Editing .PDF or .(E)PS files in Linux?
 

Anyone know a way I can edit pdf or postscript files in linux. Loading into the gimp just gives me and image, I want to be able to edit the text and everything.

umm don't know for sure but at least OpenOffice's Writer can save pdf-files...though I don't know if it will open them.

I'm pretty sure that you can't edit pdf files like a regular word document unless you have the original tex file that it was made from. For more info on how to make tex files you'd have learn latex which might not be the direction you want to head...depending on your situation.

I consider Latex to be the only tool for writing long documents like articles, reports, books or scientific papers.

Ya, Latex is very good, but at work they use PDFs. I know Acrobat can edit PDFs, so it's not impossible (but it is $150 for a license). Plus, its a PDF, it's scalable (all the text) so they have to have the original somewhere in there :)

but not all pdf-documents can be edited...I recall there's an option to "secure" the document somehow so it can't be edited at least unless some password (don't know if there is a password..but a protection is possible, though, I think)

I do believe Ghostscript honours the "secure" thing, and won't let you convert it if it is. I could be wrong. But I do know this isn't secure. I think I may have to use Acrobat :(

I just used Nedit to open both .pdf and .ps files on my SuSE box, and had no probs. Looks more or less like html. Didn't try to change anything and save it, but at least I saw the underlying code. Give it a try.

KWord from Koffice suite (KDE) imports pdf files. It's not perfect though. You can then print to a pdf file for saving changes.

Thanks, I'll try that :)

Try using scribus. It can import PDF files.

As far as editing postscript is concerned, that is simplicity itself!
Postscript is an open source publishing system, so the .ps file is actually a simple test file which is rendered as a document by the ghostscript environment. So all you need to do is learn the ghostscript code (search for HOWTO's on the web) and simply use vi to make changes.

It's still better to use lates as the source for postscript files, but it is rarely used outside the academia.

From what I know, you can edit .pdf or .ps document with a few applications.

- ghostscript
- kghostview
- kview
- ggv
- xpdf

They are all a little different, but they can all read .pdf and .ps files.

Check this post on Fedoraforum and see if it is successful for your distro
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showth...540#post450540

I think they are all document viewers and won't let you edit the .pdf file. I found Kword will do it.

I found a utility that can add text to pdf files.

http://www.ecademix.com/JohannesHofmann/#flpsed