Linux Archive - still looking for decent PDF annotation tool

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still looking for decent PDF annotation tool

> *what i wrote above has nothing to do with okular, so i don't
> understand what point you're making.

In case Evince is not ready yet: in Okular you can find the annotation
functions you are looking for - that's the point I am making.

Have a good weekend,
Bas.

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still looking for decent PDF annotation tool

On Fri, 21 Jan 2011, Arnaud G wrote:

> I know it's not free but I do a lot of pdf work and find it
> excellent. PDF studio from qoppa
> http://www.qoppa.com/pdfstudio/index.html

ok, i'll check into that but at the risk of annoying by way of
repetition, let me describe clearly what i'm after and others can let
me know if they have actually *used* something that constitutes a
solution (you'll see what i mean by that shortly).

i proofread a number of sizable word documents from a certain
publisher and the pattern until now has been to open these docs in
openoffice (3.2 in my case), go into Edit > Changes, then select both
"Record" and "Show", for obvious reasons.

i then start proofreading and all of my feedback falls into two
categories:

* short, in-place edits, where the fact that a line has been changed
is visually obvious by a mark (vertical bar) in the margin, and

* longer comments added on the right side, using Ctl+Alt+N (insert >
comment), for which i use the word "annotate"

and that's it -- i have no need of any other changes to the document
i'm reviewing. and when i'm done, i save it back to the original doc
format, and email it back.

occasionally, i'm handed a PDF file and i would like to be able to
do the same thing -- precisely those two operations, or as close as i
can get to them so, occasionally, i end up googling on some
combination of "ubuntu pdf file edit annotate". and while there are
always a number of alleged solutions, not all of them work.

example 1: many places happily suggest that you can edit PDF files
from within oodraw as long as you add oracle's "PDFimport" plugin.
good luck with that. i've installed the plugin in oodraw, then tried
to open a simple PDF file, only to get:

General Error.
General input/output error.

what numerous web pages claim should just work does *not*, in fact,
just plain work. so much for oodraw.

as for okular, that looks promising but let's read here:

http://okular.kde.org/faq.php

"How can I annotate a document and send it to a friend/colleague/etc?

"Since KDE 4.2, Okular has the "document archiving" feature. This is
an Okular-specific format for carrying the document plus various
metadata related to it (currently only annotations). You can save a
"document archive" from the open document by choosing "File -> Export
As -> Document Archive". To open an Okular document archive, just open
it with Okular as it would be eg a PDF document"

so that sounds like, if i annotate a PDF file with okular, i have to
save it in an okular-specific format, so that the recipient must
*also* install okular. not a big deal, i can just tell the recipient
to do that, but it just adds that extra requirement. am i
understanding that correctly?

rday

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================================================== ======================
Robert P. J. Day Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA
http://crashcourse.ca

Twitter: http://twitter.com/rpjday
LinkedIn: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rpjday
================================================== ======================

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still looking for decent PDF annotation tool

On Fri, 21 Jan 2011, Bas Roufs wrote:

> > *what i wrote above has nothing to do with okular, so i don't
> > understand what point you're making.
>
> In case Evince is not ready yet: in Okular you can find the
> annotation functions you are looking for - that's the point I am
> making.

and it just dawned on me (argh) that the recipient might be running
only windows, which makes using okular problematic. ideally, i'd like
to find a solution that doesn't require the recipient to be running a
KDE-based linux distro.

i think the point i was making is that, if one googles for what i'm
looking for, there are *always* countless web pages suggesting all
sorts of what should be simple solutions, every one of which seems to
have its drawbacks and shortcomings, making it unusable.

rday

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================================================== ======================
Robert P. J. Day Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA
http://crashcourse.ca

Twitter: http://twitter.com/rpjday
LinkedIn: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rpjday
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still looking for decent PDF annotation tool

On Fri, 2011-01-21 at 11:42 -0500, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Jan 2011, Arnaud G wrote:
>
> > I know it's not free but I do a lot of pdf work and find it
> > excellent. PDF studio from qoppa
> > http://www.qoppa.com/pdfstudio/index.html
>
> ok, i'll check into that but at the risk of annoying by way of
> repetition, let me describe clearly what i'm after and others can let
> me know if they have actually *used* something that constitutes a
> solution (you'll see what i mean by that shortly).
>
> i proofread a number of sizable word documents from a certain
> publisher and the pattern until now has been to open these docs in
> openoffice (3.2 in my case), go into Edit > Changes, then select both
> "Record" and "Show", for obvious reasons.
>
> i then start proofreading and all of my feedback falls into two
> categories:
>
> * short, in-place edits, where the fact that a line has been changed
> is visually obvious by a mark (vertical bar) in the margin, and
>
> * longer comments added on the right side, using Ctl+Alt+N (insert >
> comment), for which i use the word "annotate"
>
> and that's it -- i have no need of any other changes to the document
> i'm reviewing. and when i'm done, i save it back to the original doc
> format, and email it back.
>
> occasionally, i'm handed a PDF file and i would like to be able to
> do the same thing -- precisely those two operations, or as close as i
> can get to them so, occasionally, i end up googling on some
> combination of "ubuntu pdf file edit annotate". and while there are
> always a number of alleged solutions, not all of them work.
>
> example 1: many places happily suggest that you can edit PDF files
> from within oodraw as long as you add oracle's "PDFimport" plugin.
> good luck with that. i've installed the plugin in oodraw, then tried
> to open a simple PDF file, only to get:
>
> General Error.
> General input/output error.
>
> what numerous web pages claim should just work does *not*, in fact,
> just plain work. so much for oodraw.
>
> as for okular, that looks promising but let's read here:
>
> http://okular.kde.org/faq.php
>
> "How can I annotate a document and send it to a friend/colleague/etc?
>
> "Since KDE 4.2, Okular has the "document archiving" feature. This is
> an Okular-specific format for carrying the document plus various
> metadata related to it (currently only annotations). You can save a
> "document archive" from the open document by choosing "File -> Export
> As -> Document Archive". To open an Okular document archive, just open
> it with Okular as it would be eg a PDF document"
>
> so that sounds like, if i annotate a PDF file with okular, i have to
> save it in an okular-specific format, so that the recipient must
> *also* install okular. not a big deal, i can just tell the recipient
> to do that, but it just adds that extra requirement. am i
> understanding that correctly?
>
> rday
>

I think the whole problem of PDF files is that they are designed to be
immutable objects - so any form of annotation that changes the PDF
itself should be impossible. For someone to send you a PDF for
annotation is completely wrong and misses the point of having PDFs in
the first place, so they should not object to having your annotations
and edits sent back to them in some other format.

So any method of annotation is going to be a bit of a botch. Here is
mine:

Open the PDF in GIMP. Use the text tool (and other tools, maybe) to
make annotations. Print back to a PDF (I seem to get this option as one
of my 'printers' so I may have installed something to do it).

Tony

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still looking for decent PDF annotation tool

On Fri, 21 Jan 2011, Tony Pursell wrote:

> I think the whole problem of PDF files is that they are designed to
> be immutable objects - so any form of annotation that changes the
> PDF itself should be impossible. For someone to send you a PDF for
> annotation is completely wrong and misses the point of having PDFs
> in the first place, so they should not object to having your
> annotations and edits sent back to them in some other format.
>
> So any method of annotation is going to be a bit of a botch. Here
> is mine:
>
> Open the PDF in GIMP. Use the text tool (and other tools, maybe) to
> make annotations. Print back to a PDF (I seem to get this option as
> one of my 'printers' so I may have installed something to do it).

i think this is the most informative response i've read, and it
reinforces what i finally started to note. i think the simplest
solution is to tell my contact to simply send me content in doc
format instead of PDF. i have no interest in letting my ideological
preferences get in the way of my work.

rday

--

================================================== ======================
Robert P. J. Day Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA
http://crashcourse.ca

Twitter: http://twitter.com/rpjday
LinkedIn: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rpjday
================================================== ======================

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still looking for decent PDF annotation tool

On Fri, 2011-01-21 at 12:33 -0500, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Jan 2011, Tony Pursell wrote:
>
> > I think the whole problem of PDF files is that they are designed to
> > be immutable objects - so any form of annotation that changes the
> > PDF itself should be impossible. For someone to send you a PDF for
> > annotation is completely wrong and misses the point of having PDFs
> > in the first place, so they should not object to having your
> > annotations and edits sent back to them in some other format.
> >
> > So any method of annotation is going to be a bit of a botch.
>
> so, out of curiosity, how does adobe reader work? a colleague tells
> me she has the commercial adobe reader on her mac, and she can
> annotate PDFs just fine. so what is adobe reader doing to that file?
>
> rday
>

I assume that is the paid for version from Adobe (called Adobe Acrobat -
the free version is Adobe Acrobat Reader) that is also a PDF creation &
edit tool. It costs £532.80 here in the UK and is only available for
Windows and Mac.

Tony

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still looking for decent PDF annotation tool

On 21 January 2011 17:33, Robert P. J. Day <rpjday@crashcourse.ca> wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Jan 2011, Tony Pursell wrote:
>
>> I think the whole problem of PDF files is that they are designed to
>> be immutable objects - so any form of annotation that changes the
>> PDF itself should be impossible. *For someone to send you a PDF for
>> annotation is completely wrong and misses the point of having PDFs
>> in the first place, so they should not object to having your
>> annotations and edits sent back to them in some other format.
>>
>> So any method of annotation is going to be a bit of a botch.
>
> *so, out of curiosity, how does adobe reader work? *a colleague tells
> me she has the commercial adobe reader on her mac, and she can
> annotate PDFs just fine. *so what is adobe reader doing to that file?

I don't think she is doing it with Adobe *reader* (which is free), I
suspect she has the pdf *writer* professional package (the name of
which I forget) that is used to create/edit pdf files.

Colin

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still looking for decent PDF annotation tool

It is manipulating the underlying PostScript code. PostScript
is a vector graphics format originally designed for describing
a page to be printed. Lots of programs will output PostScript:
xfig, ghostview, TeX and LaTeX and lots more. And there are
programs ('ps2pdf' and others) that will take the PostScript
and produce a .pdf file. Similarly, there are programs
('pdf2ps' and others) that will convert a .pdf file back into
a PostScript file.

Gimp (I think) will do these conversions for you and allow you
to mark up the document while it is open. This is essentially
what Adobe Acrobat (the $$ version) will do for you. PostScript
is text based; so you can edit it with any editor. But that is
for the hard cases out there. Oops, that's me.

Titus sends

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still looking for decent PDF annotation tool

>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Robert P. J. Day" <rpjday@crashcourse.ca>
>To: "Ubuntu user technical support, not for general discussions" <ubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com>
>Sent: Friday, January 21, 2011 12:33:52 PM
>Subject: Re: still looking for decent PDF annotation tool
>
>On Fri, 21 Jan 2011, Tony Pursell wrote:
>
>> I think the whole problem of PDF files is that they are designed to
>> be immutable objects - so any form of annotation that changes the
>> PDF itself should be impossible. *For someone to send you a PDF for
>> annotation is completely wrong and misses the point of having PDFs
>> in the first place, so they should not object to having your
>> annotations and edits sent back to them in some other format.
>>
>> So any method of annotation is going to be a bit of a botch.
>
> *so, out of curiosity, how does adobe reader work? *a colleague tells
>me she has the commercial adobe reader on her mac, and she can
>annotate PDFs just fine. *so what is adobe reader doing to that file?
>
>rday

Are you sure that's not the full version of Adobe Acrobat Pro, a proprietary and costly program which allows for creation and editing of pdfs. *Reader is a freely distributable version that is essentially read only (unless you have been shipped forms).
Paul
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