Is there a software for writing anywhere on the system with a pen/stylus on the touchscreen?

Question

I'd like to write on top of my PDFs used for making presentations on my laptop with touchscreen. I do not need to save what I write, but I would like to circle or underline things, possibly write some equations, etc. and then erase them and move on.

Drawing tablets bring software of the sort I speak. Anything out there I could use with my Ubuntu 14.04? Thanks!

Read this blog here: http://www.gnurou.org/blog/2008/09/09/finally_real_pdf_annotating_under_linux It recommends using PDF X-Change Viewer for Windows under Wine. — Byte Commander, Mar 12 '15 at 14:49
Does this answer your question? Software to utilize digital pen on Ubuntu 20.04 — Archisman Panigrahi, Aug 20 '21 at 04:48

score 4 · Answer 1 · edited May 27 '19 at 20:30

4

Since this question still comes up in the latest search results I want to let you know that it's possible to do more than one Freehand stroke with Okular.

You just have to double click the annotation icon (for example freehand stroke). This also works for the Highlight and Other Annotation Tools as well.

However, I still could not find out how to use the pen only for annotating and the touch screen for navigation through the document...

edited May 27 '19 at 20:30

Kevin Bowen

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answered May 27 '19 at 10:59

tuxflo

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Thanks for the double-click tip ! Unfortunately freehand lines drawn with my wacom stylus suffer for a very ugly rendering (lots of "shards" parasiting the line). They are very clean and smooth in xournal so it has something to do with KDE and/or Okular and couldn't fix it KDE Wacom configuration tool :-( – ChrisAga Feb 15 '21 at 10:07

score 2 · Answer 2 · edited Aug 20 '21 at 10:09

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Currently one of the best software I'm using in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

Gromit-MPX gives me better exposure in online teaching to underline or draw something during class. I just have to press F9 and my mouse cursor becomes a pen and to reverse back again press F9.

It also has more functionality. It is also available in Ubuntu Store.

edited Aug 20 '21 at 10:09

Archisman Panigrahi

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answered Aug 20 '21 at 04:39

Satyam230ct

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Also check out http://xournalpp.github.io – Archisman Panigrahi Aug 20 '21 at 04:51
Really cool software but the cursor is messed up on my screen that makes it look bad. Don't know how to fix it... – Yan King Yin Oct 12 '21 at 17:40
Oh I fixed that by editing the cursor file in src/. It's a .xpm file which is a text file and I made the cursor very small and the problem is gone. Love this software!!! – Yan King Yin Oct 12 '21 at 18:17
This software pen is pressure-sensitive which works for my pen. The other alternatives don't have this feature. – Yan King Yin Oct 12 '21 at 18:19

Sooraj S · Answer 3 · 2015-03-12T16:28:22.853

I 'll recommend you to try Okular. It gives you lots of such options to edit your pdf files. Open your pdf using Okular and press F6 or

Tools --> Review

It will show some tabs on the left side. Selecting these will enable you to do many functions such as underline, highlight, freehand line, ellipse, polygon, etc. Using freehand line option, you can write on your pdf. You can even edit these functions.

To install Okular, type these commands in your terminal:

sudo apt-get install Okular

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 09 '23 at 16:26

You can use Xournal++, the note taking app as an annotating tool. You can write on PDFs with mouse and digital pen, erase text and images, insert text, insert images, insert equations with LaTeX, and do many more things.

xournalpp

To install it in Ubuntu 18.04-21.10, you can use the Xournal++ stable PPA

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:apandada1/xournalpp
sudo apt update
sudo apt install xournalpp

In Ubuntu 22.04 and above, you can install it from the repositories (although the PPA still hosts updated versions).

sudo apt install xournalpp

You can also use the snap and flatpak versions, but they may have issues with LaTeX.

score -1 · Answer 5 · answered Jan 02 '16 at 19:06

-1

Unfortunately the freehand annotation for Okular allows only one continuous line at a time. Cannot write with a pen with Okular.

Allowing pen writing on Okular would be a killer feature for the program. Until that is implemented, I'm opening PDFs in Xournal, which is an amazing, stable, powerful notetaking program in its own right

answered Jan 02 '16 at 19:06

iterating

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It is possible to write freehand in Okular, as per the answer by @tuxflo. You might wish to update your answer? – dave559 Jul 23 '20 at 14:24

Is there a software for writing anywhere on the system with a pen/stylus on the touchscreen?

5 Answers5