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

[Jean Louis]

* Bob Newell <bobnewell@bobnewell.net> [2023-03-22 21:49]:
> 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).

Following references may be helpful to some people thinking to use
multi-column text in Emacs:

There is (info "(emacs) Two-Column") in Emacs manual.

Example output produced by using RCD Paps packag for Emacs:
https://gnu.support/files/emacs/packages/rcd-paps/2023/03/2023-03-23/2023-03-23-12:27:05.pdf

GNU Emacs package: rcd-paps.el:
https://gnu.support/gnu-emacs/packages/GNU-Emacs-package-rcd-paps-el-76862.html

Any Emacs printing can produce such pages. 

> 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.

LibreaOffice Draw -- open PDF file and you will see you can edit many
things. 

Okular -- you can annotate and insert text

Scribus and Xournal

-- 
Jean

Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

In support of Richard M. Stallman
https://stallmansupport.org/