I want to open a PDF on Android but keep getting
Could not open content://com.android.providers .media.documents/document/document %3A95834.
Krita does not support this file format.
When I access the PDF. There’s nothing about PDF being special on Android in the manual… How is it done?
Hello @mszs and welcome to the forum!
The address you show for that PDF looks like something external, a link to a non-local resource, this may be the issue.
Can you download that PDF to your device, in case it is not already on your device (a cloud space counts also as not on your device, something many forget when working with OneDrive, Dropbox and the like)? And if it is on your Android, please put that PDF into the directory where you save your artworks in and try to open it from there.
In case you ask, why can Krita not access data from other apps, or at least not from all but a few apps:
A main issue on Android is, that most apps have issues to exchange documents between them, at least most apps that are not made by Google, Samsung, Microsoft, Adobe, and even Apple, because those companies in that exclusive club trust each other, but everyone else who doesn’t belong to this club must have found a loophole in the Android code via divine programming skills or luck to pass data across app boundaries or have received the key to this hole via a fat wallet which then allows them to exchange data across app boundaries 
Michelist
The PDF was downloaded with the Brave browser to the internal Downloads folder. Then I tried opening it from the file menu in Krita and got the error message I quoted in the original post. I also tried going to the downloads inside Brave and then to choose “open with…” but got a similar error. I’ve now moved the file to an external file system, but I still cannot open it from Krita. Now I get
Could not open content://com.android
.externalstorage.documents/document/0123-4567%3AAndroid%2Fmedia%2FKrita%2FChinese Character Worksheet 2.pdf.
Krita does not support this file format.
Try a PDF reader such as Google Drive, which can read PDF’s, or Write Era or even Write On PDF
Your suggestion allows me to write on the PDF. However, the pen and brush shapes available in e.g. Google Drive are no comparison to those in Krita. As a workaround I have used FiiNote since I can write(paint) on the PDF and there is a somewhat better control over the brush than in those other apps, but I really would like to be able to use Krita…
P.S. I don’t think that Krita was made for reading/writing on pdf’s.
Krita will open a .pdf as an image file but can’t Save or Export .pdf files.
The Android file system is a weird mess anyway.
I was hoping that it would create a vector layer from the PDF, but as it is it does not even open them. As I said, there are other apps that do, but they lack the selection of pens and brushes. How do those other(including some lesser known ones like FiiNote) manage to do it?
Do you want to do artwork as a pdf? If so, you would just do your work in Krita as a .kra file and then when you’re satisfied, export as a .jpg or .png and then in another app (such as Samsung Notes, or even MS OneNote, you can import your artwork into a new note and then export as a pdf. I’ve made a nice little booklet of my artwork that way. 
Are you able to open that PDF in Krita on a PC with macOS, Linux, Windows? Or if you do not have access to a PC where Krita is installed?
If you don’t have access to such a PC, could you perhaps send me your PDF to let me check if it is a problem all Krita versions have with this file, because I have no issues opening non-corrupted PDF’s in Krita, but that is on desktop using Krita on a Windows 10 PC?
If you are willing to send it to me, you could upload it to a file sharing/hosting service, like Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive or similar, and send me the link to your PDF via the forum using PM. In case you have no account with such a service, you can use Ufile.io or similar services. Ufile.io allows sharing files without having an account with them, you can upload files up to 5GB and files shared this way are automatically deleted 30 days after uploading them.
Michelist
I want to practice Chinese penmanship. Ideally, I’d open the PDF as a vector layer and then paint in a pixel layer above it.
It opens fine in Manjaro/Krita 5.2.2
Then create in Krita on Manjaro a new file from it, possibly in its original resolution from the PDF, to import that picture/those pictures into your Android. Just open it and export it as PNG.
Michelist
That does work in principle, but it’s rather convoluted and not a satisfying workflow.
I’ve also found out that Krita on Android does open an SVG file that was generated on Linux with pdf2svg. But it will not open a .kra file written on Linux and transferred through KDE Connect to Android.
If you can try other PDFs to see if it is an issue with that particular document on your Krita for Android or an issue per se. If it is only that document, then try it with other PDFs in Chinese, I suppose there would be more than enough material in the WWW fulfilling your requirements counting the number of possible suppliers.
Michelist
I’ve already tried different PDFs and it’s the same for all of them. Krita on Android does not open them.
If you want, then you can report it as a bug via the KDE-Bugtracking System at https://bugs.kde.org/, but it is possible that this was a deliberate design decision because of issues to include/implement the libraries to decode and encode PDF-files on Android. But in case it is a bug, then it will be fixed when a developer finds time to do it. But to be honest, depending on how important the developers rate this issue, it may take longer to get fixed, because the list of open bugs is … well, let’s say … not short.
To report a bug, you must register at https://bugs.kde.org/ to gain access to the “KDE bug tracking system”, i.e. “KDE’s bug tracker”. Keep in mind that the e-mail address you use there must firstly be existing / valid and secondly that it can be viewed by any visitor to the site. But the likelihood of your address falling into the hands of spammers there seems to be very low, because the address I used to register with them, I’m using exclusively for access to the KDE bug tracking system and have not had a single spam mail in my mailbox in the years I have been registered there.
You can read what a bug report should look like under Reporting Bugs in the Krita manual (the input mask looks slightly different today), or the User Guide on KDE.ORG, which I like less. Please use the drop-down menus to select the software, i.e. Krita, the version number, the operating system and try to narrow everything down as much as possible using the drop-down menus available there.
And after completing the bug report, i.e. after you have sent it, please publish the link to the bug report here in this topic.
Michelist
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