Re: [evince] PDF metatags editing

[Jakub Kucharski <jakubkucharski97 gmail com>]

Oh, sorry. I've just discovered this GtkDialog has a header bar. This
is a plot twist. Won't bother the mailing list anymore.

On Sat, 2016-07-09 at 22:59 +0200, Jakub Kucharski wrote:
> The properties window is a GtkDialog, so there is no toolbar where I
> could place the "Edit..." button (which would turn into "Cancel" and
> "Save" buttons after being clicked). Also, it seems that in such a
> situation the convention is just to display the data in editable form
> (like with file names and permissions in Nautilus file properties
> window). It may be a bit to easy, because in such a situation when
> you
> edit e.g. the title of a document and then decide that actually you
> want to keep the original one, but the original one is hard to
> remember
> exactly, then you loose the information. In the scenario with edit
> mode, you would just click "Cancel".
>
> At this point I'm wondering whether Evince is the right place to
> implement this functionality.
>
> What do you think?
>
> J.
>
> On Mon, 2016-07-04 at 17:21 +0200, Jakub Kucharski wrote:
> > On Wed, 2016-01-20 at 00:38 -0300, jose aliste gmail com wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > see answers inline
> > >
> > > On Tue, Jan 19, 2016 at 8:56 PM, Jakub Kucharski
> > > <jakubkucharski97@
> > > gm
> > > ail.com
> > > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > Hello everyone,
> > > >
> > > > I've started developing an application for editing PDF metatags
> > > > and
> > > > I've just realised that this functionality could be integrated
> > > > into
> > > > Evince itself.
> > > >
> > > > I'm curious what you'd think of such a contribution. When I
> > > > finish
> > > > writing the code responsible for modifying PDF metatags, I
> > > > could
> > > > work
> > > > (possibly with some help) on finding my way around Evince
> > > > codebase
> > > > and
> > > > teaching Evince to do it.
> > > >
> > > > My understanding is that Evince uses Poppler which offers only
> > > > the
> > > > retrieval of metadata, not its modification, so my code
> > > > wouldn't
> > > > involve Poppler, nor any other pdf library --- note that I want
> > > > this
> > > > code to just modify metadata, not generate an entirely new PDF
> > > > with
> > > > the
> > > > same text, images etc., but different metatags.
> > > >
> > > > To complement German's answer: Evince does not have ANY pdf
> > > > dependent
> > > code, except for the code in the backend (ev-poppler.cc), which
> > > is
> > > basically wrapper around poppler code.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > > I don't promise anything yet, since I lack experience with such
> > > > large
> > > > codebases; but I could certainly try. For now I just want to
> > > > know
> > > > if
> > > > this functionality would be welcomed and if I could ask someone
> > > > from
> > > > time to time some dumb questions concerning Evince code and
> > > > development
> > > > process. In any other case, nothing's lost --- I'd just
> > > > implement
> > > > it in
> > > > a separate application.
> > > Any contribution in principle is welcomed. That being said,
> > > contributions
> > > have to pass through maintainer's reviews and it's difficult to
> > > say,
> > > in
> > > advance, whether a certain contribution will be eventally merged
> > > or
> > > not.
> > > Best thing is to show some patches and then ask for advice.
> > > Unfortunately,
> > > due to limited manpower, we can't do anything better. But feel
> > > free
> > > to ask
> > > me questions via email ( I am not on IRC these days quite often)
> > >
> > >
> > > Greetings
> > >
> > > José
> >
> > My changes to poppler (at least the core and glib patches) have
> > finally
> > been accepted, so this functionality should be available in
> > poppler-
> > glib since the 0.46 version. I've found a bug report[1] concerning
> > the
> > same topic, so I could send my (future) patches there. Now the
> > question
> > is: can I already rely on it? Or do I have to wait a bit? Or
> > perhaps
> > it
> > would just be accepted for GNOME 3.24, when poppler 0.46 would be
> > available in the major distros? (It's a guess. I'm on Arch, so I'm
> > not
> > sure how long it can take for other distros.)
> >
> > Another thing is the UI. I'm not sure whether I should implement
> > with
> > edit mode (like editing data is implemented in GNOME Contacts) or
> > just
> > display the metadata in GtkEntry widgets in the "Properties..."
> > window
> > right from the start.
> >
> > Jakub
> >
> > [1] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=684851