Re: editing a PDF [Re: emacs 30.5.0 editing epub]

[Bob Newell]

I get sent PDFs all the time and it's often frustrating.
However most of the time I need the text, not necessarily the
formatting.  For that, there are various PDF to text
converters which work to some degree (not so great with
multi-column text for the most part).

I also found a PDF to spreadsheet converter which isn't
especially great but better than nothing.  Well, at least a
little better.

I realize this doesn't at all address the original question
about editing PDFs in the true sense of editing.  But in a lot
of cases text extraction may be good enough, depending on your
purpose.

Copy/paste works in many cases as well.  For instance I just
got sent a PDF of a budget spreadsheet, and with not so much
effort was able to make it into an org-mode table.

All bets are off if the PDF is an /image/ of some text.  Then
you've got to get out your friendly OCR software.  In such
cases I write back to the sender and politely ask for
something easier to use.

-- 
Bob Newell
Honolulu, Hawai`i

- Via GNU/Linux/Emacs/Gnus/BBDB