PDF Signing in Evince
Sometimes I have to sign PDFs for work. I use Xournal and LibreOffice Draw to do this but I am not sure if other people will like doing the same, e.g. newcomers to GNOME.
A nice and clean way to sign PDFs would probably go a long way to win over some corporate and government users.
There are existing solutions that work on Linux such as Foxit Reader but as I will show in the following series of screenshots the user interface of Foxit is pretty bad on Linux and maybe even bad in general but it gets the job done. GNOME can do better.
Foxit
Apple Preview.app
Apple's Preview.app has the ability to sign PDFs.
macOS Big Sure Preview.app toolbar
Step by Step on macOS
Initial Design Ideas:
(Scroll to the very bottom to see the "good" mockups").
I started some initial mockups. These are very rough and experimental. I'll continue exploring and refining but here are my initial ideas.
I've decided to expand on Evince's existing toolbar, adding new buttons/features.
Initial State
This is the new toolbar. I'm trying to use up all the horizontal space. I'm treating the middle area of the toolbar as a contextual area for the selected tool. If you select a tool the middle area will change to display options for that tool.
Many Saved Signatures
In this drawing the user has selected the "Signature" tool and the user can select from a list of saved signatures.
No Saved Signatures
This is the empty signature list.
One Saved Signature
(Scroll to the very bottom to see the "good" mockups"). This is the signature list with only one signature.
Add New Signature
When the user presses the "+", they are presented with options for adding signatures.
Drawing a New Signature
This part is questionable. Should the middle-most part of the toolbar expand to reveal a drawing surface? Or should the whole toolbar expand? I'll make some more drawings later.
