Pdf

From MEPIS Documentation Wiki

1 Readers
2 Manipulating PDF files
3 Creating PDF via print service
4 Links

Readers

MEPIS comes with the PDF reader KPDF by default. Other readers are available via Synaptic from the repos, including Adobe Acrobat Reader 8.1 which has advanced properties lacking in the others. See the link below for other options.

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Manipulating PDF files

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PDF Toolkit

One good CLI application is available through the repos called PDF Toolkit (Search Synaptic for pdftk). It allows you to merge, extract, etc. with very simple syntax via the console. For Example, To combine two pdf documents (doc1 and doc2):

pdftk doc1.pdf doc2.pdf cat output newfile.pdf

You can read a full discussion of its capabilities in this article or at this link.

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Kong-pdf

Konq-pdf, is another handy application that gives you a right-click menu for any PDF file with a wide range of options. It's in the repos for MEPIS 8. For MEPIS 7, download the deb, click it to install. If it complains of missing dependencies return to the Kpackage main menu and click Special --> APT: Debian --> Fixup.

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Manipulating PDF via print service

The method below (see Creating PDF via print service) can also create pdf files from other pdf files and make some changes using the print options. Just open the pdf file in one of the pdf viewers and print to pdf or PostScript. For example, you can use kghostview to select just some pages from a pdf file or to put multiple pages on one resulting page. You may also be able to change image resolution this way, for example if you want to convert huge pdf file with high resolution images into much smaller preview pdf with low resolution ones. Try different viewers, look through various print options and test the operation you want to do. To verify the result, it is good to open it in Adobe Reader and zoom in a lot. You will be able to see whether fonts are bitmap (low quality) or outline and what is the image resolution.

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pdfedit

stub

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OpenOffice.org 3.0

OpenOffice.org 3.0 can edit PDF file through the PDF import extension. This extension, currently in BETA, allows you to open a PDF file in OOo Draw for optimal layout accuracy. The text is shown in text boxes that can be edited.

OpenOffice can also save documents as PDF files, as can KOffice.

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Scan to PDF

For a quick method of scanning multiple pages to a single PDF, use gscan2pdf, which is in the repos. This application has a nice GUI, is very intuitive, and works very well. It will save you a lot of time if you do this kind of thing.

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Creating PDF via print service

From many programs, you can 'print' to PDF - output is not sent to the printer, but it goes to PDF file instead. If the application does not offer you a PDF printer but it offers printer "PostScript/default", you can still use it to create PDF - select "Print to File", press "Print" and once the PostScript file is created, find it and click on it. Now you probably can 'print' it to PDF as described before. (If just clicking on a PostScript file does not open it, install package kghostview.)

Conversion between PostScript (.ps) and PDF (.pdf) files is usually perfect, therefore if you can do something with files in PostScript what you cannot do directly with PDF, do not hesitate to convert there and back.

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