Did you know that iOS 11 introduced a feature to markup images and PDF documents right into the iOS system software?
A client asked for adding annotations to a PDF right on the iPhone or iPad with their custom FileMaker iOS SDK based application. We through first to use our PDFKit or DynaPDF functions. Those can do things like merge or render PDF documents. And DynaPDF has quite a few functions to create annotations via script. Great if you automatically want to do things, like adding clickable links via script. (see older blog posts). But this is all via script and the user wants to annotate manually with his finger (or a pencil). Recreating all the markup tools with native code or a web viewer is a lot of work.
When I asked what it should do exactly, the client opened the standard markup dialog in Apple Mail and said to do just use this one. And it turns out, we can do exactly that!
For next MBS FileMaker Plugin, we add this to our QuickLook functions. You can now use QLPreviewPanel.SetEditingAllowed function to allow editing. With QLPreviewPanel.SetDismissTrigger function you define the script to run when dialog is done and there you can query QLPreviewPanel.SavedFiles to get the saved file (if changes are made). Then import the PDF back into your FileMaker field.
The great thing is that you get all the markup features in FileMaker to work on PDF documents, add annotations, fill a form with text or draw something with an Apple Pencil.
Read more about Markup feature on Apple's website.
Available now with 11.1pr5 of MBS Plugin and we made you a nice example database to try. Please do not hesitate to send us comments, questions or feedback.