PDF annotation and sketching are made comfortable with layer management tools, customizable pen point settings, and support for stylus mappings.

However, its ability to render graphics and support for stylus input in writing and drawing make it stand out as a niche productivity tool. Xournal++ is a handwriting journal software with annotation tools for PDF files.Ĭreated to be notetaking software with enhanced handwriting features, it may not be the best option for working with text-based content and professional layouts. You can install Okular using your distribution's package manager or as a Flatpak. The Area Selection tool in Okular can identify the components within a selected area so you can extract them from the PDF independently of one another. In addition to adding texts and images in PDFs, it's also possible to retrieve them from the document to copy and paste somewhere else. You can also add a digitally encrypted signature to your document so your readers can be sure of the document's source. Okular has full or partial support for most popular PDF features and use cases, such as adding annotations and inline notes or inserting text boxes, shapes, and stamps. The app features very mature functionality and allows viewing PDFs, eBooks, images, and comics. Okular is a free open source viewer for documents developed by the KDE community. PDF Arranger is available for Linux and Windows. Its interface is intuitive and easy to use. It doesn't edit the content of a PDF the way LibreOffice and ONLYOFFICE do, but it's great for re-ordering pages, splitting a PDF into smaller documents, merging several PDFs into one, rotating or cropping pages, and so on. PDF Arranger is a front-end application for the PikePDF library. You can install the latter as a DEB or RPM file, AppImage, Flatpack, and several other formats for Linux. ONLYOFFICE Docs can be used as a web suite (on-premises or in the cloud) integrated into a document management system (DMS) or as a standalone desktop application. ONLYOFFICE also lets you secure the files with passwords, add watermarks, and use digital signatures available in the desktop version. In addition to recognizing text within PDFs to copy and extract it, ONLYOFFICE Docs can convert PDFs to DOCX, which allows you to continue using the documents in fully editable text formats. With built-in form-creation functionality, ONLYOFFICE Docs also makes it possible to build fillable document templates and export them as editable PDFs with fillable fields for different types of content: text, images, dates, and more. The document editor allows creating PDF files from scratch using DOCX as a base for files that can then be converted to PDF or PDF/A. ONLYOFFICE has been improving work with PDFs for a while and introduced a brand new reader for PDFs and eBooks in version 7.1 of ONLYOFFICE Docs. You can still add new text fields on the existing content layers and annotate or finish the documents if it doesn't.ĭraw and Writer are both bundled in a LibreOffice desktop suite available for installation on Linux systems, macOS, and Windows. For PDF editing, however, LibreOffice Draw offers tools for modifying and adding content in PDFs when the file has editing attributes. The toolset is therefore mainly focused on visual objects and layouts.

While LibreOffice Writer, a word processor, lets you create PDF files with export from text formats like ODF and others, Draw is better for working with existing PDF files.ĭraw is meant for creating and editing graphic documents, such as brochures, magazines, and posters. With the LibreOffice suite, your choice of application depends on the initial task. Each is free and open source, with all the necessary features for creating, editing, and annotating PDF files.

Here are five applications that can be installed on your Linux system (and others) or hosted on a server. There, you're likely to see proprietary applications with hidden limitations and tariffs, lacking sufficient information about data protection policies and hosting. Open source reading and editing tools for PDFs are often more secure and reliable alternatives to the applications residing in the first pages of 'PDF editor' search results.

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