pdfjam VS xournalpp

Compare pdfjam vs xournalpp and see what are their differences.

pdfjam

The pdfjam package for manipulating PDF files (by pdfjam)

xournalpp

Xournal++ is a handwriting notetaking software with PDF annotation support. Written in C++ with GTK3, supporting Linux (e.g. Ubuntu, Debian, Arch, SUSE), macOS and Windows 10. Supports pen input from devices such as Wacom Tablets. (by xournalpp)
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Nutrient – The #1 PDF SDK Library, trusted by 10K+ developers
Other PDF SDKs promise a lot - then break. Laggy scrolling, poor mobile UX, tons of bugs, and lack of support cost you endless frustrations. Nutrient’s SDK handles billion-page workloads - so you don’t have to debug PDFs. Used by ~1 billion end users in more than 150 different countries.
www.nutrient.io
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pdfjam xournalpp
4 226
397 12,126
1.5% 5.1%
8.3 9.4
4 days ago 9 days ago
Shell C++
GNU General Public License v3.0 only GNU General Public License v3.0 only
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

pdfjam

Posts with mentions or reviews of pdfjam. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-08-13.

xournalpp

Posts with mentions or reviews of xournalpp. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2025-01-30.
  • LibreOffice 400M Downloads, and Counting
    5 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 30 Jan 2025
    So happy that it continues to grow in popularity. Draw is probably their best tool in the suite. Also related, people might be interested in using Xournal (https://xournalpp.github.io/) for PDF manipulations and pandoc (https://pandoc.org/) for general document conversion.
  • ✨ Top 5 Open-Source Terminal Note-Taking Applications ✨
    5 projects | dev.to | 29 Jan 2025
    Repository: xournalpp
  • Rnote – Sketch and take handwritten notes
    5 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 25 Aug 2024
    I tried a whole bunch of the these apps, and I decided that Xournal++ [1] is better than Rnote for note taking. However, I have used Openboard [2] for teaching online since 2020.

    I agree that Rnote's smoothing is better, but it's tool selection UX is terrible. There are three different bars (top, bottom, and side), and you often need to move your mouse/hand to all of them across the screen in order to select the right tool. In Xournal++ I can put everything on the top bar.

    Xournal++ has it's own problems. Pasting an image always makes it so big, that resizing to the correct size is difficult. It also doesn't have a laser pointer, which is why I can't use it for teaching. Creating a new document with the correct template is also painful.

    Honestly, in another life, I would write a decent note-taking app.

    [1] https://github.com/xournalpp/xournalpp/

    [2] https://github.com/OpenBoard-org/OpenBoard/

  • Xournal++
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 23 Jun 2024
  • Rnote – An open-source vector-based drawing app
    3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 11 Mar 2024
    I highly recommend Rnote to anyone on Linux that misses the "hodgepodge" notetaking of apps like OneNote. It works like a dream on touchscreens and drawing tablets, with a surprising amount of configuration under the hood.

    Also worth noting is Xournal, an older but similar project: https://xournalpp.github.io/

  • Book list for streetfighting computer scientists
    2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 28 Dec 2023
    I've been using Xournalpp[1] for many years, highlighting books as I read them, adding in text/hand drawn annotations in whitespaces if necessary. Unlike other PDF readers/annotators, it saves a separate file, so the original PDF is untouched. It can also export the annotated PDF as a new PDF with highlights and annotations.

    Obsidian[2] also has PDF support, where you can open a markdown document side by side with the PDF to take notes as you read. I think it also lets you highlight the PDF itself.

    Emacs I think has a similar feature, via plugins/org-mode(?) to the Obsidian setup.

    And of course your typical PDF reader probably has support for highlighting PDFs too, but I find them clunky and they save by exporting a PDF, which can be a bit heavy-handed IMO compared to just saving the annotations/highlights as a separate file as Xournalpp does.

    [1]: https://github.com/xournalpp/xournalpp/

  • MS edge pdf alternative
    1 project | /r/linuxquestions | 10 Dec 2023
  • Looking for a program that will turn my handwriting (through a wacom tablet) to standard math text immediately. Also, I'm on Linux Mint.
    1 project | /r/linux4noobs | 9 Dec 2023
  • A kernel update broke my stylus
    3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 1 Nov 2023
  • PicoCalc
    5 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 2 Oct 2023

What are some alternatives?

When comparing pdfjam and xournalpp you can also consider the following projects:

pdftk

rnote - Sketch and take handwritten notes.

Files - A modern file manager that helps users organize their files and folders.

obsidian-excalidraw-plugin - A plugin to edit and view Excalidraw drawings in Obsidian

pdfmixtool

onenote - 📚 Linux Electron Onenote - A Linux compatible version of OneNote

unionpdf - A universal pdf rendering/editing library

notekit - A GTK3 hierarchical markdown notetaking application with tablet support.

openoffice - Apache OpenOffice

Joplin - Joplin - the privacy-focused note taking app with sync capabilities for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS.

LibreOffice - Read-only LibreOffice core repo - no pull request (use gerrit instead https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/) - don't download zip, use https://dev-www.libreoffice.org/bundles/ instead

Trilium Notes - Build your personal knowledge base with Trilium Notes

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Revolutionize your code reviews with AI. CodeRabbit offers PR summaries, code walkthroughs, 1-click suggestions, and AST-based analysis. Boost productivity and code quality across all major languages with each PR.
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Nutrient – The #1 PDF SDK Library, trusted by 10K+ developers
Other PDF SDKs promise a lot - then break. Laggy scrolling, poor mobile UX, tons of bugs, and lack of support cost you endless frustrations. Nutrient’s SDK handles billion-page workloads - so you don’t have to debug PDFs. Used by ~1 billion end users in more than 150 different countries.
www.nutrient.io
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