A: Yes, it is possible to have multiple people review a document and then merge the comments. Annotations names are randmoly generated and there is almost zero chance of conflict when loading annotations from 2 different files. You might however need to do some of this on the server. There are two approaches you can take:
First approach: Keep FDF files on the server and merge with PDF before displaying
jPDFNotes can send the notes that a user adds back to the server in FDF format. You can then save the FDF content for each user separately, without merging into the document (this would keep the original PDF intact).
When you want to display all the notes:
You can then merge them into the document using jPDFNotes on the client computer by retrieving each of the FDF files and importing them into the same document.
or
You can merge the FDF files into the document on the server using a server side product, such as our jPDFProcess product, and then serve the merged PDF to the client computer.
Second Approach: Merge FDF files with PDF as received on the server
In this second approach, you would still have jPDFNotes send the comments only back to the server in FDF format. You could then have a server side library (again, jPDFProcess) take the FDF content and merge it into the PDF.
With this approach, if you need to be able to show the PDF with just one user’s annotations at anytime, you would need to preprocess the PDF to either remove annotations from other users or to make them invisible.
