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Antonello
Asked: 2021-02-07 08:54:40 +0800 CST

Is there anything to read and hand-annotate a pdf like on paper on a touchscreen with stylus?

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I have a DELL touchscreen convertible and I would like to be able to read, but also annotate with a stylo like I am used on paper, a pdf, so to say bye bye to paper.

I can't find any PDF reader however that fulfil my needs. Ideally the reader would:

  • have just a few buttons to manage settings (colour, width, erase..) of the pensil and leave the rest of the area for the pdf content
  • once the pencil is selected stay with it (no okular), no need to select it again and again for any "line"
  • have a dark mode as Evince
  • (optional) keep the file format as an annotated PDF
  • have some basic touch gestures like switching page, zoom, exit full screen
  • when the pencil is recognised, disable the touch with the hand (if I write on the screen with the pencil, I don't want that the side of my hand makes lots of other sign on the screen)

I have tried Xournal, Scribus, pdfstudioviewer, Okular and a few more, but none is really usable for the task I am looking for. I never had a dedicated book reader, but maybe that is instead the solution to go ? What do you think ?

pdf

1 Answers

  1. Xournal++ is a feature-rich hand note-taking software:

    Xournal++ is an cross-platform, open source, hand note-taking software with the target of flexibility, functionality, and speed. It is a modern rewrite and more feature-rich version of the wonderful Xournal program.

    Features:

    • Pressure-sensitive styluses and digital pen tablets (e.g. Wacom, Huion, XP Pen, etc. tablets).
    • Plugins support via the Lua programming language.
    • Customizeable toolbar, with multiple configurations, e.g. to optimize toolbar for portrait / landscape.
    • "Paper" backgrounds for notetaking, scratch paper, or whiteboarding.
    • Different pen types (e.g. eraser, highlighter) and stroke styles (e.g. solid, dotted).
    • Different shapes, such as lines, arrow, circle, rectangle, splines.
    • Shape resizing and rotation.
    • LaTeX support (requires a working LaTeX install).
    • Multiple "layers" for easier control over overlapping notes and strokes.
    • Sidebar with page previews and PDF Bookmarks.
    • Audio recording and playback alongside with handwritten notes.
    • Rotation and grid snapping.
    • Annotate on top of PDFs.
    • Export to a variety of formats including SVG, PNG, and PDF.
    • Multi language support (over 20 languages supported, with more added by the community!).

    More info: https://xournalpp.github.io/

    Xournal++ is also available from the snap store. You can install it like so:

    sudo snap install xournalpp

    It allows you to customize toolbars from the view menu so you can have a simple interface like this in the full screen mode:

    enter image description here

    Or even simpler custom interface by dragging and dropping adding / removing tools like so:

    enter image description here

    So that you only have the tools you need like so:

    enter image description here

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