Annotate PDF Plugin - blank

Annotate PDF Plugin - blank

by Matt Jones -
Number of replies: 7

Hi,

First time poster and relatively new to Moodle (we have version 3.2.1 build: 20170202).

We are trying to use the Annotate PDF plugin, but the PDF's being generated are blank.  This is a Windows 2012R2 environment.  The Ghostscript dir is: c:\gs\bin\gswin32.exe, which works and the path to unoconv is: C:\unoconv\unoconv.bat.  The bat file contains the following:

@"C:\Program Files (x86)\LibreOffice 5\program\python.exe" C:\unoconv\unoconv.py %*

The C:\unoconv dir contains the unoconv.py file and the above bat file.  LibreOffice is installed and a test conversion can be run locally on the server, when i run the below:

C:\unoconv\unoconv.bat -f pdf c:\somefile.docx

But when I run the 'Test unoconv path' from the moodle site it generates a blank PDF.

Any assistance on getting this working would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks, in advance.

Matt

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Matt Jones

Re: Annotate PDF Plugin - blank

by Emma Richardson -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers

I am presuming you are using the built in annotation and not the old Annotate PDF plugin.

I had to give my webuser access to www folder so that it could write the converted files there.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Emma Richardson

Re: Annotate PDF Plugin - blank

by Matt Jones -

Hi Emma, 

Thank you for your speedy reply!

As mentioned, I am very new to Moodle, so the path to the plugin we are using is:

plugin path

Is that correct?

I have tried this with a user that has full control of the www dir.

Thanks,
Matt

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Matt Jones

Re: Annotate PDF Plugin - blank

by Emma Richardson -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers

It is not the Moodle user that needs permission, it is the system web user on your moodle server - normally www-data or apache-apache on linux server.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Emma Richardson

Re: Annotate PDF Plugin - blank

by Matt Jones -

Apologies, I don't follow.  It is IIS, so the user IIS AppPool\DefaultAppPool requires permission?  This user already has permission to read/write/execute.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Matt Jones

Re: Annotate PDF Plugin - blank

by Emma Richardson -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers

Oh, sorry, unsure of complete procedure on Windows.   Actually not sure if anyone has successfully got this working on Windows yet...

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Matt Jones

Re: Annotate PDF Plugin - blank

by Ryan Hazen -

After lots of time spent trying to get unoconv to work properly, I went ahead and turned off PDF annotation. It's in the path you mentioned earlier, I made a post about it with screenshots a few weeks ago.

https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=346854

It's all administering through the user interface, no coding. I'm still waiting for the PDF annotation function to develop a bit in future releases before I try to set it up again.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Ryan Hazen

Re: Annotate PDF Plugin - blank

by Matt Jones -

That's great, pleased it's not just me.  Thank you!

Average of ratings: -