Request for clarity on the future of PDFKit

Anyone who uses PDFKit to edit PDF files knows that Sierra has broken it such that it is almost beyond use. The new API is barely documented and doesn't seem to work - I can't create annotations using the non-deprecated API at all. I've seen a thread here that suggests Apple have said at WWDC that the mass deprecation of PDFAnotation subclasses was a mistake.


As a developer who is still struggling to decide how to move forward under these circumstances I'd like Apple to clarify where they are going with PDFKit - was the mass deprecation a mistake? Will it be rolled-back? If not, when will the documentation/functionality be updated to enable us to actually use this framework with some confidence?

Replies

This is a disaster. They spent untold (hu)man-hours to implement dismissing your screen saver with a $400 watch, but they can't even maintain a stable, functional API for annotating PDF documents?!


Apple, you're shooting yourself in the foot. There's no way that I'm going to spend $2000 for a computer on which I can't read, annotate and search my documents. How much would it have cost you to implement this correctly, a few months time for one employee, maybe? And if you couldn't be bothered to do that then you could have at least just left it alone. It used to work rather poorly, but now it doesn't work at all. You should feel embarrassed.

Clarity on the future of the PDF-related classes in Quartz would be very appreciated.

Has anyone seen any improvement to PDFKit since December?

Have you looked at the release notes for macOS 10.12.4 beta 6?


adcdownload.apple.com/Documentation/Beta_Release_Notes_Mar_13_2017/macOS_10.12.4_beta_6_Release_Notes.pdf


Under "Focus Areas", it says:


Reading, writing and navigating PDFs using system-provided APIs


That might indicate a push to fix the problems in PDF. You might find it useful to install beta 6 somewhere, re-test the problems you ran into, and submit bug reports for what's still wrong. The best time to convince Apple to fix something is when they're already working on it.