Re: [libreoffice-users] alternative to pdf?

On Wednesday 19 Jan 2011 14:11:53 Tom Davies wrote:
> Ooops, i was a bit unclear!  I am wondering if there is an Open alternative
> to  the pdf format itself.  When i try to "Print to file" i have a choice
> of ".ps" or ".pdf" but i am not sure if ps is editable ...

PDF and PS are very similar, on Linux you can convert ps to PDF with  
(obviously!) the PS2PDF command.  More here:

http://linux.about.com/library/cmd/blcmdl1_ps2pdf.htm

Doesn't help you edit it though.

I realise PDF was developed as a closed source project but Adobe got it 
approved as a standard years ago and disclosed the specification if not the 
source code for Acrobat, so there are loads of PDF tools out there for most 
platforms.

For what it's worth I use PDF tools in GnuCash, OO.org and Scribus to send PDF 
files to editors without any problems.

When I receive PDFs I open them in Okular (on Kubuntu) and I can extract 
images or words quite easily.

To break up a large pdf into pages I used to use a CLI tool now long forgotten 
and replaced by PDF Chain. It can reverse the process too, compiling many pdf 
pages into a single document.

KOffice will open PDF files for editing, but unless the layout is very simple it 
messes it up. Useful if you want some of the text or images for an essentially 
new document, but not good enough to edit a word or two and preserve the 
layout.
-- 
regards
Phil Thane

Bryn Villa
Penycoed Road
Llangollen
LL20 8LR
Wales (UK)

++44 (0) 1978 861677 (landline)
++44 (0) 7971 087623 (mobile)
Skype:  philthane
www.pthane.co.uk

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