[PLUG] Edit PFD

King Beowulf kingbeowulf at gmail.com
Sat May 4 20:14:15 UTC 2013


On 05/03/2013 01:44 PM, Marvin Kosmal wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I think I asked this before and can't remember the answer..
> 
> I need to edit a  PDF document.  What application can I use.
> 
> I am running Ubuntu 12.04
> 
> TIA
> 
> Marvin _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing
> list PLUG at lists.pdxlinux.org 
> http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug .
> 

PDF is not really a word processor format, more of a final output
format for screen and printers.  Adobe has their pricey editor but
reversed engineered software is going to be hard to find. Essentially,
when creating PDFs, you always work from a non-pdf source (word
processor, etc) and export to pdf the final copy - analogous to
printing - so that who ever you give the pdf to can view/print on
anything device withour needing your particular software. If someone
gives you a pdf, and you need to edit it, you should really ask for
the original source file.

On Linux it is easy enough to view, print, annotate, but the solutions
(Libreoffice/Openoffice, Scribus, etc) are not going to work very well
in most cases, especially not if there is any pdf security set.  xpdf
has some tools to convert (see you repo and
http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/home.html )  You might also try:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDFedit  <- This might be nice.
http://pdftohtml.sourceforge.net/
http://www.pstoedit.net/pstoedit/

That said, GIMP and Libreoffice 4 can work, but after import you
should first save as a native format and edit that, then, once done,
export to pdf.  I find Libreoffice Draw a bit easier to use for this
than GIMP.






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