xournalpp VS org-noter

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/

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/

Currently, I am trying to build a small open source NLP project for which I first find text on a page and then translate it; see the current project state here: https://github.com/PellelNitram/xournalpp_htr. The purpose of this project is to make handwritten text in Xournal++ searchable for all users.

[Xournal++](https://xournalpp.github.io/) is in my option the best handwritten note-taking software out there, because it has all the coolest features (like LaTeX snippets and shapes) and it's open source too, so make sure to check it out!

I use org-noter: Emacs document annotator, using Org-mode.

Well, for me personally, I get a lot out of org-noter. I like to write in org-mode but frequently find my editing skills are improved by exporting it to a more "readable" format. I then like to use the specific-note function to click on the exported pdf/whatever to add highly localized notes for myself, which are collected in a bidirectionally-linked org file for later review.

An alternative is to open PDFs, from Zotero or from anywhere else, with Emacs' pdf-tools (https://github.com/vedang/pdf-tools). If you annotate the pdf, those annotations are part of the pdf. And you can also use org-noter (https://github.com/weirdNox/org-noter) and org-noter-pdftools (https://github.com/fuxialexander/org-pdftools; but see https://github.com/fuxialexander/org-pdftools/issues/93#issuecomment-1493314118 if you use the new org-noter from https://github.com/org-noter/org-noter).

I created a new user, did a fresh git clone https://github.com/weirdNox/org-noter.gi and used use-package to install nov.el.

See the original repo, which links to a video demonstration.

There are some Emacs org-mode plugins (for example org-noter) that do exactly this. But this is just me pointing this out as something as exists, and not really a recommendation - Emacs is really intense to get into with a Steep learning curve.

Nothing special. Assuming you have org-noter installed, create your org-roam node. Then create a headline. Run M-x org-noter (or whatever shortcut you have bound this to) on the headline. Emacs will prompt you to fill in your /path/to/pdf. It creates a property to save the file and page location.

Moreover, no changes have been made for about 3 years in its github repo..

I use org-noter for emacs to do something similar to what you are wanting. But emacs isn’t for the faint hearted so probably not the best choice.