PDF 'Draw' annotations should provide both Draw and an Erase

[zkeng]

Thank you for the new PDF annotations functionality!

I am a building architect and do allot of drawing annotations by hand on a touch screen. Today I tested the new Firefox annotation capabilities. It is great that the Draw tool is sticky, so that you don't have to re-select it for every new thing you want to draw. But I came to the conclusion that it is very difficult to use for the following reasons:

- There is no erase tool. This is essential for everything but the most simple annotations. (Install and compare with the Xodo app on Android as a reference)
- Everything you draw until deactivating the Draw tool is grouped and there is no way to edit groups later on; you can only select, move and delete them.
- Selecting drawing groups is done by using the Draw tool and this means that it is not possible to add more drawing annotations within the perimeter of an already existing drawing annotation group; instead all you will accomplish is to select the existing drawing annotation group.

As a summary: The way the PDF annotations Draw functionality is implemented today means that drawing annotations are fire an forget; there is no way to erase, edit, or even to add more drawing annotations at the same place later on.

This limitation could be easily overcome by fine tuning how the Draw tool works.

Best regards,
Mikael

[Jon]

Thanks for submitting an idea to the Mozilla Connect community! Your idea is now open to votes (aka kudos) and comments.

[Jon]

Similar idea here: provide eraser in pdf viewer 

[okay_okay]

Agreed +1 

[marco]

@zkengyou can delete annotations by selecting them and clicking on the "Trash bin" icon that appears close to the selection. Does that satisfy your erasing needs?

[zkeng]

@marco  Thanx for the suggestion, but as I wrote:
"- Everything you draw until deactivating the Draw tool is grouped and there is no way to edit groups later on; you can only select, move and delete them."

What you suggest is what I would call 'deleting an entire annotation group' and this is very clumsy. Since a freehand tool has been chosen as the primary annotation tool this strongly suggest a 'pen and paper' vision of doing annotations and with pen and paper you expect to be able to erase and edit parts of annotation groups just the way you do with pen and eraser on paper.

[marco]

Makes sense. We are rethinking that behavior, I agree it is a bit clumsy.

[JoeyBats2015]

I'd like to add that it would be great for an eraser tool to work with the Surface Pen that has an eraser side.