[vox-tech] PDF editor?

[Peter Jay Salzman]

On Thu 18 Mar 04,  8:08 AM, Jonathan Stickel <jjstickel@sbcglobal.net> said:
> Karsten M. Self wrote:
> >on Wed, Mar 17, 2004 at 01:12:03PM -0800, Norm Matloff 
> >(matloff@laura.cs.ucdavis.edu) wrote:
> >
> >>
> >>Does anyone know of an open-source editor for PDF files?  All I want to
> >>do at present is insert Web links into a PDF file.
> >
> >
> >Norm, enjoyed your H1B pages for years...
> >
> >PDF is _not_ an inherently editable format (though this is a good way to
> >get into a flamefest on some lists).  It's a publishing / presentation
> >format.
> >
> >Your best bet is to find (or make) a source document and make your edits
> >there, then publish to PDF.
> >
> >There are a number of tools which will let you work with files in PDF
> >format (an operation I consider distinct from "editing"), and you may be
> >able to overlay text from within these. 
> <snip>
> 
> If it's just a single page, you can convert the pdf to ps (use pdftops, 
> _not_ pdf2ps), import it into xfig, write on top of it, and export back 
> to pdf.
 
jon,

karsten was right when he said that pdf is an output format
(paraphrased).  postscript is even more of an output format.  i think
norm's original email mentioned he wanted to edit some links.  maybe it
was to insert hyperlinks.  that's not supported by ps AFAIK, so
converting to ps, editing and converting back to pdf won't help.  he's
looking for pdf functionality which isn't available with ps AFAIK.

> I'm not sure of the best way to work with multipage pdfs.  You could 
> split it into single pages, work with each page individually, and merge 
> them together again when finished (via ghostscript).  Of course, this 
> would be rather tedious for large documents :).
> 
> Pdftex is probably another option, but I haven't used it enough to 
> suggest how.  I did discover a perl script which crops entire pdf 
> documents.  It uses pdftex internally to do much of the work.
 
that's kind of wierd.  using pdflatex to perform actions on a pdf file
is like using an assembler to write C code.  seems to me that it going
in the wrong direction.  pdflatex turns tex into pdf.  turning pdf to
latex is like trying to generate C code from assembly.  not an easy
task, and the solution isn't unique.

pete

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