open source pdf writer

[Evan Leibovitch]

Kush wrote:

> Does anybody know of any pdf writer which can edit pdf files like 
> adobe distiller does?
>
> I have seen many pdf readers --xpdf, kpdf, evince, adobe reader etc  
> and have come across the pdfcreator.sourceforge.net  for simple pdf 
> creation using the ghostscript  system (ps2pdf) but haven't come 
> across a  full blooded pdf editor yet.


I'm surprised that nobody yet has mentioned OpenOffice.org.

One of the main features that distinguishes OOo from the Microsoft suite 
is its seamless PDF creation capability. (In fact, MS is having problems 
incorporating PDF features -- even as a free download -- because Adobe 
wants a piece of it.)

Having said that, the PDF capability is export-only -- while you can 
create a very elaborate PDF document using OOo, it can't read an 
existing PDF doc for editing.

Searching "PDF" at Freshmeat offers some possibilities, including
- "PoDoFo": http://podofo.sourceforge.net/
- pdfsam: http://pdfsam.sourceforge.net/
- Multivalent Document Tools: http://multivalent.sourceforge.net/Tools/

Of course, there are the tools included with the "Xpdf" package that 
comes with most Linux distributions, it includes tools that can write 
PDFs as PostScript or PBM bitmaps, or extracts text and images from PDF 
docs.

And lastly, PDFTOHTML, the purpose of which I hope is self-evident: 
http://pdftohtml.sourceforge.net/

Hope this helps.

- Evan

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