Hello,
I’m looking for a openSUSE pdf-editor, something like the Phantom Suite in Windows.
Although I did my research on the internet, I do not seem to find one.
As a matter of fact, PDFedit does not do the job it promises to do, namely to edit pdf-files.
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
W
Thank you for your quick answer.
I already used PDFeditor but this is absolutely not user-friendly, nor does it do what I want.
I tried Scribus as well, but this is not handy neither.
I tried GIMP as well, same answer as for Scribus.
So I must conclude there is no Linux freeware program ??
Best regards,
W
Why would you conclude that after 1 reply post ? Don’t you think that would be premature if that is the only basis for your conclusion ?
In my view, there are not many freeware pdf handling programs for EITHER linux or for MS-Windows.
Most MS-Windows pdf edits that are any good require money. The same (in terms of not much in terms of free programs) is true for Linux.
But there are more programs than just those mentioned already in this thread (and hence your conclusion appears to be based on far too limited information).
For example:
Why don’t you try those and also try to give us an assessment with a bit more ‘meat’ in an assessment than what you provided above in your dismissal of PDFeditor, Scribus, and GIMP?
Thank you very much for your fast answer.
As a matter of fact I have already used/tried to use PDFedit which does absolutely NOT what I was accustomed to do with Phantom Editor (Windows breed).
The other two programs, I do not know but I surely will try them and then send back an evaluation.
What do I want ? To be able to fill out a PDF-document with a PDF-editor, correct it as many times as I want.
Cordially,
W
Hmmm … Is not Phantom Editor for MS-Windows a commercial program ?
My wife is a big winXP fan, and there being no freeware good PDF programs for MS-Windows is a big complaint of hers. She noted to me she would be tempted to use Linux if Linux had a really good open source free software PDF editor, but to the best of my knowledge there is no one free program in Linux that does what she wants. Instead there are a few different programs that one needs to use in conjunction … they are not quite as user friendly (as the commercial MS-Windows programs) and the free open source Linux PDF edit programs are also not as stable as the commercial Windows programs.
In the case of PDF editors, IMHO one gets what they pay for.
Since you alreday bought the phantom suite why don’t you try to run it on
linux with wine?
Or ask their support if they plan a linux versions (at least if I were you I
would ask if I spend money for the software).
–
PC: oS 11.3 64 bit | Intel Core2 Quad Q8300@2.50GHz | KDE 4.6.1 | GeForce
9600 GT | 4GB Ram
Eee PC 1201n: oS 11.4 64 bit | Intel Atom 330@1.60GHz | KDE 4.6.0 | nVidia
ION | 3GB Ram
I have used them all, including PDFedit, getting the Foxit Pro tools working on Linux under Wine, using Acrobat Pro in a Windows VMware Player installation (one of my current solutions). I also recommend you have a look at PDF Studio (PDF Editor Tool - PDF Studio - Edit PDF on Windows, Mac and Linux) - it’s not free, but it’s pretty good and has a free demo you can try.
But the coolest new thing is PDF Escape - a pretty full featured online PDF editor. It’s fast, and very user friendly. Give it a try at PDFescape - Free PDF Editor & Free PDF Form Filler - Your Free Online PDF Reader, Editor, Form Filler, Form Designer, Solution. It’s free, and for only $10 you can get an “ad-free lifetime membership”. Get your free registration or $10 membership fast - it’s in Beta right now, and I’m wondering if they will start charging montly or per-use fees when they get out of the beta stage.
PDF Cabaret Stage (CABAReT Solutions AG | your solution partner for pdf-forms, digital signing & pdf/a) is a pretty remarkable free linux PDF editor, but it can be very tricky to get it installed. It’s supposedly nearly a complete replacement for Adobe Acrobat Pro, in terms of the number of editing features. They have a free “home” version, and a paid professional version with more features.
Update - I decided to try Cabaret Stage again - they released a new version on February 9th, 2011. I downloaded the 32-bit version and unpacked it. From the Cabaret website, I saw that I needed a Sun version of java installed, so I installed with YaST. I could not get the program to start from the command line, but after a bit of exploration I found that the shell program, cabaretstage.sh, was pointing to .jar files in the “./lib” directory. However, this would not work, as cabaretstage.sh was placed by the archiver in the “./bin” directory,and “./lib” was off the main directory, not off the ./bin directory. I solved this and got the program running by simply copying the “cabaretstage.sh” and “cabaretstage” files from the /home/andy/cabaretstage-5.1.0/bin directory to the /home/andy/cabaretstage-5.1.0 main directory.
Once this was up and running, it had about half the functions I need in a PDF editor. It was able to delete and add pages, and do some basic markup and highlighting. However, I could not find any function to delete text from a PDF or any “Typewriter” function to add new text to a PDF. Overall, a nice addition to the Linux PDF editing arsenal, with an excellent interface.
Hmmm … Is not Phantom Editor for MS-Windows a commercial program ?
Actually, you can try the Phantom Suite (Windows) for free, but after a month your trial registration comes to an end. So, either you download again, or, indeed, you buy it.
W
Hi W,
I downloaded and installed Phantom Suite using Wine on my 64-bit openSUSE 11.4 box tonight. It installed and ran without a hitch. The version of Wine is nothing special - I just used the one in the openSUSE repository from YaST. I also installed Q4Wine via YaST - it’s a KDE frontend for Wine that makes it easier to install programs. Once I had Wine setup, I told it to run the Phantom setup executable, and it installed and ran. I was able to open a 2,000 page, 100MB PDF document - no easy task!
Looks like a great program by the way! Very quick, and lots of PDF editing features. I’ll have to play around with this some more. Looks like the next version of Foxit Pro, with some OCR and other functions added on? Anyway, it’s a great find, and I’m glad to announce that it runs just fine under Wine. Hope that helps.
On 04/17/2011 11:06 PM, wba wrote:
>
> What do I want ? To be able to fill out a PDF-document with a
> PDF-editor, correct it as many times as I want.
hmmm…perhaps i’m confused but i can do that to (for example) the (USA)
Internal Revenue Service forms using the standard Acrobat reader for
Linux…now it is true that not all pdf files are created with ‘blanks’
you can type into with Acrobat…but, such are clearly possible…
so, maybe your biggest quarrel is with those folks you deal with who are
making pdfs to be ‘filled out’ without providing a document actually
capable of being filled out…
otherwise, it seems others have already provided many free or commercial
options to you…
–
CAVEAT: http://is.gd/bpoMD
[openSUSE 11.3 + KDE4.5.5 + Thunderbird3.1.8 via NNTP]
A Penguin Being Tickled - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GILA0rrR6w
Have you thought of Scribus?
The other way could be this: there is an add-on for OpenOffice or LibreOffice which imports pdf files for later manipulation (but I never tried it)
GazetaCypr wrote:
>
> Have you thought of Scribus?
> The other way could be this: there is an add-on for OpenOffice or
> LibreOffice which imports pdf files for later manipulation (but I never
> tried it)
>
>
Hi,
I am one of the Scribus developers and have worked with all kinds of PDF
tools professionally.
First, it is true there are no real free PDF editors with the same
capabilties of commercial PDF tools. Many can import and pdftk can do
lots of manipulation (e.g. add/remove pages etc.)
You could also try pdfsam, which has some editing capabilities. I have
packaged in in my home repo and the graphics repo. See:
http://software.opensuse.org/search?p=1&baseproject=ALL&q=pdfsam
podofo is a rapidly developing library for low-level object
manipulations, but it is not for beginners to PDF. It does have editing
capabilties and a gui: http://rants.scribus.net/2006/12/10/pdf-surgery/
That said one thing which is fundamental about PDF is it was not ever
meant to be editable in the sense we edit other file formats. Think of
it as electronic paper typed by a typewriter. Internally it is
non-linear and has many tricks to optimize file size. Moreover, it is a
very complex spec, over 1000 pages.
There are only a few tools which can fully manipulate the internals of a
PDF and they require Acrobat Pro and are expensive pre-press oriented
plugins. They also require some know how of PDF internals to get the
best out of them.
Hope this helps,
Peter
Speaking of which, is there any tool that can gather few images and make one PDF?
What about pulling the pictures into OpenOffice and then converting or “printing” it to PDF?
Otherwise, I wouldn’t be surprised but I don’t know which ones right now.
On 2011-04-18 20:06, dragonbite wrote:
> Otherwise, I wouldn’t be surprised but I don’t know which ones right
> now.
Imagemagick, I think, does it.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)
Imagemagick, well, fine app… OpenOffice/LibreOffice is not suitable for the job. I didnt know for imagemagic. I had to go to windows and use paid Acrobat to generate PDF. OO or LO solution would require to import each image into page.
LibreOffice Draw supports drag and drop of multiple files into an open Draw document, and one-click creation of PDF. You don’t have to import the images - just have Draw open beside your file manager, select the images you want, and drop them onto the blank Draw page (or pages if you have too many images to fit on one page).
will try that, however skeptic I am