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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.
Distribution: FC4 & FC5-Various Kernels & Vector Linux
Posts: 11
Rep:
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.
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.
Distribution: FC4 & FC5-Various Kernels & Vector Linux
Posts: 11
Rep:
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.
If I have a report in the form of a PDF, i need to be able to edit the contents.
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.
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...
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