Need to Edit Those Scanned (.pdf) Job Application Forums

Hi All,

Well, like everywhere - times are tough in Phoenix, Arizona.

I’ve started to collect job applications, and got my old H-P ScanJet
4300C scanner going again to scan to .pdf job applications forms.

Filling job application forms in by hand seem really stupid in this day
and age, plus I’ve been using Linux for about 6 - 7 years now. Hey, the
scanner that I have was given to me by a M$ user who could not get it to
work under M$. LOL!

I’ve tried to edit using GIMP, but the output file is not .pdf. The
best there is .jpeg, or .gif. And those files are huge!

I’ve got ‘PDF Editor’ (http://pdfedit.petricek.net/index_e.html)
installed, but it doesn’t seem to allow me to just add the necessary
information that I need to do.

I’m talking about simple forms here - job applications - where I can
add the needed information from a scanned document that I turned into a
.pdf.

I’ve also tried the OpenOffice 3.0 ‘extension’
(http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/pdfimport) from Sun,
but that will not install. It is still a beta.

I’ve tried a few other things, but the idea is - open a scanned .pdf,
add text, save it, and away it goes!

BTW, I’m running openSuSE 11.0.

Help!


Regards,

JJMacey
Phoenix, Arizona - -The Valley Of The Sun-
A ‘Linux Web Site’ (http://www.jjmacey.net), And A ‘Linux Blog’
(http://www.jjmacey.net/blog/). All Linux!

jjmacey’s Profile: http://forums.opensuse.org/member.php?userid=3577
View this thread: http://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php?t=401657

Problem is a scanned PDF is not a PDF form. It’s just a bitmap in a
fancy container.

So you’d have to add the text using a graphics editor like gimp and
then write it out as say Postscript which can easily be converted to
PDF. It’ll still be a bitmap and still huge.


ken_yap

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> So you’d have to add the text using a graphics editor like gimp and then
> write it out as say Postscript which can easily be converted to PDF.
> It’ll still be a bitmap and still huge.

ken_yap,

I’ve been working with GIMP, but don’t understand Postscript.

Basically, I can edit a .pdf (add the necessary personal information)
to fill out an application, but saving it to a .pdf seems to be the
problem.

There has to be a more eloquent Linux solution.


Regards,

JJMacey
Phoenix, Arizona - -The Valley Of The Sun-
A ‘Linux Web Site’ (http://www.jjmacey.net), And A ‘Linux Blog’
(http://www.jjmacey.net/blog/). -All Linux! I’ve been there, and done
that!-

jjmacey’s Profile: http://forums.opensuse.org/member.php?userid=3577
View this thread: http://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php?t=401657

Postscript is just a printer language and easily converted to PDF using
say ps2pdf. If you can generate Postscript from gimp, that’s a start.


ken_yap

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> If you can generate Postscript from gimp, that’s a start.

ken_yap,

I can save an edited .pdf with GIMP to .ps. I went to the ps2pdf ‘Web
Site’ (http://www.ps2pdf.com/), and found this is a web based service.
There I read about ‘Ghostscript’ (http://www.ghostscript.com/) then
downloaded all the packages in the repositories.However, there does not
seem to be an option to save the opened files to .pdf. Hmm…

Any other ideas?


Regards,

JJMacey
Phoenix, Arizona - -The Valley Of The Sun-
A ‘Linux Web Site’ (http://www.jjmacey.net), And A ‘Linux Blog’
(http://www.jjmacey.net/blog/). -All Linux! I’ve been there, and done
that!-

jjmacey’s Profile: http://forums.opensuse.org/member.php?userid=3577
View this thread: http://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php?t=401657

ps2pdf is a CLI program and comes from the ghostscript-library package

> $ rpm -qf /usr/bin/ps2pdf
> ghostscript-library-8.62-17.1


ken_yap

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> ps2pdf is a CLI program and comes from the ghostscript-library package

ken_yap,

I have been through my file directory and have found ps2pdf is
installed. But, can not launch it as an application.

BTW, thanks for the posts!


Regards,

JJMacey
Phoenix, Arizona - -The Valley Of The Sun-
A ‘Linux Web Site’ (http://www.jjmacey.net), And A ‘Linux Blog’
(http://www.jjmacey.net/blog/). -All Linux! I’ve been there, and done
that!-

jjmacey’s Profile: http://forums.opensuse.org/member.php?userid=3577
View this thread: http://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php?t=401657

Open up a terminal window, cd to the directory where your PS files are
and do:

Code:

ps2pdf something.ps

This will leave the output in something.pdf


ken_yap

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ken_yap,

In terminal I get this:

jjxxxxx@linux-pbzd:~> cd /home/jjxxxxx/S4P1of4.ps
bash: cd: /home/jjxxxxx/S4P1of4.ps: Not a directory
jjxxxxx@linux-pbzd:~>


Regards,

JJMacey
Phoenix, Arizona - -The Valley Of The Sun-
A ‘Linux Web Site’ (http://www.jjmacey.net), And A ‘Linux Blog’
(http://www.jjmacey.net/blog/). -All Linux! I’ve been there, and done
that!-

jjmacey’s Profile: http://forums.opensuse.org/member.php?userid=3577
View this thread: http://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php?t=401657

Code:

cd /home/jjxxxxx
ps2pdf S4P1of4.ps


ken_yap

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ken_yap,

-You are a master!-That worked!

Thanks again for all the posts.


Regards,

JJMacey
Phoenix, Arizona - -The Valley Of The Sun-
A ‘Linux Web Site’ (http://www.jjmacey.net), And A ‘Linux Blog’
(http://www.jjmacey.net/blog/). -All Linux! I’ve been there, and done
that!-

jjmacey’s Profile: http://forums.opensuse.org/member.php?userid=3577
View this thread: http://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php?t=401657