Loading ...Linux PDF editor for manipulating PDF documents
Adobe Acrobat is a commercial tool for manipulating PDF files. Earlier I was using CUPs - printing system, to export PDF files. I've also tried out gv for the same purpose. However, I needed complete editing of pdf documents. My search ended with PDFedit software, which is free and open source editor for manipulating PDF documents. The software available in both GUI and CLI (commandline) interface.
This software also supports scripting and almost anything can be scripted. PDFedit is a low-level tool for users. You can use this software:
=> To write / create / edit PDF files.
=> Print PDF files.
=> Save PDF files.
=> Export PDF files to XML etc.
Install PDFEdit
If you are using Debian or Ubuntu Linux, enter:
$ sudo apt-get install pdfedit
Start Editing PDF Files with PDFEdit editor
To start PDFEdit, type:
$ pdfedit /path/to/pdf.file &
$ pdfedit &
( Fig 01: PDFedit ~ Linux PDF maker in action [click to enlarge the image] )
Other Linux pdf maker / writer software
During my research I came across other apps to edit PDFs. I hope you will find following tools useful:
=> scribus - Open Source Desktop Page Layout / desktop publishing (DTP) application software. It works under Linux, Mac and Windows computer. This software is another good alternative to PDFEdit. Just open file using open option and you can edit PDF file. You can install scribus using apt-get command:
$ sudo apt-get install scribus
To use scribus to edit PDF files:
Start scribus > New File > Insert > Image > Double click > Select PDF file
=> flpsed - a WYSIWYG pseudo PostScript editor. This software is very fast and light weight. To install flpsed, enter:
$ sudo apt-get install flpsed
To edit file, enter:
$ flpsed /path/to/pdf-file.pdf &
=> Gimp - I've also used gimp for editing pdf files. However, you need basic knowledge of gimp itself for editing pdf files. GIMP is almost installed on all Linux distribution. Please note that GIMP is not elegant solution for editing pdf files.
Online PDF manipulation tool
Finally, you can always use the Internet to modify PDF files using a web browser. [pdfescape.com]
Conclusion
PDFEdit is the best free open source software for for Linux / Unix-like operating systems. However, it does not support editing protected or encrypted PDF files.
Further readings:
Want to stay up to date with the latest Linux tips, news and announcements? Subscribe to our free e-mail newsletter or full RSS feed to get all updates.
You can Email this page to a friend.
You may also be interested in...
- OpenOffice.org ( OOo ) Label Templates download Review
- About nixCraft Projects
- Open source companies to watch
- Open source gift idea for the holidays
- Linux: 50 Killer Business Open Source Application to Get your Office on Open Source
Discussion on This Article:
Leave a Reply
We encourage your comments, and suggestions. But please stay on topic, be polite, and avoid spam. Thank you very much for stopping by our site!
Tags: adobe acrobat, download pdfedit, freeware pdf writer, gv, linux edit pdf, linux pdf create, linux pdf edit, linux pdf editor, linux pdf maker, open source pdf writer, pdf documents, pdf edit, pdf files, pdfedit, printer pdf writer ~ Last updated on: December 19, 2007
Excellent tool, I am just downloading it, I missed something like that. Thanks for a nice piece of news.
This website is the Best website for Linux administrator and All the linux users.
Realy Great Job ….
Thanks Cyberciti.biz….
Great article, thanks. In a few seconds I now know of at least three tools for editing PDFs, plus a web-based solution too.
Apt-get cannot locate PDFedit. I was able to download to my desktop but apt-get refuses to install it when: apt-get /path/ install pdfedit
Also tried the install from cache with the same result.
I must be missing some vital step. Any insite?
pdfedit compiled successfully (after >5 minutes…) on Fedora Core 6. Unfortunately, it is useless. Highlighting does not work in any sensible way. Worst of all, there is no obvious way for UNDOING anything! There is no simple documentation on this either. There is just no comparison with Acrobat Professional (unfortunately for Windows only and extremely expensive).
don’t forget about openoffice.org it has built in PDF exporter. I often create ebook using openoffice.org
@Ted Hope: you can install separate deb packages using (you should have the required packages installed already, of course)
sudo dpkg -i /path/to/package.deb
On many modern Linux desktops you can install debs by double-clicking/right-clicking on the package icon.
I’m running a 1.2 GHz, 1GB ram mongrel of a machine, main OS is BLAG 70000 on Fedora 7 platform. All I had to do was open a terminal, ’su -’ to my root, run ‘yum install pdfedit’, and bingo, I’m running ‘pdfedit’ just like that. No problems, other than I need to learn how to run it. That little program (less than 3MB) saves hundred$ of $$. And since I mostly always use point and click GUI, this has a real nice interface. I look forward to using it. Things don’t always turn out so sweet, but when they do it’s nice as pie.
I’m thrilled. Linux OS’s are soon going to really catch on at this rate of development.
Huge kudo’s to the developers for all the excellent work.
The newest version of Inkscape (0.46) can now import pdfs and has improved pdf export over the previous release. And it’s not out yet, but OpenOffice.org 3.0 will be fully supporting reading and writing of PDFs.
Check out this other tool called
PDF Studio
It’s a very complete PDF editor for Linux much better than PDFEdit.
I tried the lastest version 0.4.1 with cygwin on XP Pro. I found it unstable with several crashes during opening or editing. Maybe it is cygwin side effects. But the most notable cons is the poor support of fonts. According to the user guide “The creation of pdf files containing text is limited because we do not support our own fonts only standard ones” It is not only creation but also edition. Only 18 differents fonts are supported, most all non MS “standard”. Even a text using MS Courrier font cannot be edited, as well as MS Arial or MS New Times-Roman.
Nice try, but still some work at the fonts level.