Description
Description of the bug
I originally put this issue is sioyek here but I think this is an issue with pymupdf itself.
Annotations generated using add_freetext_annot sometimes appear invisible until one of its properties is changed in a pdf viewer.
How to reproduce the bug
I set up this script that reproduces the issue:
import fitz
pdf_path = "/home/alex/Documents/tutorial.pdf"
output_path = "/home/alex/Documents/output.pdf"
doc = fitz.open(pdf_path)
page = doc[0]
rect = fitz.Rect(100, 100, 200, 150)
annot = page.add_freetext_annot(rect, "Test Annotation from minimal example")
annot.set_border(width=1, dashes=(3,3))
annot.set_opacity(0.5)
annot.set_colors(stroke=(1, 0, 0), fill=(0.9, 0.9, 0.9))
# annot.update()
rect = fitz.Rect(200, 200, 300, 300)
annot2 = page.add_freetext_annot(rect, "Test Annotation from minimal example pt 2")
annot2.set_border(width=1, dashes=(3,3))
annot2.set_opacity(0.5)
annot2.set_colors(stroke=(1, 0, 0), fill=(0.9, 0.9, 0.9))
annot2.update()
print("annot 1 AP:")
print(annot._getAP())
print("annot 2 AP:")
print(annot2._getAP())
doc.save(output_path)annot appears on the page when I open the file in okular, but annot2 appears invisible. When I go in okular, select the annotation, and change any of its properties, it appears. I attached a video demonstrating this:
pymupdf_issue_20250126.mp4
Here are the appearance strings that we printed when I ran this:
annot 1 AP:
b'/H gs\n[3 3]0 d\n1 0 0 rg\n0 G\n1 w\n100 642 100 50 re\nf\n100.5 642.5 99 49 re\nS\n101 643 98 48 re\nW\nn\nq\n1 0 -0 1 100 642 cm\nBT\n0 g\n2 52.4 Td\n0 -13.200001 Td\n/Helv 11 Tf\n(Test Annotation ) Tj\n0 -13.200001 Td\n/Helv 11 Tf\n(from minimal ) Tj\n0 -13.200001 Td\n/Helv 11 Tf\n(example) Tj\nET\nQ\n'
annot 2 AP:
b'q\n/H gs\n[3 3] 0 d\n\n0 0 100 100 re\nW\nn\nBT\n0 g\n2 102.399997 Td\n0 -13.200001 Td\n/Helv 11 Tf\n(Test Annotation ) Tj\n0 -13.200001 Td\n/Helv 11 Tf\n(from minimal ) Tj\n0 -13.200001 Td\n/Helv 11 Tf\n(example pt 2) Tj\nET\nQ\n'I'm pretty unfamiliar with this library, so I threw these at chatGPT and the suggestion that it gave was that the text is initially being drawn outside the bounding box.
Additionally, when I call annot.update(), both annotations are invisible. Here are the appearance strings:
annot 1 AP:
b'q\n/H gs\n[3 3] 0 d\n\n0 0 100 50 re\nW\nn\nBT\n0 g\n2 52.4 Td\n0 -13.200001 Td\n/Helv 11 Tf\n(Test Annotation ) Tj\n0 -13.200001 Td\n/Helv 11 Tf\n(from minimal ) Tj\n0 -13.200001 Td\n/Helv 11 Tf\n(example) Tj\nET\nQ\n'
annot 2 AP:
b'q\n/H gs\n[3 3] 0 d\n\n0 0 100 100 re\nW\nn\nBT\n0 g\n2 102.399997 Td\n0 -13.200001 Td\n/Helv 11 Tf\n(Test Annotation ) Tj\n0 -13.200001 Td\n/Helv 11 Tf\n(from minimal ) Tj\n0 -13.200001 Td\n/Helv 11 Tf\n(example pt 2) Tj\nET\nQ\n'If anyone has an idea of what the issue might be I'm happy to try a fix myself, but I will have to ask for a bit of guidance on where to look since I've never touched this library before.
PyMuPDF version
1.25.2
Operating system
Linux
Python version
3.13