Yet another awesome depiction of Stallman’s wild beard:

What’s Xournal?

Xournal is an awesome piece of open source software available for both Linux and Microsoft Windows, though I haven’t used it on Windows. So far, I’ve only used it to fill out PDFs, which its really good at. It can be written on, either with a stylus or a mouse and can be typed into with its text tool. I’m sure it can do a lot more, but those are the major features I can see.

Why’s it so cool, then?

Well, if you have a stylus (either a stylus pad or a touch screen laptop) then this program will make for awesome note taking. If you’re like me, and don’t have a stylus, then you’ll benefit at least from its PDF editing. Think of its PDF capabilities like being able to open up a PDF file in Paint on Windows and do whatever you please, then save the file as a PDF just as it is on your screen. I’ve used it to fill out a few files including some applications I’ve downloaded and it really works like a charm.

So, what’s to fix?

After a clean install of Ubuntu (which I’ve gone through quite a few of, in the past) I’d expect a clean install of Xournal to work out perfectly, except sometimes it won’t. Sometimes it doesn’t write with the drawing tool, the tool you’d use if you had a stylus and it won’t write with the text tool. I’m not sure how many people have experienced this problem, but when it happens to me I’m totally lost and confused. Finally, I took a look at Xournal’s settings, here’s how you fix it:

• In the menu bar, go to “Options“
• uncheck the first option “Use XInput“
• If it worked: click “Save Preferences” (also under “Options”)

I can’t be sure that this will work for everyone, but this immediately fixed the problem for me. Hope this helps.

But the monitor burns my eyes out!! Being sick is the worst!!

Thanks XKCD for another laugh