Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc
Date: 24 Mar 2003 19:53:53 GMT

> > adobe acrobat allows the user to make some basic modification on PDF
> > files, (such as adding notes, highlighting, etc.). Is there any
> > similar thing in GNU/Linux?

> I don't think if you can do that.  PDF files are compressed with
> Unisys's proprietary LZW compression patent

No, they aren't. Not all of them, at any rate! If PDFs *had* to have their data stored in LZW format, things like PDFLib wouldn't exist. (PDFLib is a dual-licensed (Aladdin license or commercial, your choice) library for generating PDFs, and you probably have it on your system.) *Generating* PDFs is pretty easy, with PDFLib and similar things. Fitz, go take a look at pdflib.com for the real scoop.

PDF is pretty much a write-only medium from what I have seen. Even the full version of Adobe Acrobat can't really be used to do editing tasks on PDFs because the underlying structure of a PDF is very complex. That's why you have things like Enfocus PitStop (argh) which are plugins for Acrobat that provide the functionality Acrobat should have had in the first place.

Decomposing a PDF into graphics boxes/text boxes/bits and pieces , then translating Adobe's internal format into something else, then providing a user interface for someone to be able to work on all the graphics boxes/text boxes/bits and pieces , then finally putting everything back together into a PDF again—the whole thing is a decidedly nontrivial task. It's better to work in a "native" format (OpenOffice, whatever) as much as possible and save as a PDF only when you're done. Bit of a pain, that.

Matt G

> > I'm under the impression that KWord can edit PDF these days. Haven't
> > seen KWord in years, so I don't personally know. I think it was Ark
> > Linux or something that advertised the feature, but maybe it's a true
> > KWord feature.
>
> Are you referring to the KWord application of KOffice? I checked it just
> now in my RH 8.0 box, it has no support for PDF format at all.

> http://www.arklinux.com/screenshots.php[]