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

[Bob Newell <bobnewell@bobnewell.net>]

> 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.

Right, although I was referring to a different problem, namely that if
you do a PDF to text conversion of a PDF with multi-column text, you
typically don't get great results.  Or at least I don't.  I do better
with OCR software that allows me to select a column at a time.  But
then we're getting into multiple manual steps, introducing OCR error,
and in the end we are working with the text, not directly editing the
PDF.  (However extracting text is often enough for me.)

> 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

I didn't know about the RCD package.  Looks useful and thank you for
the pointer.

> LibreaOffice Draw -- open PDF file and you will see you can edit many
> things.
>
> Okular -- you can annotate and insert text
>
> Scribus and Xournal

Yes, I use Xournal very often and sometimes Gimp in this manner for
signing or annotating business documents received as PDFs.  It is
still not the same as directly editing.  However if the reproduction
is faithfully enough it is indeed possible to make significant changes
and export back out as PDF.

-- 
Bob Newell
Honolulu, Hawai`i

Via Linux/Emacs/Gnus/BBDB.