Change border color of Okular annotations

The border color is hardcoded as Qt::black. Therefore, if you want to change the color, you'll need to get the source, modify it, and recompile Okular. Look in pagepainter.cpp starting on line 711 (comment mine):

if ( borderWidth != 0 )
{
    QPen pen( Qt::black, borderWidth ); // The first argument is the important part
    painter.setPen( pen );
    painter.drawRect( 0, 0, image.width() - 1, image.height() - 1 );
}

If you want to remove the border, you can just delete the above if statement and its contents. If you want a different color, you can replace Qt::black with another one of the twenty predefined colors. To get any color, replace that constant with a call to QColor::fromRgb. For example, QColor::fromRgb(239, 228, 176, 255) is a kind of dingy yellow.

Recompiling applications is a little out of scope here, and a full explanation would be a tome. Here are some reference documents from KDE TechBase, though they may be a little out of date:

I wish there was another way, and I would welcome a simpler answer.

Ben N

Posted 2015-11-20T21:03:37.863

Reputation: 32 973

Thanks, looks very useful! I tried to assemble the instructions to compile an Okular build that work to a similar question needing an Okular tweaking (feel free to update!): http://superuser.com/questions/673917/modify-okular-highlight-to-automatically-copy-highlighted-text-into-comment . Okular developers have pretty comperehensive guidelines here, that may provide a relatively quick route: https://okular.kde.org/download.php. Step-by-step, compiling may be ok difficulty also for newbies. Consider posting the code as a git branch of Okular for increased accessiblity.

– puslet88 – 2016-02-09T14:21:40.083

Sorry for late response... I download okular source code, comment the if stament and it content and then build okular following the the kde guide, but this not work. I still have border color when I add Inline Note... – user2547450 – 2016-02-16T05:57:59.380

@user2547450 Sorry for my delayed response, heh. Are you sure you're running the version you built rather than the stock one that came with your system? If you change the Qt::black to another of the predefined colors, does anything happen? – Ben N – 2016-02-22T02:00:22.230

Yes I'm sure. I have install okular 0.20.2 and I build 0.24.60. I used borderWidth = 0 but doesn't work and I also used Qt::white and still show black border. – user2547450 – 2016-03-04T02:30:13.883

@user2547450 Does the change affect the appearance of any other annotation? What happens if you insert continue; before line 694? Inline notes should then not be rendered at all. – Ben N – 2016-03-05T00:18:19.427

Now that you mention. The Straight Line has not color. Appear that this is the style that is modifying. – user2547450 – 2016-03-05T05:06:30.477

@user2547450 I have no Linux distro to test with here, but I can't imagine how that part of the code is modifying the geometric annotations. Could you check that there's a // draw TextAnnotation comment a few lines up? – Ben N – 2016-03-05T17:50:22.530

Yes, I found // draw TextAnnotation comment. I change const double borderWidth = text->style().width(); by const double borderWidth = 0;. But continue show border color. I forget ask if you know anyone of the okular kde dev team? – user2547450 – 2016-03-06T03:21:28.563

@user2547450 I'm afraid I don't know anyone on the dev team, but maybe I'll set myself up a test environment soon. Note that setting the borderWidth to zero results in Qt assuming you wanted 1, so you should just remove that drawing instruction entirely. – Ben N – 2016-03-06T05:31:20.060

Change border color of Okular annotations

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