Hi,
I am using KDE Neon and I am trying to find a way to add text to pdf files created by my professors. I do not want to change anything about the layout or other aspects of the pdf I only want to add text. I basically want to be looking at the pdf files during classes and be able to add notes as the material is taught. Can anyone recommend the best method to achieve this?

Thanks so much

Okular or Evince can both be used to annotate PDF's...providing the PDF's aren't protected by DRM, and allow it.

1 members found this post helpful.

Well, I don't know if this is the best way to do, but I did use to add notes (post-it like style or underlying) to classe's pdf.

Official pdf reader and Okular do it and I guess lot of pdf readers does too.

It was really helpfull when I read again classe's material. I didn't try so I don't know what happen if you want to print pdf and your notes.

Thanks, I have found that I can open the pdf with libreoffice Draw while in class and add new pages, that just consist of a full page text box
with my notes, between my professors' pages and then export that to a new pdf at the end of class. Then I can open the new pdf and add inline and
highlight annotations while I am studying at home.

2 members found this post helpful.

That is a nice find. Thanks.

I gave up using word processors years ago (10 - 15?) and strictly use LaTeX. I read a pdf from my income tax forms as a \put(x,y){\includegraphics {/path_to/file.pdf}} in a picture environment. Then I \put(x,y){\textbf {\large or \normalsize My Name}}. I can do whiteouts with \put(x,y){\linethickness{5mm}{\textcolor{white}{\line(1,0){9}}}}.
TeX, including LaTeX, is available as texlive. I use A Guide to LaTeX - Helmut Kopka and Patrick Daly often as a reference manual - for example, after using X to mark boxes for many years, I came across a requirement to use check marks on a gun licence renewal, so I used $\surd$ from the Math symbols.
I also typeset in Kyrillic (Russian) with \usepackage{/usr/path_to/latex/fundus-cyr/cyr}.
TeX can be used to write a novel without taking time to format, so notes can be entered as plain text and locations \put(x,y) can be entered later.

Hi:

Try Master PDF Editor 5, this is a very good one that allows to add new documents and more.

good luck

A PDF document is a picture, not a text document.

If you can reverse it, ie make text out of the picture, then you can edit it. I used to do this with some PDF documents of financial information for businesses, and it is shady business, not 100%. Basically it is OCR scanning, which interprets letters from the picture and transforms them into text. This is primarily used for papers with text on, when scanning them to a computer, because those are also interpreted as "pictures".

https://superuser.com/questions/2842...a-pdf-on-linux
https://unix.stackexchange.com/quest...red-within-pdf

Otherwise you COULD make the PDF's into proper pictures, which is easier to manipulate in a variety of programs.

Hi Zebra:

Look, open a document that you want to edit and in the pull-down clic on document, than insert ,than choose an image , and search for a picture or whatever (could be another document) , that you got the add, after I did it and works.

That is not totally true. It is actually a file of drawing instructions (based on postscript). It can contain raster graphic elements but it can also contain text ones.
So it is not just a picture in the sense that a GIF or a JPEG or a PNG which is what many think of as a picture format. However it is a picture in the sense of a SVG. Usually text is contained as text elements rather than a raster graphics (so they can be scaled). This is why it is usually possible to copy the text from a PDF reader and paste it into a text document. This would not be possible if it was stored in raster format.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF for an intro.

The format is based on ASCII characters so if you really want to hack in something more then you can do it with a text editor.

Hi:

Not trying to come into a theoretical or more technically answer, i just look into the practical one for a quick solution, as long it's working, that's fine, at least for me.

1. If a PDF is graphical, just an image and not text, then a tool like libreoffice draw can allow you to hang text boxes over it, or you need an OCR-ish app to return it to some sort of text, hopefully with the original style and font.
2. If it is text (you can copy text from it), there are some tools to turn it back into a work processing doc, like odt, rtf, docx or doc.
I use my wife's Windows 10 box via a shared Google Drive dir so I can use Adobe Acrobat, which preserves the original layout, but sometimes it is just like #1 if the author did not create an updatable form. Still, you get to choose a font small enough to make text fit. I recommend Verdana, very legible even at small pitch.

Most of the time I use MasterPDF Editor to edit PDFs, but I also use Xournal. It works well, and it is a lot lighter than LO Draw.

Xournal is intended to be used for note taking and sketching, but it can also open and edit PDFs. You can use the text and drawing tools to add text or drawings to a PDF, and it works well most of the time.

One thing - do not use File > Save (Ctrl-S) to save changes to the PDF. Weird things can happen. Instead, use File >Export to PDF to save changes. I also suggest you select a new filename for the PDF.

http://xournal.sourceforge.net/