[Jonny-R]

Not being able to annotate on PDF files, along with native folder creation, are for me some of the biggest functions missing from the PB. Are there any apps which allow for this?

[dusdal]

Yes there is. There is an android port of a PDF annotator called 'qPDF'.

It has its limitations. Can be laggy when scrolling, sometimes android player can drop, but it has filled a huge productivity gap for me. The developer is active on these forums as well, just do a search for "qPDF" and you should find the thread.

They released an update shortly after it was on appworld and seem to be entertaining the possibility of a native app.

[Jonny-R]

Thanks for your reply. I'd love a native application, made with cascades. Lagging apps really ruins the PB experience!

[Jonny-R]

This is a great application! Currently trying out the free version. Thanks again

[robtanz]

Jotsy is also good. It syncs with Box too.

[mem0ryburn]

Both of my recommendations have already been suggested so I'm just going to sit here and look pretty for a bit

[neuroben]

Repligo Reader works really well. Need to side load it.

[FF22]

Both of my recommendations have already been suggested so I'm just going to sit here and look pretty for a bit

While sitting there, would you mind turning around!

[coolrat33]

I have tried Jotsy several times but have never been able to get it to sync despite hours of trying. I no longer have the patience to continue. If Jotsy offered a way to open PDFs direction from within the app, I'm sure I'd love it. I like the bear-paw editing menu and think its one of the most intelligently designed tools I've seen. If Jotsy can improve, I'll gladly buy this well-designed Canadian product.

I'm using Repligo now and it is outstanding. It has a brilliant feature that allows the user to view the PDF as text only (if it has readable text) and so the user can zoom the text and Repligo will automatically 'reflow' it.

I tested qPDF the other day and it also works very well. I like its features, but it did not seem to reflow text. I need to check this again thoroughly.
I've used Qoppa Software (PDF Studio editor) on my Windows and Linux computers for years. It is a very well designed, and well implemented product.

[karen qpdf]

Hi @coolrat33, we've got reflow in development right now! It'll be a while before it's released, but, once it's done, it will greatly improve text handling on both PDF Studio AND qPDF Viewer/Notes

[mjlott]

Another vote for Repligo. Works great!

[jhanks64]

I really want a native PDF editor, but in the meantime, qPDF seems to work well enough. It allows me to annotate and check off check boxes (or block them out), which is what I need to sell the PB to a fire department for inspections.

[OttawaGabe]

I really want a native PDF editor, but in the meantime, qPDF seems to work well enough. It allows me to annotate and check off check boxes (or block them out), which is what I need to sell the PB to a fire department for inspections.

If that's a mission critical application, then I would say that the Playbook is the wrong tablet for the job. Android apps on the Playbook just aren't stable enough, having all your work go down the drain because of a crash during the middle of an inspection is just bad business.

PDF handling on the Playbook is a major weakness.

[jhanks64]

It's not mission critical, just a good additional justification and nice addition to the BlackBerry the Fire Chief already carries. If it can also edit PDF's fairly reliably, that's a bonus.

The bigger problem is that the county and town use Sprint/Nextel and the only BB available is the old crappy 8350i.

[Scrapegoat]

Does anyone have a working link to download repligo reader 3.3 .bar file? I have looked all over the net and can only find a handful of sites where the link is either dead, or they want your credit card details up front. I don't have one

[polytope]

If that's a mission critical application, then I would say that the Playbook is the wrong tablet for the job. Android apps on the Playbook just aren't stable enough, having all your work go down the drain because of a crash during the middle of an inspection is just bad business.

PDF handling on the Playbook is a major weakness.

Motion Computing slates are much more appropriate for mission critical stuff and it runs Windows. Though battery life could be a concern.

[PatrickMJS]

I've got both qpdf & jotsy. With qpdf, I can open the pdf file, view it, search it and even read pop-up notes in the file. But I can't figure out how to make my own highlights and pop-up notes.

With Jotsy, I can't get past the opening screen. It simply says "no files found".

[thecsman]

Jotsy is also good. It syncs with Box too.

Jotsy is in very alpha state. The interface is pretty neat, but the app is too slow.

And the worse part, the server software you install in your PC has a horrible bug that eats your hard drive space. I was surprised when my 1TB drive run out of space. I checked with WinDirStat and Jotsy's journal files were taking 300 GIGABYTES of space. I immediately uninstalled the software and deleted the Jotsy directory in AppData.

I notified the developer to see if they care to fix this horrible bug.

[jhanks64]

In qpdf, tap the big Q in the upper left corner to activate modifications.

[PatrickMJS]

In qpdf, I tap the "Q" in the upper left corner and nothing happens.

[3Athlete]

For sitting around and making notes/highlighting on pdfs qpdf works. I feel like you may run into a problem with it if you attempt to do it during a class. One little quirk I found slightly irritating was the inability to continually draw a line ever after taking your finger/stylus off of the screen. Every time you remove the point of contact you must reselect the option you selected prior.

[karen qpdf]

Hi Patrick,

the Q is non-functional

If the toolbar is not showing, just tap once on the page to toggle it. That has all the shape, text, and note annotations on it, so you'll just tap one of the buttons and either tap or drag to place on the document.

Some annotations, like sticky notes and text boxes, will pop up the dialog for you to enter in a note. For the others, if you want to change any characteristics of it, just tap on it - you will see the grey resize borders around the shape and the top bar will change its icons to Delete, Outline, Fill, and Properties buttons. A miniature version of what you're editing will also replace the Q icon in the top left. The Properties window lets you change the outline and fill colors as well, but you can change line width, transparency, and the note from that window as well. Once done, tap OK (it will be called "Set" in our upcoming release) and tap outside of the shape to leave "edit" mode.

Let me know if you've got more questions about how things work!

In qpdf, I tap the "Q" in the upper left corner and nothing happens.