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I just evaluated Evince, Okular, Foxit, and Acrobat for annotating PDFs. My particular use case is to annotate emails, spreadsheet, etc., and merge them as exh
by tonydiep 8y ago
I just evaluated Evince, Okular, Foxit, and Acrobat for annotating PDFs.
My particular use case is to annotate emails, spreadsheet, etc., and merge them as exhibits into a legal brief.
After annotation, the other programs can export the original or it export the annotation layers but it could not give you a PDF with both the original and the annotations merged into one layer. This was a deal breaker.
With Okular you can print the PDF with the annotations as a new PDF to make sure your annotations are always visible. With the other programs the annotations are on separate layers which can get hidden on purpose or by mistake.
I found no other free program that could flatten the layers.
Okular deserves to be better known.
- facto_fermented 8y agoHave you found any software for exporting annotations (especially highlighted text)? Ideally, I would want to highlight text, select graphics, and have the software let me export those to PDF or doc/odf. My use case is reviewing academic papers. I looked into Xodo and Foxit, but they don't offer what I need.
- briancleland 8y agoHave you tried Zotero with the Zotfile extension?
- crazygringo 8y agoIn theory, shouldn't every PDF viewer support printing... and both macOS and Windows 10 support printing to PDF... which flattens the layers? Just tried it with macOS Preview and totally flattens it, the annotations pane lists nothing, I can't select/move annotations... they're permanent. However, also just tried with Acrobat Reader on macOS, and infuriatingly after selecting the system's "Print to PDF" Acrobat pops up an error saying it doesn't support print to PDF. WTF. Why would they intentionally go out of their way to disable that?
- mwcremer 8y agoBecause they sell PDF creation tools: https://acrobat.adobe.com/us/en/acrobat.html?promoid=C12Y324S https://acrobat.adobe.com/us/en/acrobat.html?promoid=C12Y324...
- JadeNB 8y ago> Why would they intentionally go out of their way to disable that? I hope that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_80486SX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_80486SX is a not-excessively-snarky reply by appeal to history.
- js2 8y agoTry CUPS-PDF. I don't know if it still works but I've used it in the past to save PDFs from programs that stubbornly refused to allow it. https://www.cups-pdf.de/ https://www.cups-pdf.de/
- ubercow13 8y agoI just tried in Evince and you can print an annotated document to flatten it just fine.
- tonydiep 8y agoCan you show me how? I'm using Document Viewer aka Evince 3.28.2 on CentOS Linux release 7.6.1810 (Core) and I don't see an option to print the PDF with annotations.
- ubercow13 8y agoIt's just the normal print option. Fill out the form, Save As with the form filled out (not sure if this is necessary), print in the main menu
- jcelerier 8y ago> Okular deserves to be better known. s/Okular/most KDE software/
- senorsmile 8y agoxournal does this.