Tool for PDF editing?

[Daddicus]

Does anybody know which software tool was/is used for creating/editing the PDF copy of the manual that comes on the CD? How about for the Errata?

I'm going to merge my copy of the Errata into my main PDF, but I don't want to screw it up by converting all of the words to pictures (etc.)

Thanks!

 

[cym0k]

I have been thinking the same thing. Merging the two would be great.

 

[Daddicus]

I'm hoping somebody knows. I won't use anything from Adobe (due to their insistence on subscriptions going forward). But, if they also didn't use Acrobat, then I would like to buy whatever WAS used.

 

[inexorabletash]

The "Preview" app on Mac OS let's you drag pages from one PDF into another (from the thumbnails pane)

 

[aramis]

I'm hoping somebody knows. I won't use anything from Adobe (due to their insistence on subscriptions going forward). But, if they also didn't use Acrobat, then I would like to buy whatever WAS used.

The PDF itself says Adobe InDesign

 

[Daddicus]

Bummer. Oh, well, thanks anyhow!

 

[Spaceresearcher]

I think CutePDFWriter can merge files by printing all the files wanted to the one file if that helps. It's still a free utility to the best of my knowledge as well.

 

[simonh]

PDFs aren't designed to be editable. Even if you used InDesign, it wouldn't be able to edit the PDF anyway.

Having said that, there are some tools that can perform some editing tasks on PDF files. In genral there are four ways you can edit a PDF:

1. Add/Remove/Re-order the pages. Unlike Postscript files, each page in a PDF file is essentially an atomic unit of data and can be extracted or shifted around by various tools. I use either Preview on the Mac, or pdftk which is a very powerful and flexible command line tool available for Mac, Linux and Windows.

2. Annotation tools that can add a drawing layer over a PDF. This isn't a lot of use for modifying the text, but can be useful to add notes. This approach may work for errata. Foxit PDF reader is ok for this on Windows.

3. Actual PDF editing tools. There are now a few tools that can actually edit PDF file contents. Adobe has one, but actually OpenOffice does a reasonable job of this. You can actually edit the text within PDF paragraph and text frames. Of course there are some hjard limits on what you can do, iyou can't just treat it like a word processing file and are constrained by the existing structure of the file, but this is probably the best way to merge in errata. Inkscape is another open source tool that does a reasonable job of this.

4. Text Editors. PDF files are actually text files and you can open them in any decent text editor. However the text in PDF files is generally stored in an encoded format that includes the font data and just looks like gibberish. However you can use this method to edit metadata such as the document title and such.

Simon Hibbs

 

[HG_B]

PDFs aren't designed to be editable. Even if you used InDesign, it wouldn't be able to edit the PDF anyway.

Firstly, please excuse my ignorance. If InDesign created a PDF it couldn't "reverse it" back into InDesign?

 

[daltoncalford]

Firstly, please excuse my ignorance. If InDesign created a PDF it couldn't "reverse it" back into InDesign?

The creation of a PDF file is 'Lossy' in operation. That means that information is lost during the generation of the destination format.

There are no 'Paragraphs' per se, but more of place letter here with this specific font kerning etc.

That is why early format pdfs where so difficult to cut/paste from as their is no natural flow of text. Lately, newer versions of pdf file formats allow some form of text flow in order to allow for cut/paste/computer reading. But, that is not the purpose of PDF - pdf was designed to support rendering of documents in the same way, regardless of the underlying hardware or software.

The best way to edit a pdf is to have the source document that was used to generate the pdf in the first place.

This is why OGL SRD releases are normally produced in an editable file format such as odt or doc.

 

[HG_B]

The creation of a PDF file is 'Lossy' in operation. That means that information is lost during the generation of the destination format.

There are no 'Paragraphs' per se, but more of place letter here with this specific font kerning etc.

That is why early format pdfs where so difficult to cut/paste from as their is no natural flow of text. Lately, newer versions of pdf file formats allow some form of text flow in order to allow for cut/paste/computer reading. But, that is not the purpose of PDF - pdf was designed to support rendering of documents in the same way, regardless of the underlying hardware or software.

The best way to edit a pdf is to have the source document that was used to generate the pdf in the first place.

This is why OGL SRD releases are normally produced in an editable file format such as odt or doc.

Thanks. I understand now.

 

[esampson]

Firstly, please excuse my ignorance. If InDesign created a PDF it couldn't "reverse it" back into InDesign?

Not really. I was pretty sure this was the way PDFs worked but I didn't want to say anything until someone who knew a bit more about PDFs spoke up.

I assume that InDesign stores the file in some sort of 'interstitial' format which can be edited fairly easily and which converts nicely to a PDF format. However that doesn't mean that it can edit a PDF itself.

The best example I can come up with is GIMP which stores its native files as .XCFs. .XCFs can store bits of text as actual text that can be edited later on, however if you want to output a file that can be read by most other programs (a .JPG, .BMP, etc.) then the text is turned into a bitmap, layers are collapsed, and the file is exported to the new type.

If you then want to edit that image you can load it back into GIMP but now it is much more difficult to delete the old text and create new text in the same style.

 

[aramis]

Firstly, please excuse my ignorance. If InDesign created a PDF it couldn't "reverse it" back into InDesign?

No. PDF's are "printed" from a work file. One can, with very little money, acquire a great PDF virtual printer, and print PDFs with anything using the standard print dialogues.

Used to be much the same with .eps (encapsulated PostScript) and .ps (PostScript); PDF is literally a .ps file with some extras.

 

[HG_B]

No. PDF's are "printed" from a work file. One can, with very little money, acquire a great PDF virtual printer, and print PDFs with anything using the standard print dialogues.

Used to be much the same with .eps (encapsulated PostScript) and .ps (PostScript); PDF is literally a .ps file with some extras.

That makes sense. Wonder why they go to the trouble of password protecting the PDF's they sell? One can just "print" it and reset the security settings to None.

 

[aramis]

That makes sense. Wonder why they go to the trouble of password protecting the PDF's they sell? One can just "print" it and reset the security settings to None.

Because they can set the print mode to "image only". It's not hard to unlock a readable PDF; now, I've had some that require external authorization (textbooks) and those can't be unlocked so easily.

 

[HG_B]

I've had some that require external authorization (textbooks) and those can't be unlocked so easily.

Yes, if they aren't readable without a password it is much more difficult to unlock. The game PDF's I have aren't set to image only. That's why I asked. It seems pointless.

 

[aramis]

Yes, if they aren't readable without a password it is much more difficult to unlock. The game PDF's I have aren't set to image only. That's why I asked. It seems pointless.

It keeps the honest and the inept honest.

 

[Daddicus]

Thanks for the info, guys.

I guess then that the content owner is the only one who can produce a publisher-quality PDF.

But, there may be some tools where I can make a not-quite-publisher-quality copy, which is all I need (I sure don't want to sell or even give the things away -- I want FFE to get all the money out of it they deserve!)

Thanks!

 

[esampson]

It keeps the honest and the inept honest.

Even if a PDF is set to image only it is only an inconvenience for people intent on removing the copy protection. They simply print to a PDF image and then run it through an OCR program.

So a PDF that is set to image only printing will produce a fractionally worse result for everyone while providing a slight inconvenience for the dishonest people.