FOLLOW-UP -- See below.
On 10-Jul-08 12:10:05, Ted Harding wrote:
On 10-Jul-08 11:16:26, Joe Button wrote:
On Thu, 2008-07-10 at 11:22 +0100, Mark Rogers wrote:
Does anyone have any idea how to perform command-line PDF editing?
The sort of thing I am talking about is adding text to the document maybe even editing existing text if that's possible.
Is there a particular reason for doing this on the command line? Do you need to automate it? Are you doing it over screen? Does your PDP-11 not run X?
If you really want to fiddle with PDFs on the command line you should probably check out http://www.pdfhacks.com/pdftk/ . I've managed to make small edits to PDFs using pdftk and a text editor, but it's at best fiddly.
Other than that I'm pretty sure one or both of scribus and inkscape will edit PDFs.
I just tried Scribus (1.2.6, June 2006 on Debian Etch). It refused to open a PDF file, on the grounds that it was "not in Scribus format".
Subsequently, I noticed that there is am "Import" option in the File menu. PDF is not included, but EPS/PS is included. I imported a PS file, and it seemed to allow me do edit it.
So an option for Scribus could be to first convert the PDF to PS, and carry on from there.
PS I just saw your message, Mark, about PDFEdit. Good luck! I hope it works. If so, it may be something well worth knowing about.
Best wishes, Ted.
As to inkscape, I just had a look at http://www.inkscape.org and the documentation seems to be still in a primitive stae, so I can't tell whether it can import a PDF file, let alone edit it if it can be imported!
Ted.
Having said all of which, what you're asking may well just be impractical as PDFs tend to do things like break text into hundreds of individual objects or convert it to vectors, which makes significant editing nigh on impossible.
Joe
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