• Handwriting and markup features have been added to Papers, GNOME’s - andsince 25.04, Ubuntu’s - default document viewer app. • The latest nightly builds of Papers let you draw on documents with ink tools to add callouts, doodles or your own signature to PDF files, and pepper pages with text boxes to type on forms that don’t otherwise support input. • Papers already has text highlighting and an annotations sidebar, but it lacked freeform pen tools or moveable text boxes. • Fleshing out the document editing tools is welcome as it will save the hassle of installing additional software. • Adding the PDF Annotation features Developer Lucas Baudin worked on adding the new PDF annotation tools to Papers, having tried a decade ago with GNOME document viewer Evince, for which Papers is a spiritual successor. • But he says he ‘quickly gave up’.
Article Summaries:
- GNOME’s default document viewer, Papers, has added free‑form handwriting and text‑box annotation tools in its latest nightly builds. The updates let users draw callouts, doodles, or signatures on PDFs and type into form fields that previously required external software. The changes required modifications to the poppler PDF library and Papers’ UI, and the new annotation features are slated for inclusion in the upcoming GNOME 50 release, which will ship with Ubuntu 26.04 LTS. While the nightly builds may still contain bugs, the enhancements aim to streamline document editing and improve form accessibility.
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