General ⇒ [solved] unable to use \pdfcomment on text imported from an external file (\input)

[cypherpunks]

Here is a minimal example:

Code: Select all

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{pdfcomment}

\begin{document}
yada yada

\pdfcomment{This is a PDF annotation -- works as expected.}

\pdfcomment{\input{some_text.txt}} % the PDF comment is literally the text “some_text.txt”

yada yada
\end{document}

It compiles fine but the result is that the name of the external text file is itself used as the text of the annotation. I also have the solution in case anyone needs this:

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\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{pdfcomment}

\makeatletter
\gdef\pdfcommentfile#1{%
  \begingroup
  \everyeof{\noexpand}%
  \long\edef\temp{\noexpand\pdfcomment{\@@input{#1}}}%
  \temp
  \endgroup
}%
\makeatother

\begin{document}
yada yada

\pdfcommentfile{some_text.txt}
\end{document}

That’s not my code. It came from someone more advanced than me -- and should probably be added to the pdfcomment package.

(edit) Just discovered a limitation: If the source text contains \textLF, then it is seen as an undefined control sequence. So in input files need to filter through sed code:

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${/^$/d}
/^$/{N; s/\n/\\noexpand\\textLF /gi;}
s/%/\\%/gi
s/&/\\&/gi
s/_/\\textunderscore/gi