Edit PDF files and add highlighting and comments

[CoolRat33]

After a very long search, I finally found a full-featured program that allows me to edit PDF files.

Qoppa PDF Editor offers a lot of features including:
- add highlighting,
- add comments,
- crossout-text,
- extract text embedded in the file,
- scan to PDF (can scan and insert directly into a PDF document),
- modify pages,
- add or remove pages from a document,
- add hyperlinks
- and other etc. etc. features

The program is written in JAVA and there are versions for Linux, Mac and Windows so you can use the same program on WinXP and Linux if you are dual booting.

I tested it in my Ubuntu 7.10 and found all its features to be fully compatable with Adobe Acrobat -- when I created highligting or notes in Qoppa PDF Editor and then opened it inside Adobe Acrobat 7, all of the highlighting and notes were intact! Great! Perhaps more researchers and students can switch to Linux now that a good PDF tool that allows highlighting and comments is available!

Check out Qoppa Software at http://www.qoppa.com/psindex.html

[Technophobia]

thanks for the ADVERTISEMENT

and here is another

"
Inkscape 0.46 Released!
March 24, 2008 (Updated April 10, 2008)

The Inkscape community today is announcing the release of the newest version of its open source vector graphics editor. Inkscape 0.46 is a major update that introduces native PDF support. The implementation of PDF support in Inkscape provides an easy, open source solution to editing PDF documents.
"
http://www.inkscape.org/


Sorry to sound like I'm putting you down, but there is always an open source answer.

[fsando]

thanks for the ADVERTISEMENT

Sorry to sound like I'm putting you down, but there is always an open source answer.
I too am sorry if I sound off putting ;) And thanks for the link.

As far as I can see Inkscape does absolutely not fill the gap. PDF studio, from a superficial view appears to be fill a need in linux, commecial or not.

Nice as it is Inkscape lets you import 1 (one) page at a time. And the imported page is meant for graphics editing not reading.

But sure. it's great to see the work being done in this area, and I imagine we're there soon. The pdf-format itself is open and a lot of implementations are trickeling out at the moment. The new Zend-framework lets you import pdf into webapps. Openoffice promises acrobat writer like features for version 3. And now Inkscapes new features.

There are those who are never going to need more than a reasonable pdf-reader (this could basically be any of the existing ones). I believe that's why all those references to apps that are essentially graphics apps but pretty useless as reading aids.

Others (like me, and probably the op), use the pdf-format intensively - 90% of what I read as part of my work is pdf-format. I used to make extensive use of the features in Acrobat Writer as part of my reading (annotation, comments, underlining, coloring etc.).
As of yet nothing remotely equavalent exists in the Linux-OSS world.
What comes closest is kpdf (well, sort of).

[CoolRat33]

I'm a very big fan and supporter of open source software and have converted as many of my friends as possible. Unfortunately, regarding PDF editing tools for researchers who need to add highlighting and comments, I've found nothing better. I can only hope the open source community can provide a solution. I'll be glad to participate.

[wouldya]

Thought it is possible to edit pdfs on open office? Wrong? I always create pdf with open office, thought if I can create it, I can edit it too?

[fsando]

Thought it is possible to edit pdfs on open office? Wrong? I always create pdf with open office, thought if I can create it, I can edit it too?

They say that should be possible in Openoffice 3.

[ahmatti]

Inkscape 0.46 Released!
March 24, 2008 (Updated April 10, 2008)

The Inkscape community today is announcing the release of the newest version of its open source vector graphics editor. Inkscape 0.46 is a major update that introduces native PDF support. The implementation of PDF support in Inkscape provides an easy, open source solution to editing PDF documents.
"
http://www.inkscape.org/



Thanks a lot for the tip! The pdf support works very nicely! Seems like I might finally be able to replace coreldraw!

[beefcurry]

hmm, Scribus, Inkscape, OpenOffice can all export to PDF's fine. Too bad we are still missing a dedicated editor :).

[brunovecchi]

After a very long search, I finally found a full-featured program that allows me to edit PDF files.

Qoppa PDF Editor offers a lot of features including:
- add highlighting,
- add comments,
- crossout-text,
- extract text embedded in the file,
- scan to PDF (can scan and insert directly into a PDF document),
- modify pages,
- add or remove pages from a document,
- add hyperlinks
- and other etc. etc. features

The program is written in JAVA and there are versions for Linux, Mac and Windows so you can use the same program on WinXP and Linux if you are dual booting.

I tested it in my Ubuntu 7.10 and found all its features to be fully compatable with Adobe Acrobat -- when I created highligting or notes in Qoppa PDF Editor and then opened it inside Adobe Acrobat 7, all of the highlighting and notes were intact! Great! Perhaps more researchers and students can switch to Linux now that a good PDF tool that allows highlighting and comments is available!

Check out Qoppa Software at http://www.qoppa.com/psindex.html

As much as I'd like to have a highlighting feature for my pdf viewer, I'm not going to pay for software nor pirate it. Thanks for the shoutout, though.

[jbizcocho]

Others (like me, and probably the op), use the pdf-format intensively - 90% of what I read as part of my work is pdf-format. I used to make extensive use of the features in Acrobat Writer as part of my reading (annotation, comments, underlining, coloring etc.).
As of yet nothing remotely equavalent exists in the Linux-OSS world.
What comes closest is kpdf (well, sort of).[/QUOTE]

I've been waiting for this feature for a while and I simply don't understand why ADOBE doesn't release this. I mean it makes complete sense if the PDF format is the standard for this type of thing, Basic ability to highlight or underline, and add comments should be default.

Anyway I was doing a research paper today and trolling through a sea of PDF's rather pissed that no options are available for Linux (Mac's have one! go figure) and I decided to see how foxit was again. The version I downloaded was their latest windows version, and I ran it using WINE and it worked very well. I know it's kind of sloppy, but according to them, the Linux client only is for Fedora, or Suse I think.... anyway run it in Wine and use the windows version until someone creates it.

[JamesLavin]

I've searched (in vain) several years for an open-source PDF highlighter that runs on Linux.

I'm thrilled to say there is now a (buggy but functional) solution, if you're willing to use KDE/Kubuntu: Okular.

It has some rough edges. Saving files is weird. Saving document XYZ1 as XYZ2 doesn't seem to work, but XYZ1 does seem to save my highlights.

And I don't seem to be able to see my highlights in other PDF readers.

On the plus side, Okular has additional annotation options (that I haven't tried). And it's designed to handle many types of documents (currently in various states of implementation). And the program seems well designed.

Very promising project. And a life-saver for someone like me who wants to highlight 300-page thick Python tutorial PDFs.

--James

[fsando]

Nice to hear and thanks for the tip ;)
Just installed it and it sure looks very promising. It seems to be close to kpdf. It recognizes highlights I made in acrobat writer (just as kpdf does), but highlights made in okular aren't seen in kpdf or evince. Also some of the highlights from acrobat are too far to the right.

Another thing - and I guess this is because I'm in Gnome - it doesn't turn up in any menu, I can't just type 'okular' at the command line and 'whereis' doesn't find it.

turns out the command is:
~/usr/lib/kde4/bin/okular
... or use the right mouse button 'open with' for pdf-files

EDIT:
After further testing:
It seems you can't remove highlights (and other annotations etc.) once made. And not only that. They stay in the document even if you close without saving!

Oh well. Just realized how it's done:
I guess none of the editing is actually saved in the document it is saved in an xml-doc in
/.kde4/share/apps/okular/docdata/
That's why it isn't recognized in other programs.
Remove the corresponding file and all annotations are gone.

[Hei Ku]

You can use KWord, though it actually imports the PDF. You can then save it in PDF or other formats, as you like. I noticed some format shiftings, though.

[stumbleUpon]

You can highlight text, add comments ... etc to PDF files using pdfxchangeviewer.

See this post

http://lglinux.blogspot.com/2008/01/pdf-viewer-with-text-highlighting.html

[tonderai]

Thanks very much for this, it works very well! Far better than pdfedit, anyway.

However, I found that Evince cannot read the block highlighting (it obscures the text), or the post-it notes. But underlining is fine. Acrobat reader can read block highlighting, underlining and the post-it notes, but not text boxes displayed directly on the document.

So, I've moved back to xpdf which reads everything apart from the post-it notes (which I don't plan to use anyway). The interface is slightly cranky, but as a bonus it is very quick :D

This kind of functionality should be a priority for Evince, imho. It would be far simpler to only use one app. Still this will do for now.

[fsando]

You can highlight text, add comments ... etc to PDF files using pdfxchangeviewer.

See this post

http://lglinux.blogspot.com/2008/01/pdf-viewer-with-text-highlighting.html

Tried to run it, but turns out it's a windows exe-file.

I think the short version is that _real_ highlighting for pdf-files is not yet available under Linux :(

We'll just have to keep up our hopes.

[stumbleUpon]

However, I found that Evince cannot read the block highlighting (it obscures the text), or the post-it notes. But underlining is fine.


Yes this is a problem.


Acrobat reader can read block highlighting, underlining and the post-it notes, but not text boxes displayed directly on the document.

Install msttcorefonts. And then install pdfxchangeviewer. Text boxes are then properly displayed in Acrobat Reader.

I think the short version is that _real_ highlighting for pdf-files is not yet available under Linux :(

We'll just have to keep up our hopes.

Yes...there is hope. :)

http://gnupdf.org/

But until that materializes, i would use the FREE pdfxchangeviewer for pdf annotation.

The windows exe runs fine using wine.

[fsando]

Yes...there is hope. :)
http://gnupdf.org/

But until that materializes, i would use the FREE pdfxchangeviewer for pdf annotation.

The windows exe runs fine using wine.

I feel certain that it will come soon. The standard is open so it's a matter of time to get it implemented. Okular has it implemented already but in their own xml-format I guess that it isn't too hard to change that into actual pdf-format.

I'm not a programmer, so ignorance makes everything seem so easy ;). It may actually be quite difficult since it doesn't exist yet.

[lucerodesign]

Thanks for all the tips. I tried most of the suggestions on the list. While all had some level of PDF editing functionality, I'd say a Granny Smiths to Fujis comparison to Acrobat Pro, PDF Studio was the closest.

Being in the architecture/design industry, we edit, mark up, build, comment and annotate large multi-sheet documents. For reorganizing and building spec books with comments and markups, this was more intuitive than the other options.

I did have some JRE issues when installing the application. Qoppa provided very good support and worked with me on it until we got the issues resolved. I'd recommend the application for heavy PDF users.

[Mariane]

Forget Qoppa, the free trial version is useless as it
writes "Demo Version" on each page.

pdfedit is at least open source, but it does not seem to be able to handle tables, and filling in a pdf form is what I wanted to do with it. Or then maybe I didn't spend long enough fiddling with it to discover how to do it...

kword messed up the tables (% signs appeared instead of table cells) but at least it is fully editable.

Mariane

[tacutu]

I read pdf files daily and I often feel the need to underline certain parts.

Okular looks promising but doesn't deliver yet. Plus, the GUI looks terrible. Pdfedit is designed for editing, not for reading + highlighting.

So far, I've had a good experience using foxit under wine -- speed is good, almost as a native app and it has all the features I need. I'm acutally thinking of buying the pro version and get rid of the watermarks (which decently put in a corner, not over the text). And hopefully, one day they'll release a _working_ version for linux.

I hate having to use wine, but it's the only solution I have at the moment. Anyway, with the proper tweaking of the registry, the color theme matches that of ubuntu and you can sometimes forget the app you're running is a windows app.

[fsando]

Yes, it's really quite strange that Linux is so far behind in this field. It may have to do with Linux being 'geek-land' until recently. Ubuntu forum has always been very responsive to user needs but I use other oss products and I'm constantly surprised that, what I consider common use cases are not realized at all by the community - I don't say they won't recognize or that they dismiss it. I'm saying that they are honestly not aware of the problems or don't consider them real problems, just unavoidable inconveniences (for example I just discovered a real simple solution to a 5 year old problem in R that is quite serious for some users, it's asked about regularly and various tedious workarounds are suggested).

Another thing I run into regularly is bash command's inability to handle filenames with spaces. I mean really!! in this day and age!? (Again, regularly asked about and tedious workarounds suggested that may or may not work in your specific situation)

Ocular, Openoffice and the opening up from Adobe I believe will soon result in much improvement on the pdf-front.

[oscar.st]

Hi,

I'm an Linux user too, but I don't know yet a good editor for my PDF files. (Use InkScape is a good option, but not sufficient)

To add notes and select text I find a good option as a web 2.0 tool, BookGoo (www.bookgoo.com) but has many problems yet.

I hope this page are useful for someone.

Greetings.

[ssam]

Another thing I run into regularly is bash command's inability to handle filenames with spaces. I mean really!! in this day and age!? (Again, regularly asked about and tedious workarounds suggested that may or may not work in your specific situation)


either escape the space with a slash, or put quotes around it
eg

cat file\ name.txt
cat "file name.txt"

i cannot think of any simpler way of doing this.

do you know about tab completion? (type the start of a file name and press tab, and bash will finishit for you). it is rare to have to actually type a whole file name.

[fsando]

either escape the space with a slash, or put quotes around it
eg

cat file\ name.txt
cat "file name.txt"

i cannot think of any simpler way of doing this.

do you know about tab completion? (type the start of a file name and press tab, and bash will finishit for you). it is rare to have to actually type a whole file name.

Ohh yeah ;)

I have this frequent problem:
A folder filled with files:
.
..
first text file.txt
second text file.txt
yet another file.txt
....
and finally the last file.txt


I want to concatenate all of them into one file like:
files=$(ls *.txt)
cat $files > all_files.txt
This obviously doesn't work and I haven't found a way yet, and I tried all the different 'quoting-style' options none worked.

On another note (you probably already know) Openoffice 3 is out, with import for pdf-files.

[y0mamma]

fsando, man find

find ~/Documents/ -type f -name *txt -exec cat {} \; > all_files.txt

[fsando]

fsando, man find

find ~/Documents/ -type f -name *txt -exec cat {} \; > all_files.txt

Thanks!
Been looking for that since I started using Ubuntu almost two years ago
Just one slight correction (missing quotes):
find ~/Documents/ -type f -name "*txt" -exec cat {} \; > all_files.txt

[ssam]

Ohh yeah ;)

I have this frequent problem:
A folder filled with files:
.
..
first text file.txt
second text file.txt
yet another file.txt
....
and finally the last file.txt


I want to concatenate all of them into one file like:
files=$(ls *.txt)
cat $files > all_files.txt
This obviously doesn't work and I haven't found a way yet, and I tried all the different 'quoting-style' options none worked.


this works for me
cat *.txt > all_files.txt

[fsando]

this works for me
cat *.txt > all_files.txt

It certainly does! So simple - why did I never try that? :redface:

[ferral-cat]

I use Foxit PDF Editor which is a Windows application but it runs perfectly via WIne. I use it to add text to fill out forms on pdf files. Im pretty sure that it highlights things also.

Widely available on Tow Rent.

[rax_m]

I've been using OSS called xournal (http://xournal.sourceforge.net/).
While not a true PDF editor, it allows addition of text and highlighting of text within a PDF. It basically creates a transparent layer on top of a PDF document that you can scribble on to. You can then export that again as a PDF with all the changes.

HTH

[fuzzyworbles]

the free pdf-xchange viewer under wine solution is perfect! thanks. previously i had been running acrobat pro under a windows guest with virtual box. now i only need to put myself through that burden when people send me docx files (which oo simply mangles)

[TreeHugger52]

I find pdfedit to be adequate for my daily reading end editing of pdf's. It's free, open source, and installs directly with the command line:

sudo apt-get install pdfedit

I only use pdfedit for relatively minor editing (highlighting sections of scientific papers, adding minor notes). The gui feel isn't great for my tastes- the developers went out of their way to give it a windows feel. That doesn't appeal to me, but it may appeal to others.

[fsando]

I find pdfedit to be adequate for my daily reading end editing of pdf's. It's free, open source, and installs directly with the command line:

sudo apt-get install pdfedit

I only use pdfedit for relatively minor editing (highlighting sections of scientific papers, adding minor notes). The gui feel isn't great for my tastes- the developers went out of their way to give it a windows feel. That doesn't appeal to me, but it may appeal to others.

I tried it before and gave up on it. Just tried it again after your post and it's too broken for me. Tried a simple yellow marking just to test how it'd look in other viewers but it made the marking black and then crashed so I had to force quit it. This is still very much alpha.

[kokoshmusun]

I'm using Mendeley for highlights and reference management. It's perfect in theory, but beta and buggy. It has messed up my highlights multiple times and I had to re-read what I already processed. It's driving me nuts, so today I decided to abandon it.

While I plan on migrating to bibus or similar for ref management, I still haven't solved the pdf highlighting problem. I'm happy to drop Mendeley (though it's perfect in theory) because it's not FOSS, and I'd rather not use Wine (pdf-xchange-viewer has been praised). Okular made me have to select the highlighting tool everytime I highlighted.

So, I'm really anxious to see a good Linux/Ubuntu pdf highlighter come out. I wish there was something I could do to make the process faster but I don't know programming or anything, but if there is anything I could do, I would volunteer sometime.

[anoop999]

Have you tried Jarnal?
This is a Java program which allows you to load a PDF as 'background', scribble on it, and save it as a new PDF (with a different name).

http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/software/tc1000/jarnal-down.htm

[terryman007]

Try PDF Editor directly from Ubuntu software center....or sourceforge... good stuff maynard!!!
http://sourceforge.net/dbimage.php?id=227671

[meral.ch]

Try okular, that one really rocks.

I like flpsed, too. It's very lightweight.

Both these are not overloaded like all the former suggestions. Take a look!

[AbdRahim]

Every time I try to add text it wipes out the image above. How do you use this program?

[fsando]

Every time I try to add text it wipes out the image above. How do you use this program?

Hi AbdRahim

Which program are you referring to?

If it's php-edit I don't know - I tried it out for a period but I never came even close to understanding what was going on, nothing seemed to really work so I gave up.

I can recommend Inkscape for editing single pages. I have used it several times. It sometimes has some trouble getting the fonts right but otherwise works really good.

If you need to create pdf-documents then use Openoffice.

If you need to read already existing texts and annotate them, okular is supposed to work but in my opinion annotation doesn't work very well. Btw okular's annotations are (if I remember correctly) saved in xml-files in .kde/apps/okular (or somewhere in the .kde folder), one xml-file for each pdf-file.

[sussa]

I tried it before and gave up on it. Just tried it again after your post and it's too broken for me. Tried a simple yellow marking just to test how it'd look in other viewers but it made the marking black and then crashed so I had to force quit it. This is still very much alpha.

That's exactly what happened to me yesterday when I was simply trying to highlight one sentence and write a small text in a pdf file. I'm a strong supporter of free and open software so I respect PDFEdit's intentions, but it's just too buggy for me.

[kokoshmusun]

Mendeley is driving me crazy. I think I'm going to give up but the pdf highlight issue??? I think I will use another reference manager to keep track of my refs (and export citations, tag pdfs, etc.) but still use mendeley by just opening one file at a time, highlighting and exporting pdf with my highlights.

AAAARRGHHHHHHHHH.....

[lord_zerg]

So what is the recommended program to highlight pdf in ubuntu?
I have seen many options cited, but all seem to have detractors.

[kokoshmusun]

Pdf highlighting turned out to be surprisingly difficult when I switched to Ubuntu from Window$ recently.

I have searched and read on this forum quite a bit and tried various. I had settled on Mendeley. It does the highlighting thing well enough. However, it's behavior in general as a reference manager is too erratic and buggy. It began to drive me nuts when I tried to work a lot of .pdf files into it. So, I think I'm quitting it.

I wasn't really happy with any other option, though Okular seemed close enough. The problem I had with Okular was that it seemed like I had to select the highlight tool every single time I want to highlight a new thing in the same file. I haven't heard anyone else report this problem, so maybe it's me.

I'm really dying to have a decent all-in-one opensource linux reference manager + pdf annotator. But I will probably have to divide those tasks between different software. As for the former, I've reduced it to Bibus, JabRef, and Referencer, and currently trying those out.

Let me know if you discover anything...

[fsando]

The problem I had with Okular was that it seemed like I had to select the highlight tool every single time I want to highlight a new thing in the same file. I haven't heard anyone else report this problem, so maybe it's me.
Let me know if you discover anything...

Yup that's how it is.

I too looked all over the place for that, didn't find anything. Now I highlight pdfs anymore. I make comments in external documents. There simply isn't any decent tool for pdf editing in Linux.

[andrewkk]

PDF-XChange Viewer in Wine is the least bad option I've found for PDF reading and annotation. The following worked well enough for me:


Install Wine (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wine)
Download PDF-XChange Viewer (http://www.docu-track.com/product/pdf-xchange-viewer) and install it using Wine.
Save the following script somewhere like ~/bin/open-with-pdfviewer and make it executable:
#!/bin/bash
wine "C:\Program Files\Tracker Software\PDF Viewer\PDFXCview.exe" "$(winepath -w "$1")" & disown
exit
Right-click on any PDF, click on Properties -> Open With -> Add, and select the script as the default application to open PDF documents.


I use this arrangement daily on multiple computers.

[Timtro]

I'm a very big fan and supporter of open source software and have converted as many of my friends as possible. Unfortunately, regarding PDF editing tools for researchers who need to add highlighting and comments, I've found nothing better. I can only hope the open source community can provide a solution. I'll be glad to participate.

I share the sentiment. I probably won't be paying for software any time soon (until Steam comes out on Linux!) but at least they make a Linux version. That's a step in the right direction. I can't blame them for filling a sore gap in open source. But I am content to work around it until there is an open source option.

How about Xournal? If you have a tablet that is.

[lord_zerg]

I have tried PDF Editor. It didn't convince me. I used Xchange-Viewer on a windows machine, I know that program works very well. But I dont' want to install wine on the ubuntu machine.
I'm starting to believe there is no really a good option for this. Good as it just works. Every thing that has been mentioned on this thread has someone mentioning a problem about it.

[kokoshmusun]

Is there a disadvantage of using wine? I've never used wine and want to. If not wine, then the best is probably Okular, with the small glitch of having to press a key for every new highlight. And then mendeley also works well as highlighter, but not manager. Well, I love linux, so I will have to accept these glitches.

[XCan]

I doubt there is any big disadvantages while using Wine. I use it plenty on my home computer. You won't install tons of deps as you do if you would choose to install a KDE (Qt) app, and some softwares even run more efficient in Wine than on Windows natively. Then of course some softwares run horribly. :p

Xournal is the one I have been using so far to highlight and comment. It's doesn't do the neat bubbles as in Acrobat, but it works alright for me.

[kokoshmusun]

You are right, if Okular is your first KDE app, then it's about 256 MBs for the install. Although I still hope that Evince catches up with the capabilities of Okular...

I gave Mendeley one last chance, resetting all my web and desktop settings. It's still driving me insane, constantly trying to do stuff and being slow.

So, I don't know why I had previously kinda dismissed Xournal in my mind but I gave it another try just now, and it looks awesome. The only "flaw" is it doesn't seem to let me highlight lines in a straight way. But it can export pdf with annotations, it lets me comment, etc. So it has all that I need.

So, I think I'll migrate to Bibus (manager) + Xournal (annotator) for pdf.

[PC_load_letter]

Xournal looks great, it does everything I want except one. I could not make it export the hyperref links. To me, it looks like it exports the "print pdf" output. Am I missing something or is this feature not implemented yet?

[Ivkosky]

Thank you for your valuable information, I was struggling with the same issues as discussed here. :)

I have used Okular for a while and until I read this thread I didn't know that the highlights and other changes are saved in a different file (I haven't opened my files in a different application so far). :(

Therefore I tried Xournal and it's a lot better software, at least for my needs. It allows me to change and keep whichever colour I want for my highlights and I don't have to switch to highlight tool every time I want to highlight something...

However, there are two issues I am stuck with by using Xournal. First is that the lines are not narrow and you have to try pretty hard by using mouse to highlight what you actually want... :(

The second (probably lame :) ) question is, why I cannot save the file in the original .pdf but just in .xor file? It makes the whole program useless since I need to read the files on other computers with Window$ as well... :(

Thanks for your help/suggestions!

[secretspicy15]

In xournal you can save to the original pdf... just do file->export to pdf or press Ctrl-E, then select your original file and save over it.

If you're saving frequently, maybe it'd be better if you saved in the default file and then at end of session, export to pdf; that way you could just ctrl-s to save periodically and then export the document with all of its changes to overwrite your original file.

[captainron042]

I just started using Xournal after reading this thread. I like it.

I only wish you had the option to make straight lines, though it doesn't bother me too much. IRL, I can't make a straight line, either! lol. So, maybe it looks more natural and easier to stand out, because it's not as squared and rigid as the rest of the .pdf. But still, sometimes I end up undoing the highlight three times before it's not too messed up.

They could make a feature so that it's like most other programs; when you press ctrl while highlighting, it forces a straight line up or down. Kind of like AutoCAD"s Ortho (if I remember correctly) command, but Openoffice word does this as well when drawing a line.

[drfox]

Thanks for introducing me to Xournal. I too have been looking for the perfect pdf editor.
I tried OOo import, but it just doesn't work for me...the import never looked like the original. PDFEdit uses 100% of my CPU, is very slow and sometimes crashes. Flpsed is hard to work with.
I've had good luck with inkscape, but I can only edit one page at a time (is there a way to do more?)

Xournal almost does it for me, it works fast and well, but it doesn't allow for rearranging or adding pages to the pdf and is missing what I consider to be the killer feature...it doesn't import images (signatures).

The only application I've been able to find that does what I want it to is a commercial product, Qoppa's PDF Studio which does it all (and does it well), but it's not free software. :-( At this point with Linux, it's either that or using the command line and multiple applications to get the same features.

Larry

[captainron042]

You're welcome. The best thing to do, is to go to their sites and let them know.

[thomasyen]

I only wish you had the option to make straight lines, though it doesn't bother me too much. IRL, I can't make a straight line, either! lol. So, maybe it looks more natural and easier to stand out, because it's not as squared and rigid as the rest of the .pdf. But still, sometimes I end up undoing the highlight three times before it's not too messed up.

They could make a feature so that it's like most other programs; when you press ctrl while highlighting, it forces a straight line up or down. Kind of like AutoCAD"s Ortho (if I remember correctly) command, but Openoffice word does this as well when drawing a line.

Hold down the shift key to force a straight line. You need to enable this by clicking the ruler icon. (Found this after a few tries; also, this combination is similar to GIMP's.)

[sguerin]

Hold down the shift key to force a straight line. You need to enable this by clicking the ruler icon. (Found this after a few tries; also, this combination is similar to GIMP's.)

thank you so so much! I was looking for just that feature. Thank you infinitely.

[decon]

I just did a lot of highlighting in Okular as the standard PDF reader in ubuntu doesn't support this. I then find out that the changes doesn't save with the PDF file, which is a huge problem when you work cross-platform. I tried Xournal too, but same problem.

This is a common feature in windows PDF readers (Foxit reader, Adobe Reader, Nitro PDF reader), can it be true that there's no FOSS alternative :(?

I just tried to install adobe reader 8.0 from adobes website. Seems like I can't add the highlighting feature to the toolbar. Instead of accepting my settings as I try to press OK, the menu just scroll randomly till it reaches the bottom.

[PGScooter]

I just did a lot of highlighting in Okular as the standard PDF reader in ubuntu doesn't support this. I then find out that the changes doesn't save with the PDF file, which is a huge problem when you work cross-platform. I tried Xournal too, but same problem.

This is a common feature in windows PDF readers (Foxit reader, Adobe Reader, Nitro PDF reader), can it be true that there's no FOSS alternative :(?

I just tried to install adobe reader 8.0 from adobes website. Seems like I can't add the highlighting feature to the toolbar. Instead of accepting my settings as I try to press OK, the menu just scroll randomly till it reaches the bottom.

you could try Mendeley. Its highlighting tool works perfectly, although you can't change color. You can only use yellow. Note that it's proprietary (but free). It's easy to install.