PSPDFKit 11.3 for iOS Adds Cloud Annotation Tool

Today, we’re delighted to announce the release of PSPDFKit 11.3 for iOS. In this release, we added a dedicated tool to create cloud annotations. We also improved the performance of ink annotations, and we added Swift Package Manager support for PDFXKit.

Cloud Annotation

In this release, we added an annotation tool that allows you to create polygon annotations with a cloudy border directly from the annotation toolbar. The benefit of this shape is that it stands out more clearly than tools with a straight line style. In the architecture, engineering, and construction industries, the cloud shape often indicates a change to the most recent revision of a blueprint or drawing.

This tool has the same styling options as other shape annotations. You can adjust the thickness of the line — i.e. the thickness of the cloud shape — change its color, and more. You can find this tool in the annotation toolbar under the shape annotations group. You can see this tool in action in the Playground Example of our Catalog app. The Construction Example shows additional custom tools to support more cloudy shapes.

Ink Annotation Improvements

The ink annotation tool is perhaps the most widely used tool for annotating PDF documents. It allows users to draw freehand, letting them make shapes or even take notes using their own handwriting. A PDF document could contain thousands of such drawings. In PSPDFKit 11.3, we improved the performance of ink annotations by optimizing the number of data points stored for an annotation while maintaining the same fidelity. As a result, there’s a reduction of up to 50 percent in the points collected when drawing.

The benefit of this improvement isn’t only limited to the reduction in the file size of a PDF document; it also applies to the rendering time of the document. Furthermore, it improves the already fast syncing time for Instant, which can be hugely beneficial if a user has limited data or a low-speed bandwidth connection.

PDFXKit

PDFXKit is our drop-in replacement for Apple’s PDFKit framework, and it uses PSPDFKit under the hood. It enables you to easily transition from PDFKit to leverage our SDK’s more robust rendering and numerous features. With this release, we added support for integrating PDFXKit using Swift Package Manager, making it even more convenient for you to transition to using the PSPDFKit SDK.

Please note that using PDFXKit in production will still require a license for PSPDFKit for iOS.

More Details

We also introduced a new default API for the Saved Annotations feature in the form of PersistentAnnotationSetStore replacing the old KeychainAnnotationSetsStore. You can read more about it in our migration guide.

In addition to the new features, this version of PSPDFKit includes other improvements and updates — like adding a dedicated button to select a transparent annotation fill color, improved error reporting with PSPDFKit asserts, and dependency updates. To see a complete list of changes, check out the PSPDFKit 11.3 for iOS changelog.