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

[Ulrich Deiters <ulrich.deiters@uni-koeln.de>]

Am 21.03.23 um 22:57 schrieb gebser@mousecar.com:
> Better than that, what FOSS app(s) would be happy replacement for the 
> Acrobat-Industrial Complex?

This depends on what you want. Printing a document takes
(at least) three stages:

(1) One composes the text using a language that contains formatting
commands. The best open-source choice is LaTeX. LaTeX code is human-
readable and can be edited with emacs; in fact, emacs has a LaTeX
mode. There are also free programs that assist writing LaTeX code,
or which let one compose XML code, which is then translated into LaTeX.

(2) One processes the LaTeX code; the results are DVI, PostScript,
or PDF files. Such files basically consist of instructions of the
type "choose font F, go to location (X, Y), and print character C". 
Therefore these files are long and, if converted to a human-readable
format, very boring. You do not want to edit these.

(3) The intermediate code is processed to produce a bitmap, which is
then transferred to the paper.

So you see, the stage at which editing makes sense is Stage (1).

Exceptions are graphics designers and artists, who work with PostScript
or similar languages directly in order to achieve special effects.