Feature idea: notes

[Mister Ribble <ender27182818 gmail com>]

This is an idea that came up recently. Should the feature become
enormously popular, I want to give credit where it's due. The idea is
Marques Rasmussen's - at least, that's where I heard it from, and it
sounded like he thought of it himself.

Anyways, the idea is this. Marq likes to download entire .pdfs of
textbooks to read on his tablet PC. Just like with a regular notebook,
he would like the ability to highlight, mark up, note, draw on, and
generally customize the view of his virtual textbook. Currently, I know
of no .pdf viewers/editors that have this very basic functionality
(though I'm far, far from an expert in these products).

Thinking about it, I realized that implementation would be relatively
simple. All you have to do is allow the user to enter a mode in which
mouse clicks are converted into pixel graphics - just like a simple
Paint program - which draws to an overlay. The overlay should be
toggle-able. The overlay could (should?) be stored in a separate file
from the original pdf, but loaded when requested. Of course, you could
add the ability to specify stroke size, brush stroke shape, color,
opacity, etc. But, overall, the idea is to simply allow the user to
display an editable graphic (.png?) over the display of the document
with variable opacity. It could be a plugin, or something that is
disabled by default, whatever. But, it would be massively useful for
tablet users who like to read everything on their tablets.

Please let me know if such a feature has been suggested before and where
I could find information about any conclusions. It seems like such a
change would be relatively easy to code for anyone with in-depth
knowledge of the api for how evince displays a document to the screen. I
would be willing to do it myself in a couple months.

-Eli Ribble