[Novalug] some pdf editing experiences

Craig Pennington cpenning@gmail.com
Thu Dec 24 21:31:49 EST 2009


pdftk is a java app -- I've only used it command line. The code is quite
readable and I modified it to generate multipage text-searchable pdfs
from multiple image files and corresponding manually generated text
transcriptions of the info contained therein. Took me a few hours.

On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 2:00 PM, Doug Toppin <dougtoppin@gmail.com> wrote:
> On my kubuntu 9.10 I installed both inkscape (gui) and pdftk (non-gui)
> with 'sudo apt-get install inkscape pdftk'.  I saw a few references to
> a gui frontend for pdftk but I was able to do what I needed without
> it.
> I don't know if pdftk needs/uses tcl/tk or not actually.
> >From the following I don't think that it does:
> $ ldd /usr/bin/pdftk
>        linux-vdso.so.1 =>  (0x00007fff07988000)
>        itext-2.1.5.jar.so => /usr/lib/gcj/itext-2.1.5.jar.so
> (0x00007fb8b7a68000)
>        libgcj.so.10 => /usr/lib/libgcj.so.10 (0x00007fb8b4907000)
>        libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6 (0x00007fb8b45f7000)
>        libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00007fb8b43e0000)
>        libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x00007fb8b41c4000)
>        libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00007fb8b3e55000)
>        libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x00007fb8b3bd1000)
>        librt.so.1 => /lib/librt.so.1 (0x00007fb8b39c9000)
>        libz.so.1 => /lib/libz.so.1 (0x00007fb8b37b2000)
>        libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00007fb8b35ae000)
>        /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007fb8b8375000)
>
> I suspect the 'tk' just stands for 'tool kit'.
>
> A couple of useful links on it:
> http://www.accesspdf.com/pdftk/
> http://www.paehl.de/pdf/?GUI_for_PDFTK
>
> doug
>
>
> On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 1:32 PM, Walt Smith <waltechmail@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> thanks !!
>>
>> That was informative, and I actually understood what
>> you were doing !!
>>
>> I take it pdftk requires tcl/tk or just tk?
>> And is some kinda user gui ?  to a backend ??
>> or not ?
>>
>> Walt....
>>
>>
>> [Novalug] some pdf editing experiences
>> Wednesday, December 23, 2009 11:51 AM
>> From:
>> "Doug Toppin" <dougtoppin@gmail.com>
>> To:
>> "NOVALUG" <novalug@calypso.tux.org>
>> I thought that I would pass along something that I had not done before
>> having to do with pdfs if anyone is interested.
>>
>> For some school work I need to sign an NDA, scan it and send back the
>> image.  Just out of interest, I decided to generate the 4 page form
>> (MS Word file) as a pdf and overlay my signature (from a jpg file) and
>> send it back as a pdf.  There are probably a number of ways to do this
>> but I did it using inkscape and pdftk (having never used either
>> before).  I tried to use pdfedit but could not find a way to overlay
>> the signature image with it.
>>
>> As far as I could tell, inkscape will only work on a single page so
>> when I opened the pdf I had to open each page and save it back as an
>> individual pdf file.  When I got to the file with the signature block,
>> I also opened my signature image file, copied it and pasted it onto
>> the signature block (with a resize) and saved back the file.  At that
>> point, I had 4 pdf files (one for each page).
>>
>> To combine the individual pdf files into a single file I used pdftk as
>> follows (the resulting file is called output.pdf).
>> pdftk page1.pdf page2.pdf page3.pdf page4.pdf cat output output.pdf
>>
>> One thing that I neglected to try was using my wife's Wacom graphics
>> tablet to actually do the signature directly on the pdf file so I may
>> give that a try tonight.  When I first used it with gimp a year or so
>> ago it worked reasonably well.
>>
>> If anyone wants to pass along an easier/more interesting way to do the
>> above please do.  btw, on occasion I intentionally do things a little
>> bassackwards just to use stuff that I haven't tried before (and this
>> may be one of those cases).  I pass along how I did it just so other
>> folks might learn about the tools/approach and maybe generate some
>> conversation.
>>
>> Also, my wife put together a 2009 newsletter for us (as if it were a
>> little local newspaper).  If anyone would like to take a look you can
>> find it off http://dougtoppin.com
>> Someday, I am going to get around to improving that site to be a bit
>> more modern.
>>
>> doug
>>
>>
>>
>>
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Corollary to Clarke's Third Law:
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