Harold Fuchs wrote:
There are software out there that will take a PDF and convert it back to Word format, but most are paid. There are web sites that do it as well. Linux seems to have a PDF editor [at least Ubuntu lists one someplace], but I have not tried it yet. Windows and Mac may be a dry zone for now.On 7 April 2010 10:54, Lars Nooden <larsnoo...@openoffice.org> wrote:On 4/6/10 9:12 PM, Drew Jensen wrote:PDF is IMO the primary file format used by Scribus. Scribus IMO supports pdf more deeply then does OpenOffice.org.A few times a week we get threads with misperceptions about PDF. PDF is a for the terminal stage of a document's life cycle. From PDF, it can go two places: the printer or the bit bucket. We could save a lot of time and grief for the users or the list to get the word out that the original documents must be saved and that if all they have is the PDF, then they have lost the document, it is gone and not coming back. "Gone, gone, gone beyond, completely gone beyond, disablement, bail..." ;) Importing PDF is really a form of disaster mitigation and in many cases provides only an uneditable B.L.O.B. to embed in another file. Mac and Linux desktops have good PDF export and it is clear that it is export. So that helps. Well, Draw is just a drawing package, and OpenOffice.org is just ansuite of office applications but together they can do most of what used to require a Desktop Publishing system.One DTP feature missing from OOo Draw is the ability for text to flow between text frames. QuarkXPress would be overkill for most users. The last few times I've had to send things to a commercial printer they've wanted SVG, but would begrudgingly accept encapsulated PDF. I didn't get a look at the software used, it would be useful to know, but it would help if Adobe's products supported ODF. ... There seems to be a steady stream of folks asking about MS ...Some is legit. Some is just trolling / shilling.So if they just ask about MS...If they ask anything about MS (and are legitimate) then it is alwaysnecessary to ask clarifying questions about what is it they are really trying to do. However, the individual will likely have difficulty expressing it or may speak Microserf which uses its own words instead of industry standard nomenclature. Regards /LarsThere are probably many reasons, apart from disaster mitigation, why I may want to convert a PDF document into an editable form. The most obvious is that the document isn't mine but I nevertheless want to modify it in some way and re-publish it. For example, I may want to re-publish it after converting parts of it into links pointing at other, possibly as yet unwritten, documents. Or I may want to incorporate [large] parts of it in a new document which I plan to publish. In either case, converting the PDF to an editable format seems to me to be quite a legitimate requirement. Having said that, shall we now adjourn to the discussion list? Please.
The only way I really do the "re-editing" is copy/paste the text and graphics into a "new" document, but this way you loose the original formatting. Yes, PDF was originally was for the final "publication" of a document. Now people need to take the PDFs sent to them and re-edit if for some reason, since it was the only format sent to them. I do not download and use any MS Word docs unless I trust the owner and their system. I still will scan them for viruses. PDF was the format where you would not have to worry about getting nasties included with the documents. Now that has changed as well. Now "they" are warning about the ability of PDF to save an attached executable file/program so you could get viruses with them. This is due to the newer abilities of the PDF standards of the format, so I have read.
I myself have come across cases where I have a saved PDF "finished" file, and I cannot find the original ODF document that I used to create it with. I do not "export" to PDF, but use doPDF as a PDF printer on Windows and CUPS PDF printing on Ubuntu. This way I a printing to the PDF file instead of paper. I have not used OOo's PDF export much since I found the PDF printer options for my systems, so I do not know how they compare.
Yes, there should be some free [and easy] methods of converting PDF back to an editable document. MS Word 2000/2003 ".doc" format would be OK since OOo reads/writes that format very well, and MS users will have no troubles excepting it as well. It would be nice to see converters go directly to ODF formats instead of MS ones, since ODF is the International default, while MS is just a want-to-be.
Also, for those who save documents in PDFs, I use the PDF printing mostly for making a copy of a web page that contains a transaction, like ordering supplies or paying a bill. This way I have a record of the web page to keep for my records if any problems come up or just to show what I have bought in the past from who/where.
In short, editing PDFs with free and easy software would be nice. Converters to popular formats would be great as well if they were free. PDFs were never made to be edited, except for people who can afford the chunkee/pricee Abobee products. Maybee someone would take up the challenge to make a solution for us users who do not have the skills to do so for ourselves.
