Open source alternative to full fat Adobe?
Evince is great for what it does, imo, but you can't extract pages with it. Does anyone round here know of a good alternative to the full-fat, all singing all dancing but not very cheap Adobe? Does such a thing exist? Bev.
On 25-Jun-2012 16:58:29 Bev Nicolson wrote:
Evince is great for what it does, imo, but you can't extract pages with it. Does anyone round here know of a good alternative to the full-fat, all singing all dancing but not very cheap Adobe? Does such a thing exist?
Bev.
Bev, Ah!! After reading your query, I tried using evince to print selected pages to file as PDF (Create a PDF Document"), and got the message "Generating PDF is not supported"! (Despite the fact that evince lures you all the way to the "Print" button is if it was supported). However, you can print the selected pages from the PDF to a PostScript file, and then convert that to PDF (e.g. using ps2pdf or pstopdf). But it seems you can only get a range of pages (e.g. 3-5), and not a bunch of independently selected pages (e.g.1,3-4, 7). Hoping this helps, Ted. ------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding@wlandres.net> Date: 25-Jun-2012 Time: 18:29:21 This message was sent by XFMail -------------------------------------------------
On 25/06/12 18:29, (Ted Harding) wrote:
On 25-Jun-2012 16:58:29 Bev Nicolson wrote:
Evince is great for what it does, imo, but you can't extract pages with it. Does anyone round here know of a good alternative to the full-fat, all singing all dancing but not very cheap Adobe? Does such a thing exist?
Bev. Bev, Ah!! After reading your query, I tried using evince to print selected pages to file as PDF (Create a PDF Document"), and got the message "Generating PDF is not supported"! (Despite the fact that evince lures you all the way to the "Print" button is if it was supported).
However, you can print the selected pages from the PDF to a PostScript file, and then convert that to PDF (e.g. using ps2pdf or pstopdf). But it seems you can only get a range of pages (e.g. 3-5), and not a bunch of independently selected pages (e.g.1,3-4, 7).
Depending on how much you want out of the pdf this website may help. http://www.pdftoword.com/ I used it a lot earlier this year to get an editable version of some documents. OK so you end up with a word document but you can just cut and paste that as you wish. Depending on how busy the site is you get a reply in anything from mins to hours. If you're going to be doing lots, i.e. hundreds of files, then download the free trial. Nev
On 25 Jun 17:58, Bev Nicolson wrote:
Evince is great for what it does, imo, but you can't extract pages with it. Does anyone round here know of a good alternative to the full-fat, all singing all dancing but not very cheap Adobe? Does such a thing exist?
If all you want to do is extract certain pages, then, erm, how about pdftk? -- Brett Parker
On 26/06/12 09:22, Brett Parker wrote:
On 25 Jun 17:58, Bev Nicolson wrote:
Evince is great for what it does, imo, but you can't extract pages with it. Does anyone round here know of a good alternative to the full-fat, all singing all dancing but not very cheap Adobe? Does such a thing exist? If all you want to do is extract certain pages, then, erm, how about pdftk?
Bev, I believe it has been traditional for Linux developers to make tools that do one thing, and do it well, whereas, in the wacky world of Windows (WWW!) there's much more emphasis on the number of features a program has - i.e. Word must be better than Wordstar because it has three times as many functions. Consequently, I don't think you're going to get very far trying to find a program that does all, or even most of the things that "Adobe" does. Come to think of it - which "Adobe" are you talking about? The reader - which is free, or the creator, which isn't?? What is it that you're actually trying to do? If it's just extracting pages from a PDF, then I've used PDF Chain, PDF Mod and PDF-Shuffler. If it's something else, then what is it? Hope that helps! Steve
Steve asks, reasonably: What is it that you're actually trying to do? OK. Say I have a 300+ page pdf document. Someone else I know needs to read one or two chapters of it but I would like to extract not just the text, but the layout and photos too. (I have looked a Scribus but that won't open it so I suspect it's more use for creating them than editing.) Bev.
On 2012-06-26 16:52, Bev Nicolson wrote:
Steve asks, reasonably: What is it that you're actually trying to do?
OK. Say I have a 300+ page pdf document. Someone else I know needs to read one or two chapters of it but I would like to extract not just the text, but the layout and photos too. (I have looked a Scribus but that won't open it so I suspect it's more use for creating them than editing.)
Bev.
Try this, using ghostscript: $ gs -q -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dNOPAUSE -dFirstPage=2 -dLastPage=4 -sOutputFile=output.pdf input.pdf Just tried it on a large PDF I had and output.pdf contained just the 3 pages from 2-4. Cheers, Steve
On 26/06/12 16:52, Bev Nicolson wrote:
OK. Say I have a 300+ page pdf document. Someone else I know needs to read one or two chapters of it but I would like to extract not just the text, but the layout and photos too.
OK! Well you can do it with PDF shuffle, pdf chain or pdftk (but read on before attempting) Using pdf-shuffler Open pdf-shuffler Use button at bottom to open a copy of the PDF document. Click on a page you want to delete. Hold the ctrl key, and click on another page you want to delete. Keep selecting pages until you have a bunch, or until you are finished. Click on the Delete Page(s) button. Repeat as necessary. Press Export pdf to save the document. Note if you are doing this for chapters, you'll have a lot to delete, it will take a long time. Using pdf chain. open pdf chain. Put a copy the document you want to edit into a directory Go to the split tab Press the add button, and tell the program where the file is. Leave Prefix as "Sheet" and counter as Auto. Press save, enter the folder you want to save the result to. This has split the document into one pdf file for every page. Go to the Merge tab.P Press the plus button Click on the first sheet you want to add. Press and hold shift button. Click on the last sheet you want to add. Press OK. Press the Save button then enter an filename for the re-assembled file You have now merged the individual pdf files into one new document. using pdftk at a prompt type pdftk ORIGINAL_FILE_NAME.PDF shuffle 28-47 output OUTPUT_FILE_NAME.PDF ORIGINAL_FILE_NAME is the name of the main document OUTPUT_FILE_NAME is the name of you want to give this, e.g. Chapter5.pdf replace 28-47 with the appropriate page numbers - note that 28-47 will give you pages 28 to 46 inclusive. I'd recommend using pdftk and creating a file for each chapter you want to extract. You can then combine these with pdf-chain, or if you're feeling adventurous, work out how to do it with pfdtk. Alternatively, just supply the separate chapter files. Hope this helps. Steve
I'd recommend using pdftk and creating a file for each chapter you want to extract. You can then combine these with pdf-chain, or if you're feeling adventurous, work out how to do it with pfdtk. Alternatively, just supply the separate chapter files.
Hope this helps.
Steve
It certainly did though it required some wrestling with. Two chapters now extracted. :¬) Bev.
Bev Take a look at pdfreaders.org. They list a variety of alternatives. Mick -- Sent from my mobile device. Please excuse my brevity. Bev Nicolson <lumos60@gmail.com> wrote: Evince is great for what it does, imo, but you can't extract pages with it. Does anyone round here know of a good alternative to the full-fat, all singing all dancing but not very cheap Adobe? Does such a thing exist? Bev. _____________________________________________ main@lists.alug.org.uk http://www.alug.org.uk/ http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above!
participants (7)
-
Bev Nicolson -
Brett Parker -
mick -
nev young -
Steve -
steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk -
Ted.Harding＠wlandres.net