For university, it has been handy for me to just keep things simple and write down my notes using Kate.
However, for anything that involves math, it would be nice to have an application that allows quickly writing down equations with the pen of my tablet pc.
xournalcpp isn’t handy for this purpose. Typing feels slow, and it doesn’t break lines. It is not a text editor.
Libre Office Writer has a drawing tool. But it adds the transformation handles after each written letter:
So it isn’t easy to just quickly scribble something. I end up hitting those handles and accidentally screw up my writing. And it isn’t pressure sensitive.
It would be nice if Calligra would allow this. Ideally pressure sensitive. It doesn’t have to be vector. Just something like Kritas “Basic-2 Opacity” brush would suffice.
I think this might be important to me to have. There is also the option that I contribute this myself. However, I only have experience with GTK, not qt, and I have no practical experience with c++. And I’m probably busy until July or something. However, if someone ends up actually working on this, and if you want me to betatest anything, I’ll make sure to help.
I have wanted a similar type app for some time. I’ve relied on xournalpp since I use more handwriting than typing. Essentially, I’d like a OneNote replacement, with actual TeX integration, and eventually live collaboration.
I have started to code something which would handle the handwriting, but since I am new to app development it is slow, and I’m not sure it’s going anywhere.
Hm… Just tried xournalcpp again, and it doesn’t feel slow. Maybe I was mixing up apps? Anyhow, word wrapping would be nice… There is a discussion for this on their github project in issue 1756, but so far, nobody seem to have found some time to implement it.
The nice thing about something like Calligra is, I think, that I can just go ahead and type, and properly format my document with headings, and have proper paragraph spacings and page margins. I wouldn’t be able to use xournalpp to write beautiful documents. And even if word wrapping is ever implemented there, I’d therefore rather use Calligra, if Calligra had a pen/draw tool.
Xournalpp is not a true word processor like you said. I’ve been annoyed often that I cannot even bold or otherwise change font characteristics of a word within a block of text. Scaling of text vs equations is strange as well.
I think a better solution, than to have each individual section or line or character as a separate image, would be, to have a drawing layer below the text.
The pen/draw tool would draw on that layer, while text remains where it is and above the drawing.
This would also allow people to highlight text with a bigger brush, like a marker.
And an eraser tool would similarly only affect that bottom drawing layer.
