Taking Notes on PDFs on an Android Tablet: Handwriting, Search and Scanning

• Handwriting recognition. Notes you write by hand should be read into text so you can search them later.
• Scanning. Paper pages should become straight, clean, searchable PDFs, including text in Hindi as well as English if that is what you work in.
• Links across PDFs. A note in one document should be able to point to a passage in another.
• Read aloud. Hearing your notes read back is a quick way to rehearse and to catch mistakes.
• Your data. The app should not change your original PDFs, and backups should go to a cloud you choose.

ArguLinx is a native Android tablet app. You write with a stylus or a finger, and a pause after writing turns the note into a tile showing the words it was read as; the words are searchable, and tapping the tile takes you back to where you wrote it. Pen, highlighter, snip and typed notes all become cards in one running-order index.

The scanner uses the camera to straighten and clean paper pages into a PDF and reads the text on them, English and Hindi on the same page, so scans show up in search. Speak mode steps through your cards with Next and Previous and a timer, and can read each card aloud in the tablet’s own voice.

A backup of a case can go to your own Google Drive, and your original PDFs are never changed.

ArguLinx does not host your documents, so there is no cloud storage allowance to manage. Files live on the tablet, and a backup goes to the cloud you already pay for, only when you ask for it.