Xournal bug while attempt to open file “could not open background”

Question

I use Xournal 0.4.5 for work with pdfs: adding comments, ticking, etc. I save files as pdf.xoj - standard Xournal format. There was no any problems with opening it and editing again.

My problem is that, yesterday I save one .xoj file [everything as usual] and now I can't open it because there is only message "Could not open background". I can open others files, but in the case of this one there is no such possibility.

I am trying with preferences editing, ticking and unticking various options but there is still the same.

Maybe anyone have any idea how to fix it?

Answer 1

The "background" is your original PDF file that you have used to annotate with Xournal. The xoj file does not contain that file, but merely your "additions" (notes, handwritten text etc.). Therefore, to open it again properly, you need to have the original PDF file.

You can take a look at the xoj files -- they are plain XML, compressed with gzip:

 cp file.pdf.xoj file.xml.gz
 gunzip file.xml.gz
 gedit file.xml

There will be a line containing something like

 <background type="pdf" domain="absolute" filename="/home/username/xxxxx.pdf" pageno="1" />

Make sure that this file is present at the location in the above tag. You can also modify the xoj to point it to new location, save it and do

 gzip file.xml
 mv file.xml.gz newfile.pdf.xoj