PDF viewers ... PDF editing libraries? [LWN.net]

PDF viewers ... PDF editing libraries?

Posted Dec 2, 2004 9:51 UTC (Thu) by tekNico (subscriber, #22)
In reply to: PDF viewers ... PDF editing libraries? by yodermk
Parent article: The Grumpy Editor's Guide to PDF Viewers

$ apt-cache show pdftk
...
 If PDF is electronic paper, then pdftk is an electronic stapler-remover,
 hole-punch, binder, secret-decoder-ring, and X-Ray-glasses. Pdftk is a
 simple tool for doing everyday things with PDF documents. Keep one in the
 top drawer of your desktop and use it to:
  - Merge PDF documents
  - Split PDF pages into a new document
  - Decrypt input as necessary (password required)
  - Encrypt output as desired
  - Burst a PDF document into single pages
  - Report PDF on metrics, including metadata and bookmarks
  - Uncompress and re-compress page streams
  - Repair corrupted PDF (where possible)

Author: Sid Steward <ssteward@accesspdf.com>
Homepage: http://www.accesspdf.com/pdftk

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PDF viewers ... PDF editing libraries?

Posted Dec 2, 2004 15:53 UTC (Thu) by kfiles (subscriber, #11628) [Link]

> $ apt-cache show pdftk
> ...
>  If PDF is electronic paper, then pdftk is an electronic stapler-remover,
>  hole-punch, binder, secret-decoder-ring, and X-Ray-glasses. Pdftk is a
>  simple tool for doing everyday things with PDF documents.

And pdftk itself uses the handy Java iText libraries for actual PDF composition/decomposition. iText can specifically address the author's desire to modify PDF content inline. And if you don't want to use run-time Java interpreting, you can copy pdftk's technique of precompiling to native code using gjc.

See:
http://www.lowagie.com/iText/

--kirby

PDF viewers ... PDF editing libraries?

Posted Dec 3, 2004 3:53 UTC (Fri) by liamh (subscriber, #4872) [Link]

I had good luck with "Mad Builder PDF Assembler"
http://thierry.schmit.free.fr/dev/mbtPdfAsm/enMbtPdfAsm2....
It took a little while to figure out - you have to create an assembly/disassembly script - but it seems quite versatile.