How to Write Page Numbers to an PDF

Scripting Forums AppleScript | Mac OS X
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#1

I improved upon Swift code from AI that writes Page numbers on PDFs. It works like a charm on macOS 27.2.

I then migrated that Swift functionality to an AppleScript/Objective-C solution that runs without error in Script Editor and Script Debugger — and produces an output PDF - without page numbers. The Page annotation dict is showing all relevant fields becoming populated prior to adding the annotation back to the PDFPage object. So I am baffled…

I would appreciate help getting this ASOC solution to write page numbers to PDFs as I have spent hours on it in frustration.

use framework "AppKit"
use framework "PDFKit"
use AppleScript version "2.5"
use scripting additions

property ca : current application

set inPDF to POSIX path of (choose file of type "PDF" default location (path to desktop)) as text

set outPDF to (ca's NSString's stringWithString:inPDF)'s stringByDeletingPathExtension()'s stringByAppendingString:"_nbr.pdf"

my addPageNumbers(inPDF, outPDF)
return

on addPageNumbers(inputPDF, outPDF)
	set inURL to ca's NSURL's fileURLWithPath:inputPDF
	set outURL to ca's NSURL's fileURLWithPath:outPDF
	
	set pdf to ca's PDFDocument's alloc()'s initWithURL:inURL
	set pageCnt to pdf's pageCount()
	set nilDict to ca's NSDictionary's dictionary()
	
	repeat with i from 0 to pageCnt - 1
		set thisPage to (pdf's pageAtIndex:i)
		set pageNo to (i + 1) as text
		set itsBounds to (thisPage's boundsForBox:(ca's kPDFDisplayBoxCropBox))
		-- keep everything in NSRect for macOS Annotations
		set itsX to ca's NSMinX(itsBounds)
		set itsY to (ca's NSMinY(itsBounds)) + 24
		set itsWidth to (ca's NSWidth(itsBounds)) - 36
		set itsHeight to 20
		set adaptedBounds to ca's NSMakeRect(itsX, itsY, itsWidth, itsHeight)
		
		set anno to (ca's PDFAnnotation's alloc()'s initWithBounds:adaptedBounds forType:(ca's PDFAnnotationSubTypeFreeText) withProperties:nilDict)
		
		(anno's setContents:pageNo)
		(anno's setFont:(ca's NSFont's systemFontOfSize:12))
		(anno's setFontColor:(ca's NSColor's darkGrayColor()))
		(anno's setColor:(ca's NSColor's darkGrayColor()))
		(anno's setBackgroundColor:(ca's NSColor's clearColor()))
		(anno's setAlignment:(ca's NSTextAlignmentRight))
		
		log ((anno's annotationKeyValues)'s |description|()) as text
		
		(thisPage's addAnnotation:anno)
	end repeat
	
	pdf's writeToURL:outURL
	return
	
end addPageNumbers