Re: editing pdf files

2012-10-14 Thread Mike Clarke
On Saturday 13 October 2012 21:47:01 Gary Kline wrote:

  SO: Is pdfimages going to spit of 6t50 files?  as noted
 in last email, only  a couple of these images are of any interest

Probably. But Gimp accepts PDF files and gives you the option of importing 
images of  individual selected pages. You might then be able to extract the 
text with some OCR software.

-- 
Mike Clarke
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org


Re: editing pdf files

2012-10-13 Thread Gary Kline
On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 01:19:07PM +0200, Polytropon wrote:
 On Fri, 12 Oct 2012 16:46:28 -0700, Gary Kline wrote:
 
 The disassembling can be done with 
 
   % pdfimages source.pdf .
 
 Then the files can be edited whatever tool you like, e. g. Gimp.
 They often come out in PBM format.
 


A qstn I should have asked last time.  this book is a history or
bio of richland county, ohio::  in type, it's like 650 or more
pages.  SO: Is pdfimages going to spit of 6t50 files?  as noted 
in last email, only  a couple of these images are of any interest 

-- 
 Gary Kline  kl...@thought.org  http://www.thought.org  Public Service Unix
  Twenty-six years of service to the Unix community.

___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org


Re: editing pdf files

2012-10-13 Thread Polytropon
On Sat, 13 Oct 2012 13:47:01 -0700, Gary Kline wrote:
 On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 01:19:07PM +0200, Polytropon wrote:
  On Fri, 12 Oct 2012 16:46:28 -0700, Gary Kline wrote:
  
  The disassembling can be done with 
  
  % pdfimages source.pdf .
  
  Then the files can be edited whatever tool you like, e. g. Gimp.
  They often come out in PBM format.
  
 
 
   A qstn I should have asked last time.  this book is a history or
   bio of richland county, ohio::  in type, it's like 650 or more
   pages.  SO: Is pdfimages going to spit of 6t50 files?  as noted 
   in last email, only  a couple of these images are of any interest 

Depends on what actually _is_ in the PDF file. If every page is
represented as a picture, 650 pictures will be created. If it
contains text _and_ images, the images will be output, if will
_only_ output the images, with no real realtion to where they
have been placed in the text. As suggested by the name pdfimages
it takes the images from the PDF file. :-)

The easiest way to check for possible text is to install xpdf
which brings the binary pdftotext (if I remember correctly that
this tool is in _that_ package). You can then use it like this:

% pdftotext source.pdf

It will create source.txt with all actual text (but of course
without _any_ formatting except line breaks and ^L page breaks),
including page numbers. But hey, it's pure ASCII text suitable
for further processing. :-)

Run pdftotext without parameters for a short summary of its
parameters; man pdftotext is also provided.


-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org


Re: editing pdf files

2012-10-13 Thread Polytropon
On Sat, 13 Oct 2012 13:38:16 -0700, Gary Kline wrote:
 On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 01:19:07PM +0200, Polytropon wrote:
  On Fri, 12 Oct 2012 16:46:28 -0700, Gary Kline wrote:
 ive got a question that fits in here.  hopefully.
   
 last week  I found a book from 1901 that google had scanned and listed
 as a pdf file.  it was text plus photos of the rich/famous of the 
 1800s.  somehow, google found the exact string that matched my great
 grandfather [from the civil war].  I d'loaded the file (maybe 2mbytes)
 and searched using acroread.  nada.  I used the pdftotext utility.
 same: nothing but  some 600 page numbers.
   
 my guess is that google just took photos of the book and used other
 tools to create a pdf file.  I am not =that= serious  about genealogy,
 but I would like to know if there are any tools to edit this kind of
 pdf file.
  
  In case the PDF is nothing more than a compilation of images,
  there's a way to deal with it for editing:
 
 
   the images in this book aren't what I am interested in.
   just text.

In case the text is in images (i. e. the images contain text),
postprocessing those images will be the only way to obtain the
text information (if there is no actual text in the PDF).



   what fmt works best with the ocr suites?  or are they about the 
   same?  for the section I got in that 1901 book on my g-grandfather,
   it was only about 1.5 pages.  there was no photo, just his name 
   and some bio.  Still, things I had no knowledge of.  I'm sure 
   that my father didnt know either!

It should work with any lossless (!) format, especially if it does
only contain two colors (as any BW format of PBM, GIF and PNG can
do, and JPEG can't). In case tesseract OCR does not operate on
PBM files directly, convert them into something it can handle
better, like TIFF or maybe PNG; you can use

% convert .-530.pbm 530.png
% convert .-531.pbm 531.png

manually (as you will only process two files) and then run the OCR
process on them.

Note that pdfimages can also output color images (if they are color
images in the source), e. g. I found .-000.ppm (PPM format) with
a diagram in Good Ideas, Through the Looking Glass by N. Wirth.
I'm not sure if there could also directly be PNG or EPS files
in a PDF file...



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org


Re: editing pdf files

2012-10-13 Thread Gary Kline
On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 11:15:36PM +0200, Polytropon wrote:
 On Sat, 13 Oct 2012 13:47:01 -0700, Gary Kline wrote:
  On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 01:19:07PM +0200, Polytropon wrote:
   On Fri, 12 Oct 2012 16:46:28 -0700, Gary Kline wrote:
   
   The disassembling can be done with 
   
 % pdfimages source.pdf .
   
   Then the files can be edited whatever tool you like, e. g. Gimp.
   They often come out in PBM format.
   
  
  
  A qstn I should have asked last time.  this book is a history or
  bio of richland county, ohio::  in type, it's like 650 or more
  pages.  SO: Is pdfimages going to spit of 6t50 files?  as noted 
  in last email, only  a couple of these images are of any interest 
 
 Depends on what actually _is_ in the PDF file. If every page is
 represented as a picture, 650 pictures will be created. If it
 contains text _and_ images, the images will be output, if will
 _only_ output the images, with no real realtion to where they
 have been placed in the text. As suggested by the name pdfimages
 it takes the images from the PDF file. :-)
 
 The easiest way to check for possible text is to install xpdf
 which brings the binary pdftotext (if I remember correctly that
 this tool is in _that_ package). You can then use it like this:
 
   % pdftotext source.pdf
 
 It will create source.txt with all actual text (but of course
 without _any_ formatting except line breaks and ^L page breaks),
 including page numbers. But hey, it's pure ASCII text suitable
 for further processing. :-)
 
 Run pdftotext without parameters for a short summary of its
 parameters; man pdftotext is also provided.
 


Well, then my original instincts were right.  I ran the 
pdftotext file.pdf and nothing but the page numbers were 
there.   rats.  oh-well, at least I can type in byhhand what 
I want:)


 
 -- 
 Polytropon
 Magdeburg, Germany
 Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...

-- 
 Gary Kline  kl...@thought.org  http://www.thought.org  Public Service Unix
  Twenty-six years of service to the Unix community.

___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org


Re: editing pdf files

2012-10-12 Thread ill...@gmail.com
On 9 October 2012 18:35, Gary Aitken free...@dreamchaser.org wrote:
 Can someone give me advice on editing pdf files?
 I have some forms I'm trying to fill out that contain labels followed by
 a bunch of underline characters and all I need to do is delete some of the
 underlines and add text.

 I tried using pdfedit but the modified file doesn't display properly.  I 
 assumed
 it would take care of text placement, etc., but it did not produce readable
 results.  For example, removing underline characters and replacing them with
 340007174 only displays 3400014; 75-300mm displays as -300mm.  Am I
 missing something or does it just not work?

 Does anyone have any experience with the open office oracle pdf import 
 extension?
 I don't see it in the ports collection,
 and I am not sure whether to even try using the linux version.


That a file is a .pdf doesn't tell you much about it, actually.

If the .pdf is just an image (eg a scanned document) you can
perhaps import it into gimp, or export it as a .png.  You might
be able to OCR it, I don't know.

If it's a proper text document saved as a .pdf, you can surely
import it into open- or libre-office  edit it from there.  You
might also be able to export it as a .ps (using perhaps print/gv
or graphics/xpdf, or perhaps one of the tools from graphics/poppler)
 edit it with an even wider variety of tools.

Yet another option would be to use google docs (or similar), which
generally allows viewing  perhaps editing as an HTML document.
I don't know if google docs allows re-export back to .pdf, though.

-- 
--
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org


Re: editing pdf files

2012-10-12 Thread Boris Samorodov
10.10.2012 02:35, Gary Aitken пишет:

 Can someone give me advice on editing pdf files?

Take a look at graphics/inkscape.

-- 
WBR, Boris Samorodov (bsam)
FreeBSD Committer, http://www.FreeBSD.org The Power To Serve
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org

Re: editing pdf files

2012-10-12 Thread Gary Kline
On Fri, Oct 12, 2012 at 10:40:29PM +0400, Boris Samorodov wrote:
 10.10.2012 02:35, Gary Aitken пишет:
 
  Can someone give me advice on editing pdf files?
 
 Take a look at graphics/inkscape.
 
 -- 
 WBR, Boris Samorodov (bsam)
 FreeBSD Committer, http://www.FreeBSD.org The Power To Serve


ive got a question that fits in here.  hopefully.

last week  I found a book from 1901 that google had scanned and listed
as a pdf file.  it was text plus photos of the rich/famous of the 
1800s.  somehow, google found the exact string that matched my great
grandfather [from the civil war].  I d'loaded the file (maybe 2mbytes)
and searched using acroread.  nada.  I used the pdftotext utility.
same: nothing but  some 600 page numbers.

my guess is that google just took photos of the book and used other
tools to create a pdf file.  I am not =that= serious  about genealogy,
but I would like to know if there are any tools to edit this kind of
pdf file.

tia guys,

gary


-- 
 Gary Kline  kl...@thought.org  http://www.thought.org  Public Service Unix
  Twenty-six years of service to the Unix community.

___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org

Re: editing pdf files

2012-10-12 Thread C. P. Ghost
On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 1:46 AM, Gary Kline kl...@thought.org wrote:
 On Fri, Oct 12, 2012 at 10:40:29PM +0400, Boris Samorodov wrote:
 10.10.2012 02:35, Gary Aitken пишет:

  Can someone give me advice on editing pdf files?

 Take a look at graphics/inkscape.

 --
 WBR, Boris Samorodov (bsam)
 FreeBSD Committer, http://www.FreeBSD.org The Power To Serve


 ive got a question that fits in here.  hopefully.

 last week  I found a book from 1901 that google had scanned and listed
 as a pdf file.  it was text plus photos of the rich/famous of the
 1800s.  somehow, google found the exact string that matched my great
 grandfather [from the civil war].  I d'loaded the file (maybe 2mbytes)
 and searched using acroread.  nada.  I used the pdftotext utility.
 same: nothing but  some 600 page numbers.

 my guess is that google just took photos of the book and used other
 tools to create a pdf file.  I am not =that= serious  about genealogy,
 but I would like to know if there are any tools to edit this kind of
 pdf file.

I suspect the following: they scanned the book and put all the images
into the PDF. The PDF itself is merely a container for scanned pages;
it thus contains no text (save for the page numbers).

That Google was able to search in this file is probably due to them running
some OCR program on the image files, and then indexing the (approximate)
text that the OCR program generated. Probably they used something like
tesseract-ocr from ports graphics/tesseract:
  http://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/

 tia guys,

 gary


 --
  Gary Kline  kl...@thought.org  http://www.thought.org  Public Service Unix
   Twenty-six years of service to the Unix community.

-cpghost.

-- 
Cordula's Web. http://www.cordula.ws/
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org