@brolf

I suggested that, but they insist they need a "handwritten signature".

@fribbledom @brolf And how are you supposed to hand write a signature on a pdf file, honest question?
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@tn5421

Honest answer: Get yourself Adobe Acrobat Reader (Win only). Even the free version allows you to do add a signature be it free-hand sketch, or as an image (they also have a cloud version of that). It’s a pain, but does the job. Also,you can generate a SMIME certificate and add it into the document. Again, Adobe-specific solution. It’s the only reason I keep Windows VirtualBox VM around.

If you don’t want to go Adobe way, another option is to use Xournal to open the PDF in question and scribble your stuff onto it. Not great, but again, does the job. Sort of… Finally, there’s LIbreOffice Draw which opens any PDF and allows you to edit it and scribble into it. The only problem is that when you save it back to PDF, sometimes it screws up fonts and there’s little you can do about it. So YMMV. Optionally, there are some SaaS options for this out there, but I did not try (except the original Adobe thing).

Oh, and there is also Master PDF Editor which could help. I think the life-long license is worth avoiding the Adobe crap. Free version adds some watermarks, but if you are OK with that, you might be good.

@brolf @fribbledom

@FailForward

I've tried the official Adobe thingy on Android, no luck 😒

@tn5421 @brolf

@fribbledom Forget Android, forget Linux. It’s a waste of time. Get yourself free demo Windows VM in VirtualBox, install Adobe Acrobat and go ahead.

@tn5421 @brolf

@FailForward @fribbledom @brolf if I'm going to run virtual machines it's not going to be with software that fucking oracle wrote

@tn5421

Well, to be precise, Oracle did not write it in the first place. They bought it (Innotek GmbH acquisition). I also understand VirtualBox is open source, or something like that. But OK, if you are sufficiently ideological about it, then your options are accordingly limited, I guess.

@brolf @fribbledom

@FailForward @brolf @fribbledom
I wrote about this a bit ago on a different post but I'd like to avoid non open software if possible. Only if there are no functional alternatives will I go closed.

Oracle is a bag of dicks.

@tn5421

Well, whatever we think about the outside world, the unfortunate reality is that sometimes we are forced to interact with big entities which require stuff like PDF signature. I still wonder why non-Adobe OSS solution emerged. It’s crazy. Everybody needs it and nobody does it. SO is full of question about this.

So after lots of struggle in alternatives, I just gave up. After all, I have better things to do with my life than waste time on futile ideological battles with myself…

@brolf @fribbledom

@tn5421 I wanted to say “I wonder why NO non-Adobe solution emerged”. Stupid me… Sorry.

@brolf @fribbledom

@FailForward @brolf @fribbledom
That's a big part of why I'm looking to solve the problem now. I have nothing better to do right now, absolutely zero concerns that are not self-imposed to take my time from me. If I can figure something workable out now, then there's no reason not to try.

I can 100% understand and respect your position as well. Not everyone has the free time I do to hunt down alternatives and figure out workarounds. Hell, until recently I was still mainly using windows because, for all the memes about how awful it was, it required practically 0 maintenance from me once initially set up.
@tn5421 @FailForward @brolf @fribbledom
> oracle wrote
are you implying oracle actually wrote sth by themselves?
@FailForward @brolf @fribbledom thankfully, i didn't need it for that. OP is the one that had to physically sign his PDF because his instructors are braindead. If I had to do the same I could probably survive on LibreOffice Draw and just trying several times until I get a non-broken copy.
@FailForward @tn5421 @brolf @fribbledom I've sometimes had more success with the Calibre equivalent to LibreOffice Draw (Karbon) when it comes to PDFs, dunno why but it seems to retain the formatting a lot better. Or at least it did when last I had to edit a PDF a few years back.

@keithzg

Interesting. This looks like going Inkscape way. It’s a vector editor. The problem with Inkscape for this is that it cannot properly open and edit multi-page PDFs. Does this Karbon thing do it?

(before I try I better know, becuase that would require me to pull in GBs of KDE dependencies first, I guess)

@brolf @tn5421 @fribbledom

@FailForward @brolf @tn5421 @fribbledom I think so but can't 100% remember; it's been years now. At my work it was mainly used for editing invoices our accounting software spit out; but since Calligra Suite wouldn't really run on Windows (at least not very well) and we didn't actually care about the formatting getting a tad broken, I just set the secretary up using LibreOffice Draw in the end. Why we had to edit our own invoices is itself a whole other story of awkward proprietary software . . .
@FailForward @tn5421 @brolf @fribbledom @keithzg Err, the Calligra equivalent I meant, not the Calibre equivalent. I always mix those two project names up!
@tn5421 @FailForward @brolf @fribbledom Karbon is Calligra's vector editing program, the equivalent of LibreOffice Draw. For whatever reason (I assume thanks to the structure and types of actual data in PDF files) those are the programs each respective suite uses to edir PDFs.

Calligra Author is the ebook editing program I believe.

Calibre is of course also related to ebooks, heh, but since its name is halfway between Calligra and LibreOffice, despite me knowing better I always slip up!
@keithzg @FailForward @brolf @fribbledom

for viewing, for almost all use cases I'd rather just load it up in my browser.

calibre's built in editor can only edit epub and....azw3 i think it was, but it can convert to pdf.

okular seems like it supports basic pdf editing functionality, but probably has to pull in kde dependencies.

evince tries to be okular w/ gnome shit instead. never used it so idk if its any good
@tn5421 @FailForward @brolf @fribbledom Okular is shockingly good. I run my desktop at a fractional scalong level though so I'm obviously a KDE person, not a GNOME (or really GTK for the most part) user, so the deps don't matter as much to me!

Over the past few years the KDE folks have compartmentalized their libs though so I'd be shocked if either Okular or Karbon was actually gigabytes of deps. And of course your package manager can toss it all out if it ends up not being for you :)
@keithzg @FailForward @brolf @fribbledom
I only bring up the deps because it does kind of suck to pull kde stuff in a non kde install
@tn5421 @FailForward @brolf @fribbledom Hmm does it screw up defaults and such? That often happens to me with Gnome stuff starting from non-GTK desktop installs, didn't have the impression that normally happens the other way around but I normally run either KDE or something lightweight like Openbox don't have direct experience.

Checked on a fully headless install and both Okular and Karbon cost ~475MB of installed space. Which is a lot in some senses, although sadly not by modern standards...
@tn5421 @FailForward @brolf @fribbledom I don't mean to be all DE war-y but in my experience Gnome seems to presume you'd only ever want to run Gnome a lot more than any other DE, and that's where havoc ensues ;)

My big basis for this assertion is how much better KDE, Qt, or even more generic GTK apps work in when I'm using basic environments like Openbox or Fluxbox, compared to Gnome apps which always seem to be horribly broken when I try to run them there (they fare much better in KDE).
@tn5421 @FailForward @brolf @fribbledom (Most of my actual problems with major defaults being changed or themes being shuffled around or such are when I have multiple full DEs installed, which I used to do a lot but have grown far lazier about in my old age, heh. Honestly still caused me less hassle over the years than PDFs :P)

@FailForward @tn5421 @brolf @fribbledom

If you don’t want to go Adobe way, another option is to use Xournal to open the PDF in question and scribble your stuff onto it.

This is what I always do. It works really well for me. It works better if you have a touch screen, but doing it with a mouse is ok as well.

I actually use Xournal++, rather than Xournal. I’m not sure if it makes a difference, though.

Of course, the other option is to simply print it, use a pen, and then scan it. Assuming you have a printer and scanner, of course.

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