Aside from shelling out big bucks for the full Adobe package, is there any other way I can edit PDF documents? I tried searching the archives, but unfortunately PDF is too short a search term.
Thanks dopers,
Auto
Never used it myself, but you might try this
If you need to actually edit pdf files, you might be able to find a freeware editor out there somewhere. However, if you need to just create pdfs, look at http://www.cutepdf.com/ .
If you have a relatively simple document you need to make a change to, get a program like cutepdf, create a duplicate of the document with your changes, and print to make the pdf.
Cutepdf creates a virtual printer that works from almost any program that you can print from. You open your document, tell it to print, and select cutepdf, and then a destiniation file.
I love Cutepdf. When I’m scanning stuff I want to be a PDF, my scanner’s imaging software handles it, but when I have stuff already in digital form that I want to make a PDF out of, it’s unbeatable.
Even the full Adobe Acrobat may not let you edit a specific PDF in a meaningful way.
A PDF is a specially wrapped Postscript file, and is a page description. And Postscript is a whole language on it’s own. Generating the Postscript output (for printing or for PDF) can be as simple as saying
;choose this font
;stick “Hello, World” on the page
This is easy to edit to change “World” to “Earth”. But the postscript could say
;choose this font
;stick “Hel” on the page
;stick “lo,” on the page slightly closer than the default because we want to kern the “ll”
;stick " W" on the page
;stick “or” on the page with a specific kern value
;stick “d” on the page
;stick “l” on the page tucked accurately between the “r” and the “d”
This would be much harder to edit as the text is out of order and split up. Or it could even say
;draw a vertical line 12 points high
;draw a horizontal line 5 points long
;draw a vertical line 12 points high
(draw an “H”)
…
This would be almost impossible to edit. Adobe Acrobat lets you create a PDF from scratch and retains all the context and structure within the PDF to let you edit it. It can guess at the structure of many PDFs, but not all, and can be used to do some tricks by layering material over the existing page definition. This is risky, because if you do this the original page is only hidden in the output, and can be viewed by stripping out the superimposed layer.
So it really depend on the source of the PDF, and what changes you need to make. Virtual Printers that generate PDFs from any application are more likely to produce less structured PDFs. A program like OpenOffice that exports a structured document as a PDF is more likely to produce an editable PDF (and in fact the next release of OpenOffice will include editing PDF files produced by OpenOffice and maybe some other structured apps).
Si
We use this at work.
May not be exactly what you’re after Autolycus, but OpenOffice allows you to save documents as PDFs.
Some method of exporting PDF into plain text, editing it in OpenOffice and saving back as a PDF might work. I’ve seen Freeware PDF to Text exporters in the past.
Let me know if you can’t find one.
At work, I find that it’s much easier and less frustrating to make my desired changes in the source document and then reprint to PDF. Acrobat provides only a limited ‘text touchup’ tool, which sometimes works. If I was wanting to edit the text of a PDF, and didn’t care about formatting so much, I’d select the text and copy it out of the PDF, then edit it elsewhere and print a new one. What exactly are you trying to do?
Perhaps other packages will work better for editing a completed PDF.
Bear in mind that PDFs can contain embedded images as well. You may be completely-unable to edit the text if it’s actually a scan of a page.
I have a job contract in a 10 day English Summer Program in Tokyo e-mailed to me in PDF form that I need to sign and initial. I could print it out and fax it, but it would be easier if I could just edit the PDF file and send it that way. I’m not looking at heavy editing, just putting my initials in three small boxes, signing my name, and dating it.
If it is not a PDF Form set up for that sort of thing, it will be tricky. You could use Ghostscript to render the pages to bitmaps, use the bitmaps as a background in a document and layer your additions, then print back to PDF… (I think I missed out a step involving a wooden table and a camera somewhere)
Or just print it, sign it and fax it. Sometimes the apparently easy logical approach (like edit a PDF and email it) is in fact not the best way to do it.
Si
Print it, sign it, scan it and email it as a JPG!
How do you plan on signing this PDF, if you could edit it?
:smack:
Fax it is then.
(I feel stoopid.)