Mobile: Import PDF in "Draw picture..." mode

Features
1

Hi there,
I'm currently trying to replace GoodNotes with Joplin and there is only one feature that is missing to make it possible: Annotating PDFs with a pen.
I already like the "Draw picture..." mode a lot and I've seen that there already is an image import option in this mode. Would it be possible to also import PDFs in this way and thus annotate them with a pen?

2 Likes
2

I really like this suggestion!

The difficulty I was having with PDF annotation was saving the annotations as part of the PDF. This would be much easier to implement.

Also related: Feature request: Add API to capture a image from a PDF side · Issue #9794 · laurent22/joplin · GitHub

3

Initial support for this has been added to the Freehand Drawing plugin:

While this allows including PDFs as images inside of drawings on desktop, there are still a few issues:

  • It only works on desktop.
  • PDF text isn't added to the inserted images. This means that the PDF isn't searchable unless pages are labeled manually.[1]
  • Large PDFs can take a long time to import. The current UI doesn't include a progress indicator.
  • Large PDFs can also significantly increase the size of a drawing.

  1. The Freehand Drawing plugin supports search with ctrl-f, which searches text and image descriptions. ↩︎

1 Like