Markup of CDF file, e.g. highlighting text

Question

Is it possible to markup (i.e. highlight or underline) text in a deployed cdf file and then save it? I think I know the answer (no), but since it seems a basic necessity for a document format that aspires to be used for textbooks, I thought I would ask if anybody had succeeded in such a task. Other similar tasks might include margin notes.

I have tried a little out myself and failed with the following code:

    highlight :=  
      SetOptions[NotebookSelection[EvaluationNotebook[]], Background -> Yellow];
    highlightButton := Button["Highlight", highlight];
    SetOptions[EvaluationNotebook[], 
     DockedCells -> Cell[BoxData[ToBoxes[highlightButton]], "DockedCell"]]

When this is executed in Mathematica, I get a nice Button in my DockedCell that allows me to highlight text, by first selecting the text and then hitting the button. However, this functionality disappears when I try to deploy as a CDF.

Am I right that this is impossible? I am pretty sure that even if I managed to get the text highlighted, from CDF Player, there won't be any saving anyway, but at least it could be printed (perhaps to a pdf).

Answer 1

Yes and no: Any alteration of the notebook by SetOptions seems to be inhibited (and that is probably fine). However, if you use Dynamic in advance for highlighting say a Text cell, then it works, even printing the highlighted cell to PDF. Try this:

highlightButton := Button["Highlight", color = RGBColor[1, 1, 0]];
unhighlightButton := Button["UnHighlight", color = RGBColor[1, 1, 1]];
SetOptions[EvaluationNotebook[], 
  DockedCells -> 
   Cell[BoxData[
     RowBox[{ToBoxes[highlightButton], ToBoxes[unhighlightButton]}]], 
    "DockedCell"]];
CellPrint@Cell["CDF is really easy!", "Text",
   Background -> Dynamic[color]]