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Home / Ink Pen Annotations (e.g. Surface Pro)

DavidBE

Dear all,

I’ve recently started to work with a Windows Surface Pro 7. As I was looking for an efficient, light, and easy-to-use software, I came across SumatraPDF.

However, I haven’t been able so far to find how to take annotations with my Surface Pen ?

I understand SumatraPDF is mainly a reader, but are they extensions available to make it possible to write down directly within the document, i.e. with Surface Pen?

Thank you in advance.

Have a good day,

David

GitHubRulesOK

Not yet
Annotation is work in progress, so the “Ink” variant you are looking for is not yet available in Pre-release.

Also Highlighting using a pen would possibly require a button to be assigned to the A key so as to be triggered after you strike across words

SumatraPDF is heavily customised towards keyboard commands (rather than touch) and thus some touch based actions can often need assistance via remapping to keyboard values.

Having said all that you can read a PDF in SumatraPDF and send it temporarily to for example Edge to be “inked” (that can be set up by using ExternalViewers to call Edge or any other app with the filename and page number) then press R to refresh in SumatraPDF to see the results instantly (there is a file size limit of 32Mb above which the two apps can’t share the same file)

DavidBE

Amazing, thank you for your answer!

Bruce_Wayne7777777

It would be great if the Sumatra PDF included a free hand drawing tool, considering how light this is, it would be a great alternative to the default edge pdf editor which I currently use

It currently only lets you highlight and add text and stamps, the ability to make free hand drawing helps tremendously, especially if you’re a student where you need to mark questions and topics with freehand drawings

GitHubRulesOK

I use the same file in both half screen at the same time (there is a size limit) and that can easily be done using a shortcut in SumatraPDF to open the current page in Edge. Such as to text with SumatraPDF and ink with Edge. You can of course highlight in either window.

Edge had advantages that disappeared in updates but are slowly returning however they have the Power of teams from MS Gogle Skia Foxit et Al.
So Read Aloud - Inking - YouTube Videos are best done in Edge.

It is a work around until SumatraPDF adds inking But I would not like those YouTube and other esoteric insecure methods. actioned.