāt type the $!
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Oh for goodness sake!! Like I said, I donāt use terminal Thanks very much!
However, I now have little padlock symbols on all the docs I want to edit. Any suggstion how to unlock and why, if they are locked, DTTG is able to annotate them? Thanks.
I dunt know anything about your PDFs. Maybe they are protected by the authors? More detail would certainly be helpful.
Sorry - they are pdfs of academic papers, web clipping etc. they are all editable on DTTG and other highlighting tools such as āHighlightsā hence my confusionā¦ I highlight on DTTG, sync and the highlight appears on the Mac DT3ā¦
Then maybe you have inadvertedly set the ālockā status in DT or DTTG. Difficult to say without at least a screenshot.
DEVONthink and DEVONthink To Go do not use the same PDF framework.
Hold the Option key and choose Help > Report bug to start a support ticket. Attach a problematic PDF for us to inspect.
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Doneā¦ thanks.