Annotation Overview

Spark supports over forty distinct annotation types, all sharing a common set of behaviours.

Common Behaviour

Every annotation:

• Belongs to exactly one page (stored in page-relative coordinates).
• Has a color, stroke thickness and opacity you can change before drawing (via Tool Options) and after drawing (via right-click context menu).
• Can be selected, moved, resized, rotated and deleted with the Select tool.
• Supports Cut / Copy / Paste / Duplicate (context menu).
• Can be grouped with other annotations so they transform together.
• Has a Z-order — Bring to Front, Send to Back.
• Can be assigned to a layer (if the document has layers).
• Supports Undo (Ctrl+Z) after creation or any edit.

Drawing Workflow

For most shape tools:

1. Pick the tool from the toolbar or Tools menu.
2. Click and drag to draw (or for polygon/polyline, click multiple points).
3. Release to finalise (or double-click / Enter for multi-point tools).
4. The annotation appears on the page. The tool stays active for drawing another.
5. Switch to Select (V or Esc) to edit.

Tool Options

Before drawing, many tools show a Tool Options popup for:

• Color — stroke color.
• Fill — optional fill color.
• Opacity — 0–100%.
• Stroke thickness — 0.5 to 10+ pt.
• Line style — solid, dashed, dotted, cloud (for line / rectangle / circle).
• Arrow endings — none, arrow, diamond, circle, square (for lines / arrows).
• Cloud intensity — bump radius (for cloud-style).
• Cloud orientation — outward / inward (for cloud-style).

Options are sticky: once set, subsequent draws use the same settings until you change them.

The Annotation Categories

Spark groups tools into:

Editing After Drawing

All edit operations are described in detail in chapter 04. At a glance:

• Select → drag to move.
• Select → drag a corner handle to resize.
• Select → drag the rotation handle to rotate.
• Select a polygon/polyline/freehand → drag an orange vertex handle to move a single point.
• Right-click a polygon/polyline/freehand → Insert Point Here or Delete Point.
• Right-click a cloud → Flip Cloud Direction (outward ↔ inward).
• Right-click any annotation → change color, opacity, delete, duplicate, send to front/back.

What Persists

All annotations are saved into the PDF on Ctrl+S. Spark-specific attributes (cloud direction, measurement calibration, grouping, layer IDs) are stored in custom PDF keys and preserved across open/save in Spark. Other PDF viewers will display the geometry but may not show custom attributes.