RE: Editing a PDF

["McLauchlan, Kevin" <Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com>]

 David Neeley [mailto:dbneeley -at- gmail -dot- com] bristled with:
 
> Kevin,
> 
> I wasn't irate, just puzzled. 

Sorry.  Shoulda had a smiley on that. 

If I'd said "David Neely thundered obdurately:" would 
that have been obviously just-goofin'-around ?

> My understanding of the original post
> was that the distribution of the piece was to be internal only, at
> least until after the author had returned from holiday vacation. Maybe
> I missed something on that score, too?

Not internal. It's eventually to go to mass printing, which can 
take place after New Year's I'd guess. 

But in the meantime, it was needed yesterday before 3:30pm for 
submission to an external validating agency for some standards 
compliance validation or other.  Late submission would have 
missed an important window and delayed a product launch in 
the new year.   I don't recall which agency or standard it was. 

Thus my earlier reference to local honchos hopping from foot to 
foot and wringing their hands as I futzed and puzzled. 

 
> To review the contents even minus the background graphic would be
> simple enough, I'd think.

Review had been done, and the PDF had some markup (one typo and a 
couple of striken-through phrases where claims had gotten a tad 
over-enthusiastic and needed to be toned back to some vague 
association with reality). 

What would normally have happened is that the author would have 
received the marked-up PDF back and simply implemented the changes 
in her source file.  Instead, I was asked to make the PDF work.
 
> You can also transform the .pdf to a straight .ps file and edit that,
> then move that back to .pdf if I understand the various tool options
> available.

I used to edit PDFs in a text editor, until Acrobat started getting 
fussy about tampering - if the checksum doesn't work, then Acrobat 
gets cranky. 

Hadn't thought of exporting as .ps, editing that, then re-importing.
Since I was only interested in changing/deleting a few words of text, 
it would not have mattered how contorted the flow was... probably. 

I'll try to remember to give that a whirl next time.
 
> By the way, there are also tools designed specifically to extract the
> images without loss. Do a search on "pdf extractor" and you will find
> a listing of same.

You don't have happy personal experience to report with some of them?

My usual problem is the time it takes to be a guinnea-pig with 
all the stuff that Google happily offers.  That's why I sometimes 
ask for other list-members to report on which specific products in a 
boatload category were good for them. 


Cheers,

 - Kevin

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