edit pdf in linux
 

Hi,
I am looking for the software to edit pdf in linux. Somebosy has any idea, do help me.
Thanks in Advance.

Regards,
Sailaja.Mulakaluri

You cannot edit PDF files. That is the idea of PDF, what you see is what originally was authored.

If you want to concatenate PDF files, use gs.

jlinkels

a) What level of editing do you want?

b) What Google or other searches have you done?

If I have a report in the form of a PDF, i need to be able to edit the contents.
I have googled alot and tried with all the procedures available.
The best one was, pdftotext conversion of a pdf and then edit it in scribus and save again as pdf. But, during this procedure, the images are lost... I dont want a lossy edit.

There is no good way to do what you want to do. Any "editing" will probably require you to rebuild the document from scratch based on what you can extract from the pdf file. No way you can get your hands on the original document I suppose? Other formats lend themselves to editing much more redily.

I have a simple doubt. Is it really possibe to edit a pdf file in windows by hand. I mean as u do with a word. Can u do it for pdf

I would just like to point out that open office can export to pdf. http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/2.0/
So if you get your hands on the texts you can recreate the pdf.

i know there is an export option if i would like to write into a doc and then convert it to pdf.
If I have a pdf?
Then what?

few months back i too was looking for a tool to edit pdf file. but i haven't found anything in linux. but you have lot of commercially available tools to edit pdf files in windows.

i tried out the verypdf editor in windows as it was giving a 15-day free-trial period. but when you open the PDF file after editing it, it puts a text in red color saying that the document was edited.

but as far as linux is concerned, i don't think there is any tool to edit pdf file.

aaditya

it is so sick. Lookign for compatibility then looking for applications like in windows. Anybody really concerned?
I am really upset

The simple fact about pdf - as always - is that the format was not designed as a document to be edited multiple times, but rather a final destination to be rendered the same way on screen and print on different platforms. (or an intermediate step on the way to printing). There are no good tools because pdf was simply not designed with editing as its primary use. In my opinion anything else on any platform is just a workaraound or a hack. I know that doesn't fix the original problem...

If the data needs to be edited repeatedly and kept for re-editing, and it simply cannot be sourced in any other format (likely) then depending on the actual application it may pay to extract as much data as possible (text / images) into different formats for later use. That is unlikely in most cases though, YMMV.

Just my $0.02

You can browse some pdfs as textfiles with:
So you can grab the text from it and edit it. Maybe that helps relieve the pain :D
source: nerdstuffs

This answer hasn't to do anything with Linux, but I still think it is highly suspicious if you only have the PDF and you want to edit it.
In projects I work in, I have the original files if I contribute to a project. And if I only have the PDF, I have to refer to it in my own report. It is highly unusual if I have to edit someone else's PDF. Sorry if it is all legitimate and I think bad of you.

jlinkels

just an idea, but can you not print out the document, and then convert it to the format of your choice using some OCR program? A quick google came up with GOCR. I'm no expert on OCR (i've never used it in linux before) so have no idea what it's like, but it could be a hack of a solution...

just a thought...

its my own project report i ned to edit
Anymore suggestions guys?
Thanks

when i am using ps2ascii, its giving me an unrecoverable error saying it does not contain text. Actually, teh header of my pdf is an image

if it is ur own project and you have created the PDF file why can't you change the source itself rather than to change the PDF file.

aaditya

aaditya its my project report sent in pdf by my superiors. I should be able to edit it.Dont divert the topic. I want to edit a pdf and am curious to search for a solution.

sailaja,

if you have to edit the pdf file anyway, why don't you try verypdf editor in windows. ur aim is to edit the pdf file, do it. why should you bother whether you are doing it in linux/windows ?

aaditya

its not that. We have a requirement to resolve aaditya..

kword can edit pdf's.
However, it saves the pdf as a kword document.
You may be able to move it into openoffice and save it as a pdf.

pdftk
vi (with the proper plugin on the webpage of pdftk)

PDF Problems
 

So you want to edit PDF's under Linux.

Well you can, and you can't...

Winehq states that in version 7.0 of Adobe Acrobat you can indeed edit pdf files. However, going into the comments section of 7.0, you get this:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Description
Acrobat 7 offers very nice interface enhancements and tweaks that make it much more convenient to use than older versions (e.g. the remapped search bar and ability to dock it where you choose). It also includes editing functions that are currently not available on Linux using any of the open source applications - these include highlighting, adding notes, creating text boxes and editing text that can be vary useful particularly to researchers desiring to make notes and highlight text in studies they download on-line.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

...but the reviewer did not specifically state if editing of pdf files was tested.

So you can (potentially) edit .pdf files under Linux using Wine (free) and Abobe Acrobat 7.0 (non-free).

Deion "Mule" Christopher

i have adapted another procedure.
I opened the pdf in the gimp image editor and then edit the pdf there and save it as png. Then again open that png in openoffice draw and export the same as pdf. This way i am able to do edit on pdf. But, when more than one page is there in the pdf, the first page is displayed fine.The other pages have junk data.i dont know why.As per my thought this is due to some font problem in gimp.Hopefully yes.Do i need to install some plugins for gimp for the fonts?

pdftk did not work for me. Well, there is an edit option still it does not work with images.

Advice me with a solution.

Thanks in advance

dear sailaja,

good try. i tried ur suggestion and tried to modify a PDF file. I was able to load all the pages of the PDF file in GIMP. but u said that all pages other than the first page had junk data. i did not encounter that problem.

but u have to be careful when editing pdf files. first thing is the resolution. u have to choose proper resolution before editing the pdf file. bcoz if u don't, then when u take a printout of the PDF file, it will be messed up bcoz of the resolution. and sometimes if are trying to edit some text, then you might not have some fonts available in gimp and this is where the pdf file might look messy.

aaditya

note to d1l2w3 : you cannot open a pdf file in kword.

yes the resolution while opening a pdf should be perfect around. But when i try to open multiple pages, the gimp asks resolution only for the first page. I dont know about the other pages. Thats y am getting junk I hope. Tell me one thing.Please try to open a pdf containing table and then tell me what you get. That would be helpful aaditya.

sailaja,

when u open a pdf file using gimp, you will get a pop-up window with the title 'load postscript' in which u can set the following things :
1. resolution, 2.height, 3.width, 4.pages : etc... by default, the resolution is 100 and height and width are A4 and pages:1-99. i was able to open pdf files with a resolution of 300. but when i tried 600, gimp had a problem of cache. it said it did not have enough room for a tile.

i tried opening a pdf file (im gimp) having a table, i did not encounter any problem. i also opened a 5 page technical document containing text, graphs, images and tables. it opened all the pages without any problem. i am using gimp version 1.2.3

aaditya

am using gimp 2.0.
Its getting problem when it has tables.
I dont know why....

had no problem even with gimp 2.0.1

aaditya

i have opened another pdf i dont see any trouble. The problem is when i try to open our technical document, I am getting this problem.