Wednesday, May 21, 2008

annotating pdf files creating presentations

I just watched a friend annotating pdf files with Preview and then
using grabber to take a picture of part of the PDF and put it into his mac
presentation application.

So what is the linux equivalent?

1. what to annotate pdfs?

i notice xournal. someone writes

http://www.g-loaded.eu/2008/05/03/how-to-annotate-pdf-files-in-linux-using-xournal/

The rest of the document has to do with configuring xournal in such a way that it is more convenient to use it to highlight text inside PDF files. Although some of these settings can be set from within xournal’s graphical interface, I recommend editing the configuration file directly: /home/gnot/.xournal/config, since it contains more options than those available in the GUI.

The ruler exists in order to make life easier when you highlight text. It is highly recommended that you enable it for text highlighting:

startup_ruler=true

If highlighting text is your main use of xournal, then you can make it the startup tool as well.

startup_tool=highlighter

The following options make xournal’s window to start maximized and set the initial zoom to 150% respectively.

window_maximize=true
initial_zoom=150

The following options configure the highlighter. You can set the 3 pre-defined levels of thickness and which one will be the default one, set the default color and finally set the opacity (the default opacity level of 50% is just too much).

highlighter_thicknesses=2.83;8.50;19.84
highlighter_thickness=2
highlighter_color=yellow
highlighter_opacity=0.20

Conclusion

No one said that annotating PDF files in Linux is an easy task. I have tried many open source tools for that job, but xournal seems to be the best one at the time of writing.

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Cool I will try that today and see how it works.


2. I have been using emacs text application to make presentations. I need to grab screen shots.
what is the equivalent of mac grabber.

xsg i see, xwd, xgrabsc Xscreencap ,

This is really simple. Run gimp (The GNU Image Manipulation Program). Click on Xtns and then Screen Shot, seleccaptscsct whether you want to capture a single window (the Include decorations option means capture the frame and title bar along with the rest of the window) or the whole screen, then click Grab. If you selected the whole screen it will open a new image containing it immediately, else if you chose single window you will have to click on the particular window you want to capture. Edit as necessary and save.

3. he uses spotlight to find files. is there a linux spotlight that searches pdf files???

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