While the other annotations are drawn on top of the content, the highlight annotation is behind the text it highlights. In other words, it has to be inserted at a specific place in the ContentElementsUILayer. The pdf seems to mark the precise place where the highlight should be placed with the BDC, MCID and EMC operators in the content. At the moment, the read-only rendering of the highlight annotation has been implemented with an instance of the AnnotationUILayer called "HighlightUILayer" which is placed behind the ContentElementsUILayer. With this implementation, depending on the contents of the pdf, the highlight annotation might be visible or it might not be.