Editing PDFs?

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Editing PDFs?
by Daniel on Wednesday 14/Feb/2007, @08:25

Viewing PDF, multi-page Tiffs and other, similar multi-page media is only half the game.

The app that allows to:
1. Mark / Type on the individual pages + export that back into PDF, and
2. Extract, move, rotate pages

Will the the only one that matters in the end. So, my money's on the group that tries to empower users, rather than chain them.

Related Links

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Re: Editing PDFs?
by superstoned on Wednesday 14/Feb/2007, @10:46

Okular will (does) support annotating of pdf's, and save it, but extracting, moving and rotating pages won't be supported because they think a viewer shouldn't change files (except for the annotating, apparently, tough previous versions did save annotations in a separate file).

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Re: Editing PDFs?
by LordBernhard on Wednesday 14/Feb/2007, @11:38

so... which program is supposed to be for editing pdfs (like rotating, moving, filling in)... I've been searching for such a program, but until now I wasn't able to find a good one :-(

btw: great work with okular and ligature

with friendly greetings

bernhard

ps: sorry for my bad enlish

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Re: Editing PDFs?
by otherAC on Wednesday 14/Feb/2007, @14:17

acrobat reader comes to mind....

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Re: Editing PDFs?
by Bakterie on Thursday 15/Feb/2007, @00:41

Maybe this does some of the things you wish for:
http://pdfedit.petricek.net/pdfedit.index_e

I remember reading a review of this program together with some other a while ago, but I can't remember where.

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Re: Editing PDFs?
by Medieval Mutt on Thursday 15/Feb/2007, @01:15

Umm, I suppose Kwriter (KOffice) has the ability to edit PDF files... right?

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Re: Editing PDFs?
by cm on Thursday 15/Feb/2007, @03:37

There is no app called Kwriter.

There's KWrite which is a simple text editor that was just moved out of the standard KDE packgages.

And then there's KWord, the part of KOffice you're referring to. But its PDF import filter, as cool as it is, has its limits.

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Re: Editing PDFs?
by tendays on Thursday 15/Feb/2007, @09:41

"they think a viewer shouldn't change files"

Well, all picture viewers in KDE allow rotating a diplayed picture, and then saving it back so IMHO there's no reason a pdf/ps/.. viewer should be different...

- tendays

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Re: Editing PDFs?
by zonk on Thursday 15/Feb/2007, @12:57

"all picture viewers in KDE allow rotating a diplayed picture, and then saving it back"

And that's exactly the thing i HATE with those viewers! I'm opening an image, rotating the VIEW, to look at it from a different angle, and when closing (or moving to the next image) I'm being asked if I want to save changes. What changes!?!? If rotating the view constitutes a "change", then why zooming it does not? Rhetorical question, of course. And first of all, why do I have to be afraid of damaging my file by opening it in a VIEWER, and accidentally pressing wrong button on exit? Hope someone fixes this misfeature...

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Re: Editing PDFs?
by Thomas Zander on Friday 16/Feb/2007, @05:14

Tip; alter your gwenview config to never ask you this anymore ;)

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Re: Editing PDFs?
by Henry S. on Wednesday 14/Feb/2007, @13:47

I think you do have a good point. Aside from filling in editable PDF's, I would *really* wish we could extract, move, and concatenate. I can imagine it right now...dragging pages around in the preview pane....or drop a PDF file into the place you want its pages inserted.

I don't understand why we have to have TWO very similar programs for viewing PDF's and ZERO programs for editing them (although I do understand why we aren't supposed to discuss it). I think in a perfect KDE world, there would be one good general file viewer and seperate editor. So, if these projects could get together and decide which one is going to be the "Best File Viewer Ever" and which is going to be the "Best File Editor Ever" that would be awesome.

I have always thought KDE's PDF handling was ming-boggling great. Being able to print-to-pdf from any application...and it was always many times faster at viewing than Adobe.

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Re: Editing PDFs?
by otherAC on Wednesday 14/Feb/2007, @14:22

>>I don't understand why we have to have TWO very similar programs for viewing PDF's and ZERO programs for editing them

Well, that's not too hard to understand: untill today, no-one bothered to create a pdf editor.

But joining okular and ligiture does not mean that we would be closer to a pdf editor than in the current situation.

if you thinks its weird to have TWO applications doing the same thing, checkout kde-apps.org and you will find many areas where there are even more applications available for the same job..
Would merging them all mean that we would get one great application that can do it all?
Don't think so..

And as last note: ligiture and okular did not start as similar applications: both started as viewers for a certain task, and while they mature they started to grow in each others direction.

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Re: Editing PDFs? - Rotate feature !!!!
by ferdinand on Thursday 15/Feb/2007, @03:03

A lot of documents are batch-scanned and distributed as PDF.
The content of this documents may be mixed portrait or landscape mode. That's the way they are.
As long as the receiver prints the document that's fine because he can turn them as needed.
But it's hard to to ready landscape docs in portrait mode on screen (except on laptops ;-).

So the argument - see one of the postings - not to modify PDF files is only the half truth and the users will have to use xpdf or acroread instead.

So please reconsider to add rotation.

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A small trick
by Richard Van Den Boom on Thursday 15/Feb/2007, @07:56

I have found a small trick that works rather well, to extract specific pages : I print them using the PDF pseudo printer of Kprint, selecting the appropriate pages in the process. It generates a new file with the pages you want.
Maybe playing with the print settings and order of printing should allow you to rotate and move pages.

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