[nycbug-talk] editting pdf's... (dot dot dot)

[Jay]

On Tue, 22 Feb 2005 23:01:20 -0500, Okan Demirmen <okan at demirmen.com> wrote:
> so in my quest to have a paperless office, i'm struggling with one
> big thing: faxing/emailing back forms sent or downloaded in pdf
> form.
> 
> thought i'd hit up this knowledgable list to see if anyone has any
> bright ideas ;)
> 
> obivously the faxing thing is not an issue (faxmodem+hylafax), nor
> the emailing part;) the part about filling out forms that come
> across the wire as pdf. i'm aware that adobe can edit certain
> "fillable" pdf forms, but the majority of stuff out there is not
> of that type - besides, i'm not going to bye adobe to fill this gap ;)
> 
> are there any ideas out there? is coverting the pdf to an image,
> then editing that image a valid, and sane, idea? ideas? or maybe a
> hit on the head with a good cluestick that has the magic google
> search keywords ;)
> 
> thanks.
> 

Find a wordprocessor that will import the pdf as a graphical format. 
Open Office won't, but I don't know about the other options. 
Otherwise, turn it into EPS or some other format that your word
processor will work with and use it as a background image.  Then you
can draw text boxes where you want them, or just use the space bar and
carriage returns to get in the right ballpark.

If done this a couple of times.  You'll lose a lot of resolution with
the graphic conversions, but it was a fax to begin with, right?

HTH,

--jay savage