I would like my $0.02, adding to what has been said.
Denis Auroux twisted the bytes to say: Denis> There are basically two different things: xournal, and xournal++ Denis> (xournalpp). Denis> Xournal was written in C using GTK2. Its code base is stable, but is Denis> not evolving very fast anymore. Denis> The official repository is on sourceforge.net, both as CVS and GIT, Denis> accessible from Denis> http://sourceforge.net/projects/xournal/ Denis> The GIT repository read-only access is Denis> git://git.code.sf.net/p/xournal/code xournal-code Denis> The current codebase differs from the official release 0.4.7 by minor Denis> updates -- mostly adding a couple of translations, and minor bugfixes or Denis> fixes to the build system. Denis> Because there are a number of patches waiting to be triaged, and because Denis> I'm pretty uptight about evolving the "official" codebase, various power Denis> users have created their own git repositories -- the most relevant one Denis> here is probably Daniel German's on github. About some extra repos: * Scholiar: https://github.com/dmgerman/scholiar Before we had an official git repo, I started incorporating patches from Sourceforge and adding some of my "scratch-my-own-itch" features. Once we had an official repo, and to avoid naming problems I changed the name of its repo to scholiar. It has gotten out of sync with xournal, mostly in windows compatibility. This is the xournal I use day to day in my laptop. Some features on it: - Jump to next/previous annotation - Automatically export to PDF when saved - Always use touch as hand tool - Add A5 size paper (my favorite one :) - Maximize height - Optionally remove menu and toolbar when in fullscreen (useful for presentations) - Scroll to next/previous PDF file in same directory as current one. - New page adds default one rather than copying the current PDF page (useful when doing presentations) - Do not allow horizontal scroll * dmgerman/xournal My fork of official xournal. I try to keep it up to date. My goal was to used it to port scholiar features to xournal. But it has ended being used for gtk+ and to talk to other xournal developers instead. It has several branches: - master. Tracks official - gtk3 my efforts to make it run under gtk3+ - for-andrey cmake support (not merged anywhere else yet :) As Denis mentioned, the gtk3 is usable, but needs some finetuning. The core of the work is done. However, this was a MAJOR rework. Xournal is very tied to the GUI. The code changed everywhere. I have done some refactoring, added new code, and removed a lot of old code. What it needs the most is testing and still the porting of some features. You can find an update here: https://github.com/dmgerman/xournal/blob/gtk3/towardsGtk3.org - Lasso needs to be reimplemented - Text editing. It works but looks ugly. I haven't been able to get it to work. Also, pointer/mouse/pen management is different in gtk3. This has created new bugs, but also opened new opportunities (it is now easy to distinguish the type of device the user is using). * andrey/xournal Four students (Andrey, Jared, Derek and Jordan) took to improve official xournal for a capstone project at our University. The most important features they implemented many features but the ones I recall the most are: - bookmarks (really nice, neat) - thumbnails - ink mimicking more real pens (variability of intensity of color based on writing speed). It is really neat. - Search in PDFs and annotations. - Support for PDF Table of Contents You can see an example of their work here (created using xournal): http://turingmachine.org/~dmg/temp/xournal499.jpg I haven't used their version on a day-to-day basis (thinking about it I should, given that I'll benefit a lot from their features :) My goal is to incorporate many of their features into xournal, as I finish the work with GTK3. But you can their branch. Denis> Daniel recently undertook a rewrite of xournal to use GTK3 + goocanvas Denis> instead of GTK2 + gnomecanvas, which are no longer well supported. The Denis> key reason to migrate, besides general modernism, might be Windows 8.1, Denis> which appears to have poor GTK2 support according to some user reports. I have not tested Daniel's code recently, but understand that by now Denis> it basically works and just needs maybe a bit more testing for stability Denis> etc. Denis> Feature-wise (from the user's viewpoint), I believe most of the github Denis> repositories, Daniel's included, are very close to 0.4.7 + various Denis> patches available on sourceforge. However, the passage to GTK3 + Denis> goocanvas is obviously a big architecture upgrade. I agree. Denis> On the other hand, Andreas Butti undertook a rewrite from scratch in Denis> C++, called xournal++ (or xournalpp). Denis> The official repository is the SVN at Denis> http://sourceforge.net/projects/xournal/ Denis> Because the codebase is completely different and various extra features Denis> were planned from the start, and because things evolved differently, Denis> this has a slightly different user interface and set of visible Denis> features. At some point I was confident that xournal++ was evolving Denis> fast enough to put xournal out to retirement soon; unfortunately Andreas Denis> had to take an extended break from working on it soon afterwards, which Denis> leaves xournal++ in a state where it's not clearly better than xournal Denis> yet (particularly from a reliability viewpoint). Long time ago I looked into xournal++ but it was still incomplete. I have mentioned this to Denis, but I am totally in owe that Xournal is 100% reliable. Except for one bug it was reported recently to me, it has never crashed on me (and I use it a lot). Before the porting to gtk3 my changes were very incremental. >> I couldn't figure out what is the actual up-to-date repro resp. from >> where to start. >> Should one wait for the GTK3 port? >> Is there any future for the C++ branch? Denis> Questions, questions. If you want code that's stable and 99.9999% Denis> reliable, start from the official repo (C and GTK2). If you want to Denis> start from what this code might become someday, it's quite possible that Denis> Daniel's GTK3 port will become the way of the future, but that's far Denis> from clear yet. (Also, given my pace, it'll take forever to merge things Denis> into the official repo unless I suddenly get a burst of energy; of Denis> course it could be that I'll just give up and ask Daniel to take over). Xournal++ will certainly remain something separate; if Andreas manages Denis> to complete it, it might be the other branches that won't have any future. My attempt to gtk3-ize xournal has made me understand the code more than I ever imagined :) I can help answer question about hacking the code. I think the best way is to say: "I want to do X, where do I start?" >> Furthermore, I have a bit trouble to start reading the code. Is there >> any developer manual? Filestructure, coding style, etc.? Denis> For the main branch, Daniel once told me something along the lines of Denis> "it shows that there was a single author". I think that was not meant as Denis> a compliment concerning the coding style and readability :| Denis is a mathematician and I am software engineering researcher :) The code is really good, and I wish most programs would be as resilient as Xournal (seriously) but there are two main problems with xournal that are hard to tackle: - Lack of encapsulation. The code relies on few global variables, making reentrancy a really hard problem. This imposes problems trying to create two instances/windows of xournal that talk to each other (either with the same document or different documents). - Integration of GUI. Xournal is very tied to the GUI. It can be separated, but it would take time (and potentially making it less reliable). Another interesting problem is that xournal stressed some libraries it was using to the point of breaking them. There was code to deal with some bugs in libraries in the past that are no longer needed. Denis> Xournal++ ought to be easier to read since Andreas is at least a Denis> properly trained software person, while I'm just an amateur. >> Actually, I want to add a presentation mode to xournal. That is >> (ordered by piority): >> >> a) An extra window which mirrors the content of the actual drawing >> area (to be placed on the video projector screen) Denis> Seems definitely possible but non-trivial. You'd need either to maintain Denis> two gnomecanvases by duplicating a lot of the code to handle both Denis> windows, or something else. One of my colleagues solves this problems very smartly. He places the projector in a region of the screen, so he can annotate, but leaving a region that he can only see where he places the notes. He uses Latex/Beamer. He can then see both the slides and his comments and annotate on the slides at the same time. He uses xrandr to accomplish this: xrandr --output VGA1 --mode 1024x768 --scale 0.66699x0.66699 --pos 0x129 Denis> However, if I may suggest, the reason why I've resisted such suggestions Denis> in the past -- besides the inadequacy of the libgnomecanvas Denis> architecture, which would force a lot of code duplication or other Denis> inelegant things -- is that ideally it would be either the X server (via Denis> xrandr configuration) that takes care of the boring task of mirroring a Denis> portion of the primary display into an external display, or the window Denis> manager (of course, one with features, i.e. not gnome-shell) or some Denis> add-on generic software that mirrors part of a given window onto another Denis> display via window capture. Or if you don't want to be generic, at least Denis> some add-on into the GTK API to make such things easier. That seems Denis> smarter than inserting such a functionality into every single piece of Denis> software that one might ever want to use to give presentations. I totally agree. I think xournal is a note taking and PDF annotation tool, not a Swiss army of annotation. It is better to be good at something that to be average or below at many things. >> d) set and jump to bookmarks easily Denis> I believe there's a patch for this somewhere on sourceforge.net but I Denis> haven't tested it. Once you decide how you're going to store the Denis> bookmarks and handle them in the user interface, the back-end code is Denis> very easy -- it's mostly user interface work. The features from the 499 team have done this very nicely. One of my biggest concerns (and why I renamed my fork and have been working on branches) is that I don't want to dilute the xournal name. If a user downloads xournal they should have a warranty of reliability. I think the solution might be to create a big warning at the beginning that (when appropriate) that this xournal is not official and complains should not be directed to Denis. We really need a way to manage that. Personally, I think we need the following with regard to the future: - A reliable version. Where the features are rock solid. - An experimental version. This can be used by early adopters to try a set of new features. Then the features can be backported to reliable. - Braches/repos for specific experimental features /subcommunity. For instance, I might have features that are not to be ever part of xournal. This also includes features that our benevolent dictator (Denis) does not deem appropriate for xournal. So yes we have a mess. And we need to start cleaning it :) I think the move to git has helped tremendously to manage all these features. Unfortunately my scholiar branch is not forked from it, so it requires some work to backport it to the current xournal repo. And by the way, if anybody wants to try a newer version of xournal for windows (official + two extra features: don't scroll horizontally and touch as hand) try it here. No warranty :) it works on win8.1 on desktop mode (I have been using it on my Lenovo Thinkpad tablet 2 for a while). (warning, this zip file might be removed any moment) http://turingmachine.org/~dmg/temp/xournal.zip Denis, totally out of topic, have you tried the Japanese chalk? --dmg -- Daniel M. German "A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in neither case he is justly accountable John Stuart Mill -> to them for the injury." http://turingmachine.org/ http://silvernegative.com/ dmg (at) uvic (dot) ca replace (at) with @ and (dot) with . ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ DreamFactory - Open Source REST & JSON Services for HTML5 & Native Apps OAuth, Users, Roles, SQL, NoSQL, BLOB Storage and External API Access Free app hosting. 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