Finally, real PDF annotating under Linux! (with help from Wine)

Inkscape can import beautifully a pdf while preserving fonts and look. Unfortunately, Inkscape can only import one page at the time... But you can use pdftk to concatenate the different pages together.

Inkscape permits whatever you want : add text, edit existing text, add an image, a shape, anything solid or with transparency. When your work is done, you simply print from Inkscape in a pdf using your pdf printer (you've already added cups-pdf) and your original text is preserved and the differents annotations are added. Beautiful !

Hi,

I have been looking for something to annotate pdfs in linux and had faced the same frustrations as you with Xournal, foxit, pdfedit, and okular. I tried PDF-Xchange Viewer and it works flawlessly. The only missing features are that I cannot instert text as comments (I can instert text, but it is not  a pop-up  like replace text), and print with comments (print to pdf gives a blank pdf).

Adobe reader on linux also cannot print annotations. So, although PDF-Xchange allows me to create a pdf with annotations, I cannot print these annotations :-(

Thanks for blogging this. It helped confirm my suspicions. I reviewed a document in Okular fully expecting it supported annotations compatible with Adobe Reader! This was nice to know before I reviewed a few more!

I noticed your comment about Xournal, what are other derivatives of it ?

 

I wanted to thank you very much, because I tried so long and so hard to find a solution that lets me annotate pdfs within linux.

In addition to xournal and PDFedit I also tried Jarnal, a cool java tool that I would rate second-best because it saves the annotations correctly but it "highlights" text by putting color on top of it (like xournal).
Another windows tool I tried via wine is "PDF Annotator" by Grahl (I used it for a year within windows, its very good) but I needs additional ink-able software which can not be installed via wine ...

To sum it up: I recommend every body using linux to quickly install wine and PDF-Xchange-Viewer beacuse it works perfectly (Ubuntu 8.04) and it is the only possiblity to realy highlight and save PDFs for free in linux.

I was looking for some way to do this. I rely on annotations and highlighting heavily during my research. It worked flawlessly on Fedora 10 and Wine. Many thanks..

I use Foxit Reader and Wine flawlessly too. It's adware and the unlimited trial version restricts how many edits you can make to a document (to like 3 or something). But if you have (paid or somehow otherwise acquired) a license key Foxit is probably the best Linux solution. Also, I have Foxit installed on my Windows partition and I simply clicked THAT executable in a file browser in Ubuntu (8.10) and Wine automatically ran it.

What Linux really needs is a native pdf reader that does simple things like basic annotation markup (comments, highlighting, etc.), and ideally graphical page cropping. The awful state of pdf on Linux is what makes it nearly unusuable for serious academics (since essentially every electronic journal format is pdf).

thank you, it works for me too!

Thanks!!!!!!

Thanks a lot. I have been searching for such a solution from so long and have tried all the things which you have mentioned but none worked. FInally read this page. Thanks

I've had the same Problem for ages, and after trying out PDFedit and even OpenOffice 3.0, I always resorted to printing PDFs and adding comments on the paper :-(

But now, thanks to your hint, I can finally work completely digitally :-)

BTW: I tried out FoxitReader for Linux 10 minutes ago and it worked - but it does not (yet) have an "Add comment" feature, so to date, PDF-XChange Viewer is still the best solution.

very useful post, using your solution myself right now!

A native application for gnu/linux which allowed us to fully edit pdf files is much needed though. Right now you need at least 3 programs to do so, or at least I do.

The best application running natively in gnu/linux I found is PDF Studio. Not open source but at least sells at a reasonable price, seems to bee multiplatform too (java).

Thank you! I was searching for a well-performanced pdf-markup solution, and I've found it in your post.

xavi

Great blog, thanks! I've actually been using pdf-xchange in Windows for a while (and really love it), and have recently installed Ubuntu onto my laptop making for a dual-boot system. I've installed pdf-xchange under Wine in Ubuntu with no problems - but what I'm at a bit of a loss with is how to change the file associations in FireFox so that pdf links I click on in FF open in pdf-xchange (whether inside the browser or separately). You wouldn't have any tips on this by any chance?

A great way! thanks!

Hi there,

In terms of markup and annotation, Adobe Reader (Linux version) works flawless on Ubuntu and other linux platforms. The only trouble is that you need an Acrobat Pro to grant user right so that the pdf file becomes markable within Adobe Reader. Acrobat Pro costs hundreds of dollars. But if you are with a corporation, usually you don't have to pay a penny out of your own pocket.

On the other hand, there is not linux version of Acrobat Pro at the moment. So it is a pain-in-the-ass to go back to Windows to do the user right thing.

In this regard, PDF-XChange Viewer+Wine seems to be a neat solution.

I've just gone to try latest PDFEdit to see if it would now solve the problem, but despite being a nice app, it is not fit for purpose of annotating and commenting a PDF. Like the original poster, I am resorting to PDF-XChange Viewer under wine . A really sad state of affairs for the Open Source community...

Thanks for the tip !

PDFStudio is java based and works fine under linux. But it's commercial software. You can download a testing version for free.

i was looking for a tool to add comments and annotations to pdfs (in native way) under linux. Tried pdfedit, but it is about editing layout and adding/editing text, not about reviewing.

the only solution for reviewing seems to be wine + PDF-XChange Viewer. Played around with it a little and so far it works flawlessly (kubuntu 9.10)

thanks for letting know about this tool

That's what I've been searching for, at least until there is an applicable solution based on Linux.

Thanks! Finally something that works!

Thanks for this nice hint!

I went through the same issues as you, and then came across your blog entry. PDF-XChange Viewer works stunningly well. I did find that kpdf does not read the annotations, but the default viewer in Ubuntu does. Okular and Acrobat Reader have no problems with the annotations.

You could possibly merge this with my previous comment.  With the default PDF viewer in Ubuntu (evince), the text under highlighted entries is hidden. Highlighted text is legible in kpdf.

PDF Xchange works but what troubles me is that page navigation toolbar is not showing the page number properly. This is important to me since i read pdf containin g thousands of pages and i have to go to a page quickly.

Is it working flawlessly in other users too? Please reply.

does any one know to correct it? I am using foxit reader under wine due to that problem.

I've just realized that Xournal is doing the job of PDF annotating just fine. Files are first imported into the software's proprietary format, where you can add text and drawings as you like. Exporting the file back to a PDF works seamlessly: text is preserved as text, so you don't loose anything, which was my initial concern. It's GTK and looks sleek and simple.

Want to annotate pdf under linux and share with somebody, also under linux ?

Perhaps, the most natural thing is to use okular (from kde world).

You can annotate easily a pdf file. Then export as document archive (you will see a just pdf file, but it contains the required metadata to handle the annotations).

Send the file to a firend with Okular: he/she can read the annotated pdf. Don't expect acrobar reader to do so, however.

 

 

Thank you!! It works great. I almost wanted to give up looking for a good PDF editor with annotation function. Then BANG! I read your article. Thanks loads.

thank you. this eased my workload

Works like a charm. Thank you very much for the tip. I've been looking for such a long time for a PDF reader with comment functionality. THANK YOU!

Regards,
Philipp

Thank you very much. It just worked perfectly so far in OpenSuse 11.1.

 

Thanks, works perfect for me!

xournal can now export pdfs with annotations included. It's pretty nice.

Hi just tried this: great!! However: the application under wine (PDF-Xchange) crashes every time I try to "save" the file. I am using Opensuse 11.3, wine installed from the repository and downloaded from the web (2.057) any input is welcome (since this is the best solution I found so far, thanks for the tip...)

Thank you very much for your post. I am receiving numerous annotated PDFs - reading them gos fine - but also people expect from me annotated PDFs back and I always returned text comments of the type "page XXX, section YYY, line ZZZ from top: do this or this" ... quite a pain. New worlds just opened :)

xournal works great for pdf annotation: to change pdf use File - export to pdf the image file is optional, for later edit!

I was looking around the same year at the same problem and explore just as you the xjournal,pdfedit,..,finally settle with foxitreader under Wine. I did not understand why Linux don't come up with a better pdf reader. Anyway, Foxireader is the best.

I had tried Foxit reader under Wine, but highlighting text also greyed out the text. However using the rectangle tool in PDF-Xchange is an acceptable substitute, sometimes better than highlighting for text up to one line long.

Xournal is indeed not quite like "real" annotation app., but for many of us that makes little difference. As an academic, most of the time I annotate homework, thesis, paper draft, etc. For that purpose, Xournal is fine since I do it once, and no one else needs to annotate that document version later on. So, unless you need to further annotate/edit annotated PDFs, I find Xournal is a good alternative to a wine based solution. The only drawback is that if you want to add a long comment, you have to add a new page to write it on. I do not have a tablet to try Xournal's "pressure sensitivity" feature, so if anyone has experience with it I am curious to know if it is useful?

Check out Mendeley: http://www.mendeley.com/ It's available for linux, has basic annotation functionality and it's great for organizing your pdf files.

In addition to the information above, it seems that Foxit is slightly better than PDF-XChange Viewer for the following (clearly incomplete list of) reasons: Foxit Reader Free Version Advantages: Editing bookmarks supported (create, rename, delete, etc.) The windows version (Foxit 2.4 --currently the latest version -- works fine as of 2-14-2011 on Wine on Ubuntu 10.0.4.1) Highlighting, underlining, drawing, commenting are all supported Can disable the advertisements (right-click a gray area in the toolbar and de-select advertisements) Foxit Reader Free Version Disadvantages: Can't copy highlighted text into the highlight Requires Wine on Linux Can't split window like in Adobe Acrobat Reader No indexing support via PDX files. Their indexing product is slow and confusing. ................ VS ...................... PFD-XChange Viewer Free Version Advantages: (Probably) Easier to install on Linux than Foxit (Probably) Better keyboard shortcuts (compare Single-Key accelerators in Adobe Acrobat Reader) than Foxit Highlighting, underlining, drawing, commenting are all supported PFD-XChange Viewer Free Version Disadvantages: You must pay to edit Bookmarks (create, rename, delete, etc.) Can't split window like in Adobe Acrobat Reader No indexing support (including PDX files)

Thanks very much for this - after installing pdf-xchange viewer I can finally simply double-click on a pdf file that I stored in Evernote 4 running in Ubuntu 10.10, and it just opens.

Thanks very much for this! I myself have struggled with finding a good annotation program. Okular and Mendeley were not cutting it at all. (The export feature in Mendeley doesn't seem to work, at least under Karmic.) Anyway, this works really well. One thing I noticed is that the latest version of PDF XChange Viewer was crashing a lot under Wine 1.0.1, but I switched to wine 1.1.31 (which confusingly is the "wine1.2" package in the repository) and it's been rock-solid. Hopefully there will be a native Linux option in the future, but in the meantime, this is a very nice solution.

Thanks it just works fine! I'm reviewing a pdf right now without printing it, from Linux :)

Almost 3 years from the original post and nothing changed... incredible. However, thank you for the tip!

Thank you for this tip. PDF-XChange Viewer 2.5.197 seems to be running flawlessly under wine on Ubuntu 11.04. Printing markups is working too. Cheers, Friedrich.

Thanks for the tip, and for creating a place for other people to keep updating the state of affairs with pdf annotations in Linux :)

It looks like eventually, there will be proper PDF annotation through GNUpdf (http://www.gnupdf.org/). "The GNU PDF Library provides functions to read and write PDF documents conforming to the PDF 1.7 specification. This includes visualization (retrieving of bitmaps with rasterized page contents) and interactive features such as annotations and interactive forms. The library also support the generation of specific subsets of PDF conforming to the ISO standards PDF/A, PDF/X and ISO 32000." But... "Right now the library is under heavy development and we have not released a version yet."

I did some googling. And when I realised that evince supports annotations by default nowdays. I realised I had to search no more! just read the descriptive help page for evince!

http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/gnu-pdf-project-leaves-high-priority-projects-list-mission-complete

Excelent solution. I just installed it on linux mint 12 and it works like a charm. Greatly surprised with wine's evolution, completly integrated with nautilus to open pdf files by default.

Thank you so much! I am SO glad you took the time to find a .pdf editor, your time was not wasted. This tool is so invaluable to me, and now I don't have to give up my linux OS just to go back to Windows and use Foxit Reader.

This worked beautifully for me. Thanks!

Works! Thanx! Had a frustrating time until I found your blog! Ronny

Thanks a lot! Works great :D

PDF-XChange Viewer works flawless on my wine 1.2 installation via macports on my Macbook running Mac OS X 10.6... Even though I have to start it from the command line I'll probably end up using this over Preview's annotation capabilities because they're just so much more powerful (and I know my ubuntu and windows colleagues can use it too). Thanks for this post, it saved me a lot of time.

Thanks a lot, I love Okular but it is not compatible with other users, so, even if it means resorting to Windows, it is a great solution.

Wow thanks this works great. Solved a big limitation of my linux box :)

Thank you! I was very skeptical about using wine for this, but it works flawlessly, I am very impressed!

Thanks for the post. Yeah, the software was up to the task.

Another possibility is to convert the pdf to djvu, then use djvusmooth (http://jwilk.net/software/djvusmooth) to add the annotations and then convert back to pdf using djview4 export to pdf.

just a note: Many people experience a crash of pdfxchangeviewer under wine when saving a document. This can be resolved by using the portable rather than the installer version.