Better way to edit PDF forms with any desired font using freeware?

[Arlen G. Holder]

Someone asked me to help them edit a multi-page PDF form where they wanted it to look professional.

First I tried PDFtoOffice but it made a mess of the multi-page PDF in the
final Word document. Then I tried the Adobe Acrobat 6 PDF writer but it
would only edit existing text (where we needed to enter text on forms).

The next solution worked, but it was perhaps too convoluted:
1. Use Irfanview with Ghostscript to read PDF and write to something else
(I wrote to TIF, but it could have been any image format)

2. Edit in any editor that has easy text editing with selectable fonts
(I used Paint.NET but any image editor with selectable fonts would work)

3. Convert from the image format back to PDF with Irfanview + Ghostscript.

This worked with the advantage that:
o It used existing freeware that had many fonts to choose from
But the disadvantage was that:
o The multi-page TIF would only save as a single-page PDF

Is there a simpler freeware multi-page PDF-form-editing method for Windows?

[Arlen G. Holder]

On Wed, 1 May 2019 07:17:16 -0000 (UTC), Arlen G. Holder wrote:

> o The multi-page TIF would only save as a single-page PDF
>
> Is there a simpler freeware multi-page PDF-form-editing method for Windows?

I should note that I also tried the Paint.NET Portable Document Format'
FileType Plugin:
<https://forums.getpaint.net/topic/22863-portable-document-format-filetype-plugin-pdf/>

Which entailed adding the following files to the Paint.NET hierarchy:
o .\Paint.NET\FileTypes\imPDF.Command.exe
o .\Paint.NET\FileTypes\imPDF.Open.FileType.dlc
o .\Paint.NET\FileTypes\imPDF.Open.FileType.dll
o .\Paint.NET\FileTypes\imPDF.SaveFileType.dll
o .\Paint.NET\OptionBasedLibrary v0.6.dll
o .\Paint.NET\OptionBasedLibrary v0.6.dlc

But, unfortunately, this read/write PDF capability plugin still only
created single-page PDFs out of the multi-page PDF input.

[nospam]

In article <qabh5r$nab$1...@news.mixmin.net>, Arlen G. Holder

<arling...@nospam.net> wrote:

> Someone asked me to help them edit a multi-page PDF form where they wanted it
> to look professional.

pity on them.

[Eric Stevens]

You might be interested in http://www.pdfshaper.com/ . It doesn't
actually write PDF files but it does just about all of everything
else. If you have a wordprocessor which will write PDF files PDF
Shaper might meet your needs. There is a fully functional free version
for personal use.
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens

[Keith Nuttle]

I would suspect that if you copied the text from the PDF document and
pasted it into a Word processor it would have been simpler.

Once you had edited and formatted it the way you want, you could then
print it to a PDF writer, or use the word processor's native PDF function

It the edits were basically text changes you could have done it with the
add Text function, of Adobe Reader. Click Comments, and select the
Capital T in the tool bar. Place the cursor where you wanted to change
the text, adjust the font size and color, and type in the change.

Once you have the form modify print it to a PDF writer, to make the
changes permanently part of the form.







--
2018: The year we learn to play the great game of Euchre

[Paul]

I like to start with examples.

The government tax office is a good source of these examples.

For example, this one is only for printing, followed
by using a ballpoint pen. (Tool used: Adobe Livecycle Designer)

https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/cra-arc/formspubs/pbg/t2201/t2201-18e.pdf

Whereas this one is digital. You can edit and save this one.
Have a play with this. An editable form might be an "Acroform"
(try Wikipedia). This form also does validation of input into
a box, if Javascript is on and if the version of Acrobat Reader
is high enough.

https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/cra-arc/formspubs/pbg/t2201/t2201-fill-18e.pdf

This one does validation too.

https://tax.nv.gov/uploadedFiles/taxnvgov/Content/Forms/Sales_and_Use_Tax_Return_07-01-11.pdf

*******

This article has something to do with Acroforms.

https://www.techrepublic.com/blog/five-apps/five-tools-for-generating-interactive-pdf-forms/

Adobe has some sort of "Professional" version of Acrobat,
that supports Acroforms and XFA (Jetforms).

Designing one of these, without spending money, would be
well outside my pay scale.

*******

I had hoped there would be a tool I could use, point it at
the three files above, and it would "tell me their sub-type".
Didn't work out. So far, they're "all just PDF". I can't get
identification of subtype.

Don't forget to go back to Preferences and disable
Javascript after testing that stuff. Leaving Javascript
enabled is a security issue.

Paul

[Dan Purgert]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Arlen G. Holder wrote:
> Someone asked me to help them edit a multi-page PDF form where they
> wanted it to look professional.
>
> First I tried PDFtoOffice but it made a mess of the multi-page PDF in the
> final Word document. Then I tried the Adobe Acrobat 6 PDF writer but it
> would only edit existing text (where we needed to enter text on forms).

Sounds like this "form" is intended to be printed and then filled out,
either by hand or with a typewriter.

If the party creating the form intended it to be editable directly as a
PDF, the person filling in said form would've been able to do so
directly in acrobat reader / whatever the web-browser plugin is called.

For example, my city does this with their income tax form. Fill in the
fields (employer, income, taxes paid to other cities, etc.), print out
the completed document, and the sign the bottom.

In my experience, trying to work-around this on a PC (as with your
options that were snipped) tends to have various (and usually
debilitating in the long run) shortcomings in the "user friendliness"
department.

If the form is something widely and regularly used (e.g. tax forms,
etc), perhaps the best option is asking the party who generated it if
they can also create an editable option.

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--
|_|O|_|
|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
|O|O|O| PGP: 05CA 9A50 3F2E 1335 4DC5 4AEE 8E11 DDF3 1279 A281

[Arlen G. Holder]

On Wed, 1 May 2019 06:52:29 -0400, Keith Nuttle wrote:

> I would suspect that if you copied the text from the PDF document and
> pasted it into a Word processor it would have been simpler.

Hi Keith,

Unfortunately, the original PDF was a complex document, where nothing but a
WSYWIG editor would have been functional.

> It the edits were basically text changes you could have done it with the
> add Text function, of Adobe Reader. Click Comments, and select the
> Capital T in the tool bar. Place the cursor where you wanted to change
> the text, adjust the font size and color, and type in the change.

While I didn't try the Adobe Reader, I have the Adobe Writer (aka Acrobat),
version 6, which can rudimentarily edit existing text, but it has nowhere
near even the most basic of required functionality, e.g., selectable
resizable fonts, and it didn't seem to _add_ text (it would only edit
existing test in my quick test before abandoning that approach).

> Once you have the form modify print it to a PDF writer, to make the
> changes permanently part of the form.

Basically, what I needed, and what everyone needs, is a freeware PDF editor
that can edit text using selectable fonts and sizes like Paint.NET (or many
other freeware image editors) do.

[nospam]

In article <qacd13$a7e$2...@news.mixmin.net>, Arlen G. Holder

<arling...@nospam.net> wrote:

> > It the edits were basically text changes you could have done it with the
> > add Text function, of Adobe Reader. Click Comments, and select the
> > Capital T in the tool bar. Place the cursor where you wanted to change
> > the text, adjust the font size and color, and type in the change.
>
> While I didn't try the Adobe Reader, I have the Adobe Writer (aka Acrobat),
> version 6, which can rudimentarily edit existing text, but it has nowhere
> near even the most basic of required functionality, e.g., selectable
> resizable fonts, and it didn't seem to _add_ text (it would only edit
> existing test in my quick test before abandoning that approach).

version 6 is over 15 years old, so it should not be any surprise that
it doesn't work correctly with a modern pdf.

[Chris]

Dan Purgert <d...@djph.net> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA256
>
> Arlen G. Holder wrote:
>> Someone asked me to help them edit a multi-page PDF form where they
>> wanted it to look professional.
>>
>> First I tried PDFtoOffice but it made a mess of the multi-page PDF in the
>> final Word document. Then I tried the Adobe Acrobat 6 PDF writer but it
>> would only edit existing text (where we needed to enter text on forms).
>
> Sounds like this "form" is intended to be printed and then filled out,
> either by hand or with a typewriter.
>
> If the party creating the form intended it to be editable directly as a
> PDF, the person filling in said form would've been able to do so
> directly in acrobat reader / whatever the web-browser plugin is called.

You'd think so wouldn't you. However, it's typical that editable forms are
provided as word docs and printable things are pdfs or also word docs.
Actually at my work they use excel for editable forms <sigh>.

Editable PDF forms have been around for so long yet very few are created.

[Arlen G. Holder]

On Wed, 1 May 2019 17:11:46 -0000 (UTC), Chris wrote:

> You'd think so wouldn't you. However, it's typical that editable forms are
> provided as word docs and printable things are pdfs or also word docs.
> Actually at my work they use excel for editable forms <sigh>.
>
> Editable PDF forms have been around for so long yet very few are created.

Hi Chris,

This question requires someone with Windows skills, where I've been editing
PDFs since they first came out decades ago, it seems, and where we can wax
philosophically as to WHY people make PDF forms in the first place.

As you noted,
o Some PDF forms are intended to be printed, signed, scanned, & digitized
o While other PDF forms are designed to be directly editable.

But all PDF forms _should_ (IMHO), be editable by the user (if they so desire).

This one was clearly designed to be signed & scanned, but the person who
needed it was accepting a formal agreement where they didn't have the
scanning & digitizing equipment, nor the time to send the paper, and,
besides, they knew I'd do it in minutes with the tools I had on hand.

Rest assured I've been editing PDF documents for years and years.

I've had many payware PDF editing tools in the past, most of which work
fine, but this question isn't about payware since I always seek a
general-purpose solution, where freeware is the starting point.

The goal, as always, is the best single freeware tool for editing PDFs,
particularly the common practice of these basic text tasks:
o Add text given a choice of fonts, sizes, emphasis, etc., and,
o Add checkbox marks, initials, and signatures using those fonts, and,
o Keeping the document as a single multi-page PDF (if possible).

I will test out any viable solution that appears to meet those simple
goals, where I will simply ignore the purposefully unhelpful posts from the
likes of nospam & Dan Purgert, neither of which appears to comprehend this
simple problem set.

To report on my tests, last night I did try to get the Paint.NET PDF reader
and writer plugins to work, where I was able to get Paint.NET to write out
a PDF but it wouldn't read in the specific PDF (which is a formal legal
document but which is not "protected" by any means that I'm aware of).

If others on this newsgroup wish to test the process I tried, to let me
know if it works for them, here's a quickie tutorial:

1. Install Paint.NET freeware
<https://www.getpaint.net/download.html>
Note that Paint.NET will automatically install .NET Framework 4.7.2
(if it isn't already there). Also, Paint.NET will automatically run
in 64-bit mode if possible.
<https://www.dotpdn.com/files/paint.net.4.1.6.install.zip>

2. Install Ghostscript 9.10 freeware (where that version no longer exists):
<http://www.ghostscript.com/download/>

2. Download & install the two ImPDF read/write plugins named:
o ImPDF.Open.FileType
o ImPDF.Save.FileType
Collectively referred to as:
o "Portable Document Format FileType Plugin (.PDF)"
from <https://forums.getpaint.net/forum/46-filetype-plugins/>
Directions here:
<https://forums.getpaint.net/topic/22863-portable-document-format-filetype-plugin-pdf/>

Specifically, you download & unpack these two zip files:
o ImPDF.Open.FileType v1.1.zip
<https://www.dropbox.com/s/ol6yw90do7ciwkv/ImPDF.Open.FileType%20v1.1.zip>

o ImPDF.Save.FileType v1.4.zip
<https://www.dropbox.com/s/jb7gy8h3jvkfks7/ImPDF.Save.FileType%20v1.4.zip>

Then place the extracted contents in the following Paint.NET folders:
o ImPDF.Open.FileType
.\Paint.NET\FileTypes\imPDF.Open.FileType.dlc
.\Paint.NET\FileTypes\imPDF.Open.FileType.dll
.\Paint.NET\OptionBasedLibrary v0.6.dll
.\Paint.NET\OptionBasedLibrary v0.6.dlc
o ImPDF.Save.FileType
.\Paint.NET\FileTypes\imPDF.Command.exe
.\Paint.NET\FileTypes\imPDF.SaveFileType.dll

This process _should_ have worked, and it _mostly_ worked, but the reading
in of the PDF erred out on my system, even as there were no errors reading
the PDF into a variety of other PDF viewers.

If someone can test this process to doublecheck what I did, that would be
great, as this potentially enables any user to edit multipage PDF forms
with a good number of possible fonts & sizes & emphasis, all within the GUI
of the single Paint.NET program.

Note that the underlying mechanics of both Ghostscript & ImPDF are
invisible, so even though three entities are involved, it's all done within
the single Paint.NET GUI.

If someone with Windows skills can be purposefully helpful by pitching in
to install as I've described above, everyone will benefit from your
purposefully helpful efforts.

[Arlen G. Holder]

On Wed, 01 May 2019 22:00:39 +1200, Eric Stevens wrote:

> You might be interested in http://www.pdfshaper.com/ . It doesn't
> actually write PDF files but it does just about all of everything
> else. If you have a wordprocessor which will write PDF files PDF
> Shaper might meet your needs. There is a fully functional free version
> for personal use.

Hi Eric Stevens,

Since every post to Usenet should add value to the Potluck Picnic for all
participating adults to benefit from, I thank you for your purposefully
helpful suggestion of "pdfshaper" freeware to test out for the team.

Below is my log file based on my quick tests.
o I like this freeware pdfshaper tool, but not for the purpose I needed it.

It's a very nice quick-and-easy freeware tool for two things though, IMHO:
o Delete pages in a PDF file
o Rotate pages in a PDF file

Here's my log file...
============================================================================
PDF Shaper Free, version 8.9, log file
This software is free for non-commercial use.

What this PDF Shaper Free will do for you is...
o Delete pages
o Rotate pages
============================================================================
To install...
http://www.pdfshaper.com
http://www.pdfshaper.com/download.html
https://fileforum.betanews.com/download/PDF-Shaper-Free/1364214245/1
http://download.betanews.com/download/1364214245-1/pdfshaper_free_8.9.exe
I saved it to C:\archive\editor\pspdf\pdfshaper\.
Doubleclick on pdfshaper_free_8.9.exe to install.
It wants to install into C:\Program Files (x86)\PDF Shaper Free
I put it into C:\app\editor\pspdf\pdfshaper
Desktop Target: C:\app\editor\pspdf\pdfshaper\PDFShaper.exe
After installation, an "Avast" optional offer pops up on your screen
NOTE: This popup is part of the softawre as it's not a browser popup!
Obviously you will be hitting "Decline".
Then the same thing happens for WinZip (obviously hit "Decline").
Then it will launch PDF Shaper Free.
It then phones home to: http://www.pdfshaper.com/after-install.html
In Settings, turn off the check for updates on startup.
============================================================================
Test 1:
o File > PDF to RTF > Add > (find test1.pdf) > Process > test1.rtf
Result:
o As expected, the editable document was screwed up when viewed in Word.
============================================================================
Test 2:
o File > PDF to Image > Add > (find test1.pdf) > Process
Result:
o Test{1,2,3}.jpg (where, at least by default, the quality was bad)
============================================================================
Test 3:
o File > Delete Pages > Add > (find test1.pdf) > Options >
(o)Delete selected pages = 1-2
Process > (choose a new file name, like "test2.pdf")
Result:
o This is a very nice way to easily delete pages in a PDF.
============================================================================
============================================================================

[Arlen G. Holder]

On Wed, 1 May 2019 18:59:47 -0000 (UTC), Arlen G. Holder wrote:

> It's a very nice quick-and-easy freeware tool for two things though, IMHO:
> o Delete pages in a PDF file
> o Rotate pages in a PDF file

Hi Eric Stevens,

For PDF page rotation freeware, I like your purposefully helpful pdfshaper
suggestion, where I had tested out the following "PDF-Xchange Viewer",
which is also a page rotator, but not much else (IMHO), but which I include
the quicktest of for others to benefit from the effort, as Usenet is a
potluck picnic for adults to benefit from the actions of others who are
purposefully helpful.

============================================================================
PDF-XChange PDF Viewer, version 2.5, build 322.0
o Is a freeware PDF viewer, with
o free OCR
o and free page rotation
And that's about it, realistically.
o It can do rudimentary text editing, but it was almost worthless IMHO

Note it insists on using your "userid" that you logged in as.
============================================================================
https://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-viewer/download?fileid=446
<https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.comp.freeware/EGotfgDntXA/x0a5zw9EBgAJ>
http://downloads.pdf-xchange.com/PDFXVwer.zip
============================================================================
I saved it to C:\archive\editor\pspdf\pdfxchange\PDFXVwer.zip
Extract to .\PDFXVwer\PDFXVW1.xml & .\PDFXVwer\PDFXVwer.exe
Doubleclick on the PDFXVwer.exe to install.
It wants to install into C:\Program Files\Tracker Software
I put it into C:\app\editor\pspdf\pdfxchange
Target: "C:\app\editor\pspdf\pdfxchange\PDF Viewer\PDFXCview.exe"
After installation, set "Edit > Preferences" as desired.
============================================================================
Note that this free version:
o Can't insert pages
o Can't delete pages
o Can't really do much other than OCR & rotate pages.
============================================================================
My suggestion is to use pdfshaper instead, if you need to rotate pages.
http://www.pdfshaper.com
============================================================================

[Keith Nuttle]

On 5/1/2019 11:12 AM, Arlen G. Holder wrote:
> While I didn't try the Adobe Reader, I have the Adobe Writer (aka Acrobat),
> version 6, which can rudimentarily edit existing text, but it has nowhere
> near even the most basic of required functionality, e.g.,

The Free Adobe Reader DC Version 2019.010.20099 is quite different from
Adobe Writer version 6. I believe the current Adobe Writer (Acrobat) is
about version 11.

https://acrobat.adobe.com/us/en/acrobat/pdf-reader.html

Several version ago one of the features added was an improved commenting
feature. You could add balloon text to the document and save it with
the text balloons, or you could add text to parts of the document
itself. You can do this by creating a box in the document hit Control
T, adding the text to the window that opened and hitting OK.

When I fill out a form, scanned image or text base, I use the method
available when you click Comments in the right side pane of a document
opened in an Adobe window. Clicking comment opens a toolbar across the
top of the document panel. It says COMMENTS, shows the Comment balloon,
followed by a dozen editing icons, like the text entering icon,
highlight, etc.

From this Editing Toolbar I select the capital T about the center of
the toolbar. place the cursor where I want to enter text and start
typing. If you click the three dots on the right of the toolbar, it
gives you the ability to change the font, color, and type of font of the
text you are adding.

I do not believe this last method of adding text to the document was
available in version 6, and is entirely different that it was in early
versions.

You may have decided not to upgrade to this new version as it added what
appears to be an advertising section of Adobe products, but this
improved commenting is worth the Adobe products icons.




selectable
> resizable fonts, and it didn't seem to_add_ text (it would only edit

> existing test in my quick test before abandoning that approach).

[Keith Nuttle]

On 5/1/2019 2:09 PM, Arlen G. Holder wrote:
> As you noted,
> o Some PDF forms are intended to be printed, signed, scanned, & digitized
> o While other PDF forms are designed to be directly editable.
>

> But all PDF forms_should_ (IMHO), be editable by the user (if they so desire).
See my comments, ANY form, whether image based or text base, can be
filled out using the current Adobe PDF Reader DC which is FREE. It is
also designed so that you can add a signature to that document. Caveat
is that you must scan your signature and added to the Adobe Reader.

[Dan Purgert]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

I think Arlen is using "form" to mean ANY document that is intended to
be filled out -- and is missing the point that there is a specific type
of PDF subtype (XFA document, and others?) that is referred to as "a PDF
Form".

So he is indeed working with "a form" (as in "print it out and fill in
the blanks with blue or black ink), just not "a *PDF* form" (as in what
you're talking about).



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[Arlen G. Holder]

On Wed, 1 May 2019 16:35:49 -0400, Keith Nuttle wrote:

> See my comments, ANY form, whether image based or text base, can be
> filled out using the current Adobe PDF Reader DC which is FREE. It is
> also designed so that you can add a signature to that document. Caveat
> is that you must scan your signature and added to the Adobe Reader.

Hi Keith,

Thanks for that admonishment, where are different kinds of PDFs, e.g.,
o A PDF of "something" (anything), which can be a bitmap for all we know
o A PDF of pure text of some format (which is the easiest to deal with)
o A PDF in a specific editable "form" format, which is a special beast

To be clear, we're talking about the 1st item above; not the latter two.

In my humble experience, the Adobe editing of the former is nearly
worthless, even with the Adobe PDF Writer.

Nonetheless, I tested your suggestion even though I hated older installs of
the Adobe Acrobat Reader almost as much as I hate Google Chrome (for
similar shenanigans), or the iTunes abomination (for not installing stuff
where they belong and for worthless bloat), where I faithfully tested this
Adobe Acrobat Reader DC, version 2019.101.20099, finding it to be about as
worthless as software can possibly be, IMHO.

Here's my ad-hoc log of my horrid experience with installing it just now.

1. Obtain the latest Adobe PDF Reader DC 2019.101.20099 for Windows.
<https://get.adobe.com/reader/>
<https://acrobat.adobe.com/us/en/acrobat/pdf-reader.html>

2. If desired, uncheck "Install the Acrobat Reader Chrome Extension".

3. If desired, uncheck the "free McAfee Security Scan Plus" box.

4. If desired, uncheck the"Install McAfee Save Connect" box.

5. If desired, uncheck the "Install Google Chrome" box.

6. If desired, uncheck the "Install the Adobe Reader Chrome Extension" box.

7. Click on the yellow "Install now" button.
This will download the stub named "readerdc_en_xa_crd_install.exe" from...
<https://admdownload.adobe.com/bin/live/readerdc_en_xa_crd_install.exe>

8. Save a copy of that stub (just in case), as it wipes itself out when you
run it.

9. Doubleclick on the downloaded stub "readerdc_en_xa_crd_install.exe",
where the real installer will be downloaded even though the form that comes
up says "Adobe Acrobat Reader DC, Installation will begin shortly"...

10. There is likely a place where the full offline network installer
downloaded, but I don't know that location, off hand, so we can't even
archive the installer until we figure that out (or if we sign up for an OEM
license separately).

11. The installation asks if you want to run it and then asks if you want
to make it the default PDF reader, which you can say "Yes" to if you like.

12. The installer is so poorly written that it doesn't even _ask_ where it
should go, which is the classic mark of a POS software program, of which
only about 1% of the programs out there are _that_ poorly written (IMHO).

13. As a result of the poor programming, the software installs into the
wrong location, where the desktop shortcut target is:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat Reader DC\Reader\AcroRd32.exe"

14. Even though the software is clearly a POS, open up the desired PDF
where at the right side, under a blue "Convert" button, you'll see "Edit
PDF" in red, but that apparently requires you to "sign in" to something, so
that's a bust.

15. In the "File" menu, there's an option to "Convert to Word, Excel, or
Powerpoint", which pops you up to a form trying to extract money from you
at: <https://acrobat.adobe.com/us/en/landing/exportpdf-pricing-b.html>

16. In the "Edit" menu, there's an option to "Edit Text & Images", where it
pops you to the _same_ idiotic button that the Share > Edit option popped
up, where you have to click the blue "Add" button, and where that brings
you yet another form attempting to extract money from you at
<https://acrobat.adobe.com/us/en/landing/edit-pricing.html>

17. At this point, close it down as the conclusion is clear that it's
utterly worthless as anything but a dumb PDF viewer.

18. Delete the Adobe Acrobat Reader DC from your system and don't fall for
this garbage ever again.

As folks here know, I install a _lot_ of software to test it, where I've
rarely come across such a piece of shit as this latest Adobe Acrobat Reader
DC proved itself to be.

Only the most gullible sheep on the planet would fall for the myriad tricks
and shenanigans that this software abomination tried to pull on me just
now, IMHO.

[ken]

In article <qacncl$v9v$1...@news.mixmin.net>, arling...@nospam.net
says...

> 2. Install Ghostscript 9.10 freeware (where that version no longer
exists):
> <http://www.ghostscript.com/download/>

A clarification here; Ghostscript is *NOT* 'freeware', it is open-
source, licensed under the AGPL version 3, which is not the same thing
at all.

I agree that, for a home user, the difference is entirely moot, but
legally there is a substantial difference.

In passing, anyone wanting to use Ghostscript should use the current
version 9.27. Version 9.10 is now 5 years old and has a number of well-
publicised security problems.



Ken

[Dan Purgert]

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Hash: SHA256

Arlen G. Holder wrote:

> On Wed, 1 May 2019 16:35:49 -0400, Keith Nuttle wrote:
>
>> See my comments, ANY form, whether image based or text base, can be
>> filled out using the current Adobe PDF Reader DC which is FREE. It is
>> also designed so that you can add a signature to that document. Caveat
>> is that you must scan your signature and added to the Adobe Reader.
>
> Hi Keith,
>
> Thanks for that admonishment, where are different kinds of PDFs, e.g.,
> o A PDF of "something" (anything), which can be a bitmap for all we know
> o A PDF of pure text of some format (which is the easiest to deal with)
> o A PDF in a specific editable "form" format, which is a special beast
>
> To be clear, we're talking about the 1st item above; not the latter two.

So you're not talking about a form then. In which case, it is
non-editable with freeware -- at least without some (potentially
convoluted) processing that takes you through two or more different
programs.

>
> In my humble experience, the Adobe editing of the former is nearly
> worthless, even with the Adobe PDF Writer.

That's the whole point -- you're not supposed to be able to edit a
published PDF. The idea being anyone and everyone looks at the same
static document.

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[Keith Nuttle]

On 5/2/2019 2:48 AM, Arlen G. Holder wrote:
> On Wed, 1 May 2019 16:35:49 -0400, Keith Nuttle wrote:
>
>> See my comments, ANY form, whether image based or text base, can be
>> filled out using the current Adobe PDF Reader DC which is FREE. It is
>> also designed so that you can add a signature to that document. Caveat
>> is that you must scan your signature and added to the Adobe Reader.
>
> Hi Keith,
>
> Thanks for that admonishment, where are different kinds of PDFs, e.g.,
> o A PDF of "something" (anything), which can be a bitmap for all we know
> o A PDF of pure text of some format (which is the easiest to deal with)
> o A PDF in a specific editable "form" format, which is a special beast
>

Did not mean that to be an admonishment, but many people think all PDF
documents are the same.

> 14. Even though the software is clearly a POS, open up the desired PDF
> where at the right side, under a blue "Convert" button, you'll see "Edit
> PDF" in red, but that apparently requires you to "sign in" to something, so
> that's a bust.
>

You were on the right track, but then made a wrong turn. In that panel
where you found "Edit PDF", click "Comments" right below it. This adds
the Comment toolbar above the document panel.

Using the Capital "T" icon form the Comments toolbar, you can move your
cursor to the place on the document (Form) where you want to add the
text. Type the response to the form request and and move the cursor to
the next request space to add the next response.

There are other ways to add text to the document, but I find this works
best for filling out form.

This method would be a bit cumbersome if you were actually editing the
form instead of filling out the form. From the discussion, I felt the
OP intention was to add response to the question on a form, not edit
information contained in the form structure and text itself.

My wife enters a lot of art shows and there is always a forms to fill
out. This is the method we use to fill out those forms. I have even
used it to complete legal and bank forms. For an image form you may
have to do some image processing steps to get the lines in the form square.

[Arlen G. Holder]

On Thu, 2 May 2019 10:58:58 -0400, Keith Nuttle wrote:

> Did not mean that to be an admonishment, but many people think all PDF
> documents are the same.

Hi Keith,

I APPRECIATE your suggestion, and your clarification of the types of PDF,
as Usenet is a Potluck Picnic, where each post should help everyone, and
where your post will help those who aren't familiar with the fact that PDFs
have text, links, forms, and are often mere bitmaps.

I've been using the Distiller and then the writer since, oh, about version
4, and then 5, and then 6, and then 7 when I stopped because they started
to pull shenanigans at version 7 with connecting to the Internet. I have a
copy of 7 but I never use it as Acrobat is like ES File Explorer, in that
it gets worse with every newer version in terms of shenanigans it tries to
pull.

Mostly I use it for the control+shift+o option of creating a PDF containing
all the pages referenced in any particular HTML location, where, depending
on your settings, you could literally archive the entire Internet into that
single huge PDF if you're not careful with the options.

I've tried for _years_ to _replace_ that one feature of the writer with
freeware, but alas, nobody knows (last I checked) of any freeware that can
archive a web site into a comprehensive single (often large) PDF where
every click inside that PDF takes you to another page inside that PDF.

TO my knowledge, _everything_ else that the Adobe Acrobat Writer does can
be replicated with freeware, although I rarely edit PDFs anymore, and where
simply converting the PDF to a bitmap allows editing "on" the PDF.

As you know, I'm always seeking general-purpose solutions, which often
(almost always actually) need to involve freeware tools, but I did test an
older version of Adobe Photoshop on the multiple-page PDF, where Photoshop
asks to "import" each page individually (which is actually a nice feature),
and then you can use any of scores of fonts to "annotate" the PDF.

There was no "save to PDF" option though, nor an "export to PDF" that I
could see, but you can always "print to PDF" the final results, which
accomplishes the desired task, if not directly with a "save" or "export".

> You were on the right track, but then made a wrong turn. In that panel
> where you found "Edit PDF", click "Comments" right below it. This adds
> the Comment toolbar above the document panel.

Hi Keith,
Thanks for that clarification, which will help others. I will re-install
that POS Adobe Acrobat Reader from a saved copy of the downloaded stub
(where I prefer to archive the full installers instead).

I already tried a "similar" feature with Adobe Acrobat 6, but I'll test out
the DC 10 similar feature just to be sure that it's a viable option.

The key question is what fonts are available to this Adobe Reader DC text
editing capability, where the need is for a selectable set of fonts,
perhaps a few dozen or so, which are what we already have in the current
solution.

If there is no choice of fonts, as is the case (as I recall) with the
Acrobat Writer that I have installed, then it's useless for the stated
purpose.

> This method would be a bit cumbersome if you were actually editing the
> form instead of filling out the form. From the discussion, I felt the
> OP intention was to add response to the question on a form, not edit
> information contained in the form structure and text itself.

Yes. The "form" is merely a bunch of questions with answers put on lines,
where the lines would remain just as if we hand typed on a typewriter onto
the form and hand signed it at the bottom.

As always, I want to stress that I easily solved the problem with freeware;
but I'm simply looking for a simpler solution than to edit the PDF in an
image editor such as Photoshop or Paint.NET.

It would be nice, for example, if the venerable Irfanview would do the job,
but the text editing in Irfanview is far too rudimentary to be of any
practical value (as was the Adobe Acrobat Writer 6, which didn't have any
font selection.

> My wife enters a lot of art shows and there is always a forms to fill
> out. This is the method we use to fill out those forms. I have even
> used it to complete legal and bank forms. For an image form you may
> have to do some image processing steps to get the lines in the form square.

Irfanview has a wonderful "F12" paint-dialog option to straighten out an
image, where if the margins are monochromatic, Irfanview does a pretty good
job straightening out a crooked (usually scanned) PDF.

[Keith Nuttle]

On 5/2/2019 1:48 PM, Arlen G. Holder wrote:
> The key question is what fonts are available to this Adobe Reader DC text
> editing capability, where the need is for a selectable set of fonts,
> perhaps a few dozen or so, which are what we already have in the current
> solution.

I may have mis-counted but there may be as many as 200 different fonts
in the Free Adobe Reader DC when used as I described with 10 different
font sizes.

Again I did not count them but there is more fonts in Adobe Reader than
in Word Perfect. Its been years since I used MS Word so can not comment.

[Joe Beanfish]

On Thu, 02 May 2019 06:48:10 +0000, Arlen G. Holder wrote:

> On Wed, 1 May 2019 16:35:49 -0400, Keith Nuttle wrote:
>
>> See my comments, ANY form, whether image based or text base, can be
>> filled out using the current Adobe PDF Reader DC which is FREE. It is
>> also designed so that you can add a signature to that document. Caveat
>> is that you must scan your signature and added to the Adobe Reader.
>
> Hi Keith,
>
> Thanks for that admonishment, where are different kinds of PDFs, e.g.,
> o A PDF of "something" (anything), which can be a bitmap for all we know
> o A PDF of pure text of some format (which is the easiest to deal with)
> o A PDF in a specific editable "form" format, which is a special beast
>
> To be clear, we're talking about the 1st item above; not the latter two.
>

For the first 2 types, here's a method that, while not slick, works:

Open the pdf with gimp.
Import with at least 200 or 300 dpi.
Each page will be a layer, so be sure to choose the correct layer(s)
to edit. (getting the hang of layers might take a couple minutes)
Export the finished product as "mng" (multi-part png).
Use ImageMagick's "convert" command to turn it into a multi-page
pdf again:
convert somefile.mng somefile.pdf

[Carlos E. R.]

It is not a matter of the PDF file being modern or old, AW it is simply
not designed for what Arlen wants.

I worked with it or similar version around year 2000, and that is what
it did back then. It is not a PDF creation tool, but a modification
tool. Correct a spelling error, for instance. Maybe it added
certificates and other things I have forgotten.
There was another Adobe program in the suite that would do other things.
Distiller?

The idea of PDF is creating a source document that produces a PDF.
Similar to compiling a program. Say, create the document in Office or
Libre Office or whatever, then render the PDF.

What he needs first is a tool that creates the right source document. A
tool designed to create brochures, for instance. There are some
expensive suites out there, name forgotten by me. Corel?

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

[Arlen G. Holder]

On Sat, 4 May 2019 00:06:33 +0200, Carlos E. R. wrote:

> It is not a matter of the PDF file being modern or old, AW it is simply
> not designed for what Arlen wants.

Hi Carlos,

Thanks for that correct response to nospam's imaginary belief system, where
you'll note that of all nospam's posts in this (and most) threads...
o He has absolutely no intention on ever being purposefully helpful, and,
o He's so wrong so many times that a brainless coin toss is more accurate.


Given the fact that nospam's credibility is worthless, I decided to ignore
the incessant ignorant bullshit from nospam, who didn't even comprehend
what you did, which is that the file was read just fine, so there's no
problem with the "age" of the Adobe Acrobat Writer, but simply it wasn't
designed to make only very minor changes to PDFs.

I should have done the same in ingoring the other well-known worthless
posters who almost never can add any value to the Potluck Picnic that is
Usenet (such as Dan Purgert), so as to concentrate on finishing up the
tests that Keith Nuttle so kindly suggested.

> I worked with it or similar version around year 2000, and that is what
> it did back then. It is not a PDF creation tool, but a modification
> tool. Correct a spelling error, for instance. Maybe it added
> certificates and other things I have forgotten.

The main reason I had the writer was not to edit documents, but to create
fantastic self-containd fully-clickable PDF archives of entire web sites,
any desired level deep, simply by pressing the ingrained muscle-memory
control+shift+o sequence.

In addition, at the time, the Adobe writer had the only easily set up
automatic conversion of PostScript files to PDF files on sight.

> There was another Adobe program in the suite that would do other things.
> Distiller?

Yup. The Adobe Acrobat Distiller was a nice tool, where I had set up common
Columbia AppleTalk/Samba Windows/SunOS/Mac directories for years (SunOS and
Solaris moving to Linux over time) where the users needed to simply put a
PostScript file into that common directory (which was always hosted on the
UNIX side because it worked best with the two PC platforms), and that file
was automatically converted from PostScript to PDF.

Nowadays, we have almost no need for PostScript, as far as I can tell, but
it was more necessary on the olden days.

> The idea of PDF is creating a source document that produces a PDF.
> Similar to compiling a program. Say, create the document in Office or
> Libre Office or whatever, then render the PDF.

I dug up my _old_ list of freeware tools to operate on PDFs, where it's
interesting that, as you noted, Libre Office has its place in that old list
when it came to PDF privacy!

[x]Fast PDF reader: (Sumatra PDF)
[x]Archive sites (wkhtmltopdf, Acrobat Pro payware)
[x]Add pages (pdftk)
[x]Remove pages (pdfsam, pdftk)
[x]Rotate pages (Acrobat Reader)
[x]Renumber pages (Acrobat Reader)
[x]Remove restrictions (Ghostscript/Ghostview)
[x]Merge PDFs (pdfsam, pdftk)
[x]Extract images (PDF Exchange Viewer)
[x]Edit PDF existing text ()
[x]Edit PDF new text ()
[x]*Print sans username in the properties (Libre Office Writer)*
[_]Print book format PDF (FinePrint payware)
[x]Tile PDFs (i.e., to print large posters) (Posterazor)

>
> What he needs first is a tool that creates the right source document. A
> tool designed to create brochures, for instance. There are some
> expensive suites out there, name forgotten by me. Corel?

I have Corel Draw, somewhere, but I am not the one creating these PDFs
which, for all we know, can be bitmaps anyway, where any editing tool can
be used to modify them as long as the edits are relatively minor (e.g., you
can't add text which will then shift the page count up).

I've bitten the bullet and re-installed that horrid piece of crap Adobe
Acrobat Reader DC, and will provide a report for Keith Nuttle who has
always been very helpful on these PDF editing questions over the years.

[nospam]

In article <gj3sba...@mid.individual.net>, Carlos E. R.

<robin_...@es.invalid> wrote:

> >>> It the edits were basically text changes you could have done it with the
> >>> add Text function, of Adobe Reader. Click Comments, and select the
> >>> Capital T in the tool bar. Place the cursor where you wanted to change
> >>> the text, adjust the font size and color, and type in the change.
> >>
> >> While I didn't try the Adobe Reader, I have the Adobe Writer (aka Acrobat),
> >> version 6, which can rudimentarily edit existing text, but it has nowhere
> >> near even the most basic of required functionality, e.g., selectable
> >> resizable fonts, and it didn't seem to _add_ text (it would only edit
> >> existing test in my quick test before abandoning that approach).
> >
> > version 6 is over 15 years old, so it should not be any surprise that
> > it doesn't work correctly with a modern pdf.
>
> It is not a matter of the PDF file being modern or old,

yes it does, since there are a lot of changes with pdf in the past 15
years, which will cause a 15 year old app to not properly read a more
recent pdf, let alone modify it.

> AW it is simply
> not designed for what Arlen wants.

not true.

[Arlen G. Holder]

On Thu, 2 May 2019 17:08:43 -0400, Keith Nuttle wrote:

> there is more fonts in Adobe Reader than
> in Word Perfect.

Hi Keith Nuttle,

*YOU UNMDERSTOOD & PROPOSED A SOLUTION THAT _SOLVED_ THE STATED PROBLEM!*

First, I wish to thank you for your purposefully helpful suggestions!
o You helped everyone because Usenet is a potluck picnic of tasty ideas
o We each bring the value we can for the benefit of the whole community

Thanks for your purposefully helpful corrections and clarifications, where
I should note that I was already very familiar with the payware Adobe
Acrobat's so-called "Advanced Editing" "Touch-Up Text Tool" features (at
least up to version 7, which is the last version that I had purchased),
where I show those older menus in this screenshot below of a typical
graduate school application form which is my testcase:
<https://i.postimg.cc/s23jZRTJ/pdfedit02.jpg>

I'm experienced with that Adobe Acrobat Writer "Advanced Editing" tool,
where I can easily make small edits within the existing text, but anything
that extends past the original line generally screws up almost everything
else, as you can see from this subsequent screenthot taken after making
small spurious edits to the original instructions with the Adobe Acrobat
writer changing the existing test instructions (as a test case only).
<https://i.postimg.cc/J4vVLWwh/pdfedit03.jpg>

To delve a bit deeper into the limitations of that "Advanced Editing" tool,
if you're extremely judicious with that "Touch Up Text Tool", and, if
you're lucky with line ends and form boxes, you can make small changes to a
document that aren't noticeable, but the moment you extend past the edge of
a text box, you're generally doomed, as it easily screws up the formatting:
<https://i.postimg.cc/c4SZgS95/pdfedit04.jpg>

However, as you correctly noted, the intent here was not to change the
form's instructions, but to literally fill out the form as you would fill
it out by hand.

I had never thought of using the "Comment" section to add those fields
though, as I think of comments as a sidebar of sorts, when reviewing
documents.

In fact, you may notice that this older Acrobat payware also has had the
"Commenting" & "Advanced Commenting" features all along (this is version 6
of the writer), but where the so-called "Advanced Commenting" feature
appears to completely lack the ability to change the fonts (AFAICT).
<https://i.postimg.cc/cHf3hWQ5/pdfedit05.jpg>

Hence, I simply "assumed" that the newer "reader" would also lack the
ability to change fonts - but that would be wrong! :)

To test whether the latest Adobe Acrobat DC (reader) has a font selection,
here's what I did after re-installing the (unfortunately badly written)
Adobe Acrobat Reader DC software on Windows 10 just now:
o I double clicked the multi-page document (which is to be filled out)
o It opened in the latest Adobe Acrobat Reader DC version 2019.010.20099
o In the right panel is a blue Convert button & yellow "Comment" below
<https://i.postimg.cc/rmgfj5GH/pdfedit06.jpg>
o As you noted, this step adds the "Comments Toolbar" above the document
<https://i.postimg.cc/8kmJCNNt/pdfedit07.jpg>
o And, as you noted, that enables a desired font for text form completion!
<https://i.postimg.cc/mDQvsdx6/pdfedit08.jpg>

Woo hoo! You solved the problem for this particular graduate student, where
the student asked me to fill out the form, knowing that nothing stops me
from editing any PDF (even PDFs that have encryption locks on them).

While I can't stand the badly written installer for that Adobe Acrobat
Reader DC freeware, most people aren't as incensed as I am when an
installer doesn't even ask where it should go - which makes your suggestion
PERFECT for me to explain to this graduate student how to annotate any PDF
in the future!

In short, your suggestion worked PERFECTLY for the stated goal of a general
purpose freeware solution to electronically fill in fields of PDF files
which were designed to be filled in by hand.

Thank you for ADDING VALUE to the Potluck Picnic that is Usenet!
o Your suggestion benefits EVERYONE with this question, now & in the future!

[Arlen G. Holder]

On Wed, 1 May 2019 07:17:16 -0000 (UTC), Arlen G. Holder wrote:

> Is there a simpler freeware multi-page PDF-form-editing method for Windows?

SOLVED:
o Name: AcroRdrDC1901020099_en_US.exe
o Size: 163773488 bytes (156 MiB)
o SHA256: 178EA741121977D3A73D9AC916CB86FF20847FCDF0C93505303FBDB0EAB4CE81
<https://i.postimg.cc/mDQvsdx6/pdfedit08.jpg>

Thanks to the purposefully helpful advice brought to the potluck picnic
that is Usenet, particularly by Keith Nuttle (where others pitched in), we
have a working general solution which is described in detail over here:
<https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.text.pdf/PFL16-iOxEo/_Ww0iRxDDAAJ>

The main problem with that general purpose solution is that the default
Adobe Acrobat Reader DC web installer is about as sophomorically written as
an installer can be, in that it suffers from two nearly fatal flaws:
o It doesn't even ask where it should be installed, and,
o It wipes itself out as it's just a stub that doesn't archive well.

The latter issue is a problem in the same way that you store your tools
differently in your garage than your neighbor, and your wife stores her
utensils in different drawers than her neighbor - even as you all have the
same (or similar) tools & utensils.

Where you store your tools and how you store them...
o Should be completely up to you

And this _is_ up to you, for 99.9% of all the installers out there.
o Unfortunately, the Adobe web installer is in that 1/10th of 1 percent.

To resolve the latter issue, the full offline installer appears to be here:
<http://get.adobe.com/reader/enterprise/?scid=social46788336>

For example, for US English on Windows 10, the full installer is here:
<http://ardownload.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader/win/AcrobatDC/1901020099/AcroRdrDC1901020099_en_US.exe>

Personally, I save offline installers to a mirrored hierarchy:
C:\archive\editor\pspdf\acroread\AcroRdrDC1901020099_en_US.exe
Where I would then install that program into its app mirror:
C:\app\editor\pspdf\acroread\AcroRd32.exe
And where the WinXP-style accordion menus on Win10 point to the mirror:
menu > app > editor > pspdf > acroread.lnk

After saving this full offline installer, running it solves the second
problem, in that the full offline installer _asks_ where to be installed.
<https://i.postimg.cc/pXpCtB6B/pdfedit09.jpg>

The default installation is the idiotically organized

C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat Reader DC\

Where you can now install in a logical mirror hierarchy to everything else:
C:\app\editor\pspdf\acroread\AcroRd32.exe

In summary, if you want to have a general solution allowing a full
selection of fonts, sizes, and emphasis when electronically filling out
PDFs that are intended to be manually printed & filled out by hand & then
rescanned back to digital format, you can employ Keith Nuttle's suggestion
of the Adobe Acrobat Reader DC product, where I strongly suggest you eschew
the online web installer stub in favor of the full offline installer.
o Better way to edit PDF forms with any desired font using freeware?
<https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.text.pdf/PFL16-iOxEo>

--
NOTE: The point is that _you_ choose the logical hierarchy; not others.

[Keith Nuttle]

I am glad to help. I do a lot of research for genealogy purposes, and
use most of the ways Adobe provides to add "comments" to document
images, as I said we also use it to add reposes to forms.

[Keith Nuttle]

An additional comment about adding responses to from. Even if you save
the original PDF document, the response remains as a comments and can be
deleted.

Once I have added all of the responses, and if the form is to become
official, to state, business, etc. I always print the completed from to
a PDF Writer. Once the completed form is printed to a PDF Writer, the
Responses become a permanent part of the PDF document.

For a document with responses, the is usually a blank for your
signature. I use the Fill & Sign option several lines below the Yellow
Comments. When you click the Fill&Sign, another toolbar comes up. On
the right there is a pen Icon with Sign. You can scan you signature,
add it to the Adobe Reader, and then add it to your document with the
responses, where it asked for the signature.


When I said add comments to documents found during your research I was
talking about source and citation for the document

[Arlen G. Holder]

On Sat, 4 May 2019 07:13:42 -0400, Keith Nuttle wrote:

> Even if you save
> the original PDF document, the response remains as a comments and can be
> deleted.

Hi Keith,

Thank you again for bringing tasty items of value to the Usenet Potluck.
o I hadn't realized the comments were saved separately until now

Knowing this has value because we can take advantage of the re-use
o And knowing this means we need to be sure to "embed" them as you do

One additional question I have, that I only thought of while responding to
Carlos' suggestion that we're, essentially, abusing the PDF (my words, not
his), is how do we KNOW, for sure, whether the original PDF is an
electronic form (intended to be filled out electronically), or if it's a
"dumb" form, intended to be printed, hand annotated, re-scanned, and then
sent?

Do you (or anyone who reads this), know if there is an unambiguous way to
tell, no matter what PDF reader software we use (e.g., I often use
non-Adobe products to read PDFs), the difference between:
o An "electronic form" intended to be filled out electronically, versus
o The "dumb" form, intended to be printed, hand annotated, & re-scanned?

Do "electronic form PDFs", have a unique generally available "property"
(i.e., available to all PDF readers) that we can easily ascertain?

[Keith Nuttle]

My guess it that it does not make any difference if the original
document was intended to be a form or not. Using the "Comment" as I
described a Comment can be embedded with any document,text or image
based (Like that word "embedded" in this usage, but did think of that
word in my original response)

I think this was an outgrowth of Adobe's attempt to make the PDF format,
a document that can be passed around for Collaboration. ie to be used
with the Redact, Send for review, etc, functions. The similar functions
could be used for the online approval of documents in a regulated
environment, ie FDA, ISO, Legal, etc The PDF format would be Word
Processor independent, so any one with the Adobe Reader DC could be
included in the review.

[Carlos E. R.]

That is a terrible idea. Documents used online should not require use of
a specific software. Specially if they come from the administration.

And of course, the PDF is not a format designed to be edited in the way
of a word processor. For that, use a real word processor and a format
designed for word processing.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

[Arlen G. Holder]

On Sat, 4 May 2019 16:35:16 -0400, Keith Nuttle wrote:

> My guess it that it does not make any difference if the original
> document was intended to be a form or not.

Hi Keith,

I agree with you that the PDF is whatever you want it to be, unlike those
who are limited in what they can do who seem to claim that a PDF is only
what the originator wants it to be.

For example, I've stripped off restrictive permissions in PDFs so many
times that I can't count them, although I haven't had to do that for quite
some time now.

In stark contrast to those who advocate the Apple-user-like attitude of
"just give up", I've never failed to edit a PDF in a way that I wanted to
edit it, although I've often had to resort to a variety of tools to do so.

I most often convert PDFs to MS Office documents, where even MS Word can
"edit" a PDF <https://www.jotform.com/edit-pdf/>, but as you know, that
isn't always a single-step operation, where I don't spend a lot of time on
that unless I really need to edit the document a lot.

For annotations, such as filling out forms, almost any software works (as
we've shown in this thread). Here's a list of PDF editors, for example:
o ApowerPDF
o FormSwift
o Sejda
o InkScape
o PDF-XChange Editor
o PDF Viewer Plus
o Xodo
o Nitro PDF Reader (they say it edits)
o Foxit Reader (they say it edits)
o Acrobat Reader (it edits too)
etc.
<https://www.jotform.com/edit-pdf/>

I can't think of a single thing that Adobe Acrobat Writer (or Reader) does
that can't be done with freeware, even down to the creation of a web site
PDF.

Of course, there are plenty of payware PDF editors out there, for example:
o Wondershare PDFelement
"Completely Edit PDF, Anyway You Want"
<https://pdf.wondershare.net/ad/pdf-editor/form-bing.html>

The main unanswered question is how to tell if a PDF is an electronic form,
or just a dumb PDF using _any_ software (such as Irfanview, for example) to
read it.

Certainly there is a way, as described by that Wondershare tool:
"The program will automatically detect whether the form is
interactive or not. If it is, a "Highlight Fields" bar will
appear, which indicates that there are fields you can edit
and fill in."
<https://pdf.wondershare.com/how-to/edit-pdf-form.html>

Apparently Adobe calls these differences:
o Interactive fillable forms, versus
o Flat forms
<https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/filling-pdf-forms.html>

Given that the underlying format of a PDF is open to the user, I'm sure
there's an easy way to determine, with a non-Adobe tool, whether the PDF is
a "flat" or "interactive" form, where I'm not that curious as to look it up
at this time - but where if I ever need it, I won't go the typical
Apple-user route of "just give up". :)

[nospam]

In article <qal5l5$8e2$1...@news.mixmin.net>, Arlen G. Holder

<arling...@nospam.net> wrote:

> I most often convert PDFs to MS Office documents, where even MS Word can
> "edit" a PDF

converting a pdf to a different format is *not* 'editing a pdf'.

[Carlos E. R.]

Agree.

Arguably, a PDF is impossible to edit. It is "decompiled", then edited,
then another PDF is created.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

[Arlen G. Holder]

On Sun, 5 May 2019 02:48:20 +0200, Carlos E. R. wrote:

> The fact remains, Adobe Reader is the canonical tool to open a PDF. Any
> other tool may or may not cope, but if it doesn't another tool might -
> thus better save time and try directly with adobe Reader.

Hi Carlos,

As an adult, I always agree with reasonable logic, where I agree with you
that the Adobe Acrobat Reader DC suggestion by Keith Nuttle worked for the
stated purpose, as long as we know to use the "comments" toolbar and as
long as we know to preserve the comments (if desired) after they are
inserted.

Even though I've since deleted the product from my system, as a general
purpose solution for annotating "flat" PDF forms, it works as well as Keith
said it would, even down to the choice of almost any font & emphasis
imaginable.

Where the Adobe Acrobat Reader will fail is in edits to the existing text,
for which I have the Adobe Acrobat program (often termed the "writer"),
albeit an older version.

Another place the Adobe Acrobat Reader will fail will be in removing the
encryption or copy/print protections, which, again, requires a non Adobe
product to perform.

I admit it has been a long time since I've bothered to remove encryption
where this old tutorial popped up in a quick search of comp.text.pdf:
o DIY for freeware to remove the 128-bit encrypted user password in a PDF file
<https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.text.pdf/6RgLQwgKP7o/mQ2nMKpsdv4J>

I'd have to check if the Adobe Acrobat Reader DC does these things, where
this is an _old_ checklist that I found in my software archives of the
dozen main things I have needed to do with a PDF file over time, where I've
slightly modified the checklist, but I didn't check it for total accuracy.

Tasks commonly performed on PDFs:

[x]Fast PDF reader: (Sumatra PDF)

[x]Archive entire web sites (wkhtmltopdf, Acrobat Writer)

[x]Add pages (pdftk)
[x]Remove pages (pdfsam, pdftk)
[x]Rotate pages (Acrobat Reader)
[x]Renumber pages (Acrobat Reader)
[x]Remove restrictions (Ghostscript/Ghostview)
[x]Merge PDFs (pdfsam, pdftk)
[x]Extract images (PDF Exchange Viewer)

[x]Edit PDF existing text (Acrobat Writer)
[x]Fill out flat forms (Acrobat Reader)
[x]Save PDF sans username in the properties (Libre Office Writer)

[_]Print book format PDF (FinePrint payware)

[x]Tile PDFs of larger size than your printer can print (Posterazor)

What other tasks do people commonly perform when editing PDFs?

[Arlen G. Holder]

On Sun, 5 May 2019 02:50:17 +0200, Carlos E. R. wrote:

> Arguably, a PDF is impossible to edit. It is "decompiled", then edited,
> then another PDF is created.

Hi Carlos,

Point to a PDF on the net that you think I can't edit.
o Name just one

[Paul]

A PDF can be edited. (.pdf in, .pdf out).

There just aren't a lot of tools that would do
a good job.

I had a Postscript editor, on the Mac. Cost around
$200, only one version was ever made (company went out
of business). It's main claim to fame, was you could
"group" objects together, in a sense making layers,
and change their Z-axis priority to make them visible
or hide them behind other groups. The ability to group,
was essential for larger projects. You could drop in new
primitives if you wanted. But it lacked the full feature
set of Adobe Illustrator. There wasn't "spline curve text strings".

Illustrator is probably closest to high technical finesse,
but then there's the question of what the input and output
types are. I don't know if Illustrator has been consistent
over the years or not.

http://www.thegraphicmac.com/illustrator-file-formats-explained/

Save as .ai, .eps, .pdf, .svg

.ai = "The data contained in the file is based on PDF,
but it isn’t a format that Acrobat can read correctly."

A list with fewer details is here.

https://helpx.adobe.com/ca/illustrator/kb/supported-file-formats-illustrator.html

An editor is not "a tool that changes a few letters in an
existing sentence". That's an insult. You can do just about
anything with Illustrator.

There's CorelDraw, but after buying a copy and having it
crash in the first ten minutes, I would never trust them
again with one thin dime of mine.

http://apps.corel.com/partners_developers/casb/serviceb/puttogether/idesign/fileformats.htm

Whatever LibreOffice does to PDFs, is not... anything.
Defies description in polite company. It makes CorelDraw
look positively heroic.

Portable Document Format and PostScript are computer
languages. You can write programs in them. An editor then,
is an "impossibility". If the editor recognizes a pattern,
it may treat a chunk of code as an "object". It's my guess,
if you put your mind to it, you could leave the editor
quite confused, or you could create objects for which no
simple editor operations are practical. (Like, say you
created a document consisting of "a million dots" sitting
in space, and the boss asked you to "change those two lines
of text there". Well, you couldn't, and keep within the
confines of the original concept of the document. The text
added that way, simply wouldn't look the same as the rest
of the document, so the edit would be a failure.)

An editor in such a situation, is only practical if the
original object follows some conventions.

For example, "if you think you're an editor, edit this".
Illustrator would likely work. The first file, was written
as if you were writing a computer program (you can open the
first file in a text editor, and learn how to write in
PostScript). I don't know if the second document is merely
a distilled version, or the author sat down and wrote the
same code using PDF constructs. But there are sufficient
curves in here, to keep "bozo" editors out of the running.

http://ecee.colorado.edu/~kuester/smith/smith.ps

http://ecee.colorado.edu/~kuester/smith/smith.pdf

I'd open the second document in LibreOffice, but I've
got better things to do.

Paul

[Arlen G. Holder]

On Sun, 05 May 2019 04:10:59 -0400, Paul wrote:

> But there are sufficient
> curves in here, to keep "bozo" editors out of the running.
> http://ecee.colorado.edu/~kuester/smith/smith.ps
> http://ecee.colorado.edu/~kuester/smith/smith.pdf

Hi Paul,
You're not kidding that a Smith Chart PDF document had "curves".

I read in that PDF, sheared it to 15 degrees in both the X & Y direction,
and wrote out the resultant PDF file and uploaded it here for review:
<http://s000.tinyupload.com/?file_id=19854826114495782092>

Here's a screenshot of the 15 degree skewed results for your edification.
<https://i.postimg.cc/XY3mdZS4/pdfedit10.jpg>

I do agree with you that both PS and PDF are just "programs" though.

[Paul]

The original smith.pdf is 93KB, and if you zoom into it,
the curves are smooth all the way to 6400% magnification.

Your file is a bitmap, because I can see jaggies when I zoom in.

In principle, you can do certain types of matrix operations
that would preserve the "SVG" nature of the original document.
You can translate, rotate, scale with a matrix. Shear, I
don't know right off hand how I'd do that, and preserve
the vector nature of the source. But at least, PostScript
and PDF should have some matrix operations you could
experiment with.

This isn't exactly what you've done. Yours is better
looking than this one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shear_mapping

Paul

[Carlos E. R.]

On 05/05/2019 03.27, Arlen G. Holder wrote:
> On Sun, 5 May 2019 02:48:20 +0200, Carlos E. R. wrote:
>
>> The fact remains, Adobe Reader is the canonical tool to open a PDF. Any
>> other tool may or may not cope, but if it doesn't another tool might -
>> thus better save time and try directly with adobe Reader.
>
> Hi Carlos,
>
> As an adult, I always agree with reasonable logic, where I agree with you
> that the Adobe Acrobat Reader DC suggestion by Keith Nuttle worked for the
> stated purpose, as long as we know to use the "comments" toolbar and as
> long as we know to preserve the comments (if desired) after they are
> inserted.
>
> Even though I've since deleted the product from my system, as a general
> purpose solution for annotating "flat" PDF forms, it works as well as Keith
> said it would, even down to the choice of almost any font & emphasis
> imaginable.
>
> Where the Adobe Acrobat Reader will fail is in edits to the existing text,
> for which I have the Adobe Acrobat program (often termed the "writer"),
> albeit an older version.

This is not a fail: it is intentional. If you want to edit the text with
adobe products, you have to pay.

> Another place the Adobe Acrobat Reader will fail will be in removing the
> encryption or copy/print protections, which, again, requires a non Adobe
> product to perform.

Again, this is not a failure, it is intentional.

> I admit it has been a long time since I've bothered to remove encryption
> where this old tutorial popped up in a quick search of comp.text.pdf:
> o DIY for freeware to remove the 128-bit encrypted user password in a PDF file
> <https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.text.pdf/6RgLQwgKP7o/mQ2nMKpsdv4J>

128 bits is old.

> I'd have to check if the Adobe Acrobat Reader DC does these things, where
> this is an _old_ checklist that I found in my software archives of the
> dozen main things I have needed to do with a PDF file over time, where I've
> slightly modified the checklist, but I didn't check it for total accuracy.
>
> Tasks commonly performed on PDFs:
> [x]Fast PDF reader: (Sumatra PDF)
> [x]Archive entire web sites (wkhtmltopdf, Acrobat Writer)
> [x]Add pages (pdftk)
> [x]Remove pages (pdfsam, pdftk)
> [x]Rotate pages (Acrobat Reader)
> [x]Renumber pages (Acrobat Reader)
> [x]Remove restrictions (Ghostscript/Ghostview)
> [x]Merge PDFs (pdfsam, pdftk)
> [x]Extract images (PDF Exchange Viewer)
> [x]Edit PDF existing text (Acrobat Writer)
> [x]Fill out flat forms (Acrobat Reader)
> [x]Save PDF sans username in the properties (Libre Office Writer)
> [_]Print book format PDF (FinePrint payware)
> [x]Tile PDFs of larger size than your printer can print (Posterazor)
>
> What other tasks do people commonly perform when editing PDFs?

Editing PDFs is not something you are supposed to do. And don't get
started that you do it all the time. Of course we do. That's not the point.

If you have to edit a PDF, there is a failure somewhere.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

[Carlos E. R.]

Not the point. Not what I said. The program "emulates" edition so that
you /think/ you are editing it. It is not an editor in the sense MS Word
is.

Similarly, you can not edit a jpg. Now think it over and try to find out
why I say that, when every body knows they can edit photos and do it
every day. It is not obvious, but you are clever enough to find out. ;-)


But yes, there are PDFs that /you/ can not edit. You'd see the text
"word". But the 'w' is put there separate from the 'o' and 'r' and the
'd' so that the "word" can not be even selected. The file is
intentionally obfuscated. I don't have a sample handy.


--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

[Carlos E. R.]

On 05/05/2019 10.10, Paul wrote:
> Carlos E. R. wrote:
>> On 05/05/2019 01.49, nospam wrote:
>>> In article <qal5l5$8e2$1...@news.mixmin.net>, Arlen G. Holder
>>> <arling...@nospam.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I most often convert PDFs to MS Office documents, where even MS Word
>>>> can
>>>> "edit" a PDF
>>> converting a pdf to a different format is *not* 'editing a pdf'.
>>>
>>
>> Agree.
>>
>> Arguably, a PDF is impossible to edit. It is "decompiled", then edited,
>> then another PDF is created.
>>
>
> A PDF can be edited. (.pdf in, .pdf out).

sort of :-)

Quite.

>
> Portable Document Format and PostScript are computer
> languages. You can write programs in them. An editor then,
> is an "impossibility". If the editor recognizes a pattern,
> it may treat a chunk of code as an "object". It's my guess,
> if you put your mind to it, you could leave the editor
> quite confused, or you could create objects for which no
> simple editor operations are practical. (Like, say you
> created a document consisting of "a million dots" sitting
> in space, and the boss asked you to "change those two lines
> of text there". Well, you couldn't, and keep within the
> confines of the original concept of the document. The text
> added that way, simply wouldn't look the same as the rest
> of the document, so the edit would be a failure.)
>
> An editor in such a situation, is only practical if the
> original object follows some conventions.

Yes.

>
> For example, "if you think you're an editor, edit this".
> Illustrator would likely work. The first file, was written
> as if you were writing a computer program (you can open the
> first file in a text editor, and learn how to write in
> PostScript). I don't know if the second document is merely
> a distilled version, or the author sat down and wrote the
> same code using PDF constructs. But there are sufficient
> curves in here, to keep "bozo" editors out of the running.
>
> http://ecee.colorado.edu/~kuester/smith/smith.ps
>
> http://ecee.colorado.edu/~kuester/smith/smith.pdf

Wow! I wanted that thing when I was in college. The copies we got were ugly.

> I'd open the second document in LibreOffice, but I've
> got better things to do.

:-D


--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

[Carlos E. R.]

On 05/05/2019 14.15, Paul wrote:
> Arlen G. Holder wrote:
>> On Sun, 05 May 2019 04:10:59 -0400, Paul wrote:
>>
>>> But there are sufficient
>>> curves in here, to keep "bozo" editors out of the running.
>>> http://ecee.colorado.edu/~kuester/smith/smith.ps
>>> http://ecee.colorado.edu/~kuester/smith/smith.pdf
>>
>> Hi Paul,
>> You're not kidding that a Smith Chart PDF document had "curves".
>>
>> I read in that PDF, sheared it to 15 degrees in both the X & Y direction,
>> and wrote out the resultant PDF file and uploaded it here for review:
>> <http://s000.tinyupload.com/?file_id=19854826114495782092>
>>
>> Here's a screenshot of the 15 degree skewed results for your edification.
>> <https://i.postimg.cc/XY3mdZS4/pdfedit10.jpg>
>>
>> I do agree with you that both PS and PDF are just "programs" though.
>
> The original smith.pdf is 93KB, and if you zoom into it,
> the curves are smooth all the way to 6400% magnification.
>
> Your file is a bitmap, because I can see jaggies when I zoom in.

Indeed! So, not strictly an edit.

Now, with an svg graphic file that manipulation could be done "easily".

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

[nospam]

In article <qam5qi$tiq$1...@gioia.aioe.org>, Paul <nos...@needed.invalid>
wrote:

> I had a Postscript editor, on the Mac. Cost around
> $200, only one version was ever made (company went out
> of business).

postscript is text. any text editor will work. even free ones.

[Apd]

"Carlos E. R." wrote:
> Editing PDFs is not something you are supposed to do. And don't get
> started that you do it all the time. Of course we do. That's not the point.
>
> If you have to edit a PDF, there is a failure somewhere.

Yes, like those manuals for consumer electronics etc. which are
supplied as a single multi-megabyte PDF in about 20 different
languages where every section contains paragraphs in each language.
An absolute pain, since you are continually scrolling around the
document. Being able to extract one language version is essential for
easy reading.

[Arlen G. Holder]

On Sun, 05 May 2019 08:15:21 -0400, Paul wrote:

> In principle, you can do certain types of matrix operations
> that would preserve the "SVG" nature of the original document.
> You can translate, rotate, scale with a matrix.

Hi Paul,

Thanks for looking at the results & for analyzing them.

I understand what you're saying, where the bitmap conversion may have been
a result of how I read the PDF in, or, more likely, how I saved it.

I didn't write down the steps since it was only a quick proof of concept
attempt where there weren't any rules, so it was a freeforall. Normally I
write down all the steps of a process, in a scientific manner, but this was
just proof of concept since I knew I could "change" the PDF at will.

As I recall, I first opened the smith.pdf in Microsft Word 2007, but not
everything was there, where I didn't bother to debug. I also tried the
Adobe Acrobat Reader, but it wouldn't change the text (saying it didn't
have the font), which was the change that I had originally wanted to do (I
was gonna change the title to "Paul Chart" or something like that).

In the Adobe "writer", version 6, I could select the text in the word
"Smith Chart", which were recognized as Palatino-Bold text, but the error I
got when I tried it just now again to reproduce for you was:
"All or part of the selection has no available system font. You cannot
add or delete text using the currently selected font"
<https://i.postimg.cc/QCvPjX78/pdfedit11.jpg>

Bearing in mind I mostly change text in PDFs, I don't know this for a fact,
but, I suspect if I either edited the PDF with a text editor, or if I added
the required font, that I "might" have been able to change the "Smith" to
"Paul" directly in the PDF.

Since it was just a proof of concept, I didn't bother to try to work around
that problem, and simply decided to use an image editor, where I right
clicked on the 94KB PDF to arbitrarily "open in Krita" freeeware, where the
Krita "Import" dialog asked how many pages (where I said "all pages"). The
resolution defaults to 100dpi

Then I simply hit Krita:Image > Shear Image" which asked for the
"Shear angle" for X & Y, each of which I arbitrarily set to 15 degrees.

Since that left white space at the edges, I filled it in and also increased
the canvas so that it was even at the top and bottom and then cropped.

The problem was that I couldn't _save_ as a PDF. Bummer. As I recall, I
saved ot Photoshop Image (smith.psd), and then read it into PhotoShop and
then simply saved it to "Photoshop PDF" without changing any of the default
options.

Since PS is simply a "language", I realize we could use a text editor on
the PostScript, but we'd have to know how to interpret the language, which
is best left to software, IMHO. I did look at the original smith.pdf in VIM
just now, where it's a combination of text & binary, apparently. Obviously
a hex editor would do the trick, but I think that is overstepping the
bounds of the quick test.

Vim doesn't show us the original text (which was what I was hoping to see),
but it does seem that the original PDF was created by Aladdin Ghostscript
6.01 based on what it says at line 550 almost at the end of the original
94KB smith.pdf file.

At line 410 of the original PDF is a definition of a font:
"URW Palladio L Roman"

At line 280 & 532 of the original PDF, are font descriptions of the sort:
<</Type/FontDescriptor/FontName/Symbol>>
<</Subtype/Type1/BaseFont/EKHBOO+Palatino-Bold/Type/Font/Name/R14/FontDescriptor 13 0 R/FirstChar 32/LastChar 251/
Where I "presume" that, if I knew the syntax, I could change that to a
system font that I have on my system.

At line 391 & 508 is another apparent font "Palatino-Roman", where at lines
293 & 407 there are copyright notices, apparently related to the use of
each of those fonts.

The rest is scrambled like the Franciscan sediments, where obviously things
would have been more descriptive had I looked at the postscript file in the
vim text editor instead of the PDF file.

I'm not going to spend the time to load or change the fonts, but I suspect
that there's a chance that a focused font-based approach perhaps would have
worked.

In short, you can edit (as in "change") any PDF, with varying degrees of
success, depending on a plethora of factors, not the least of which is what
you want to change.

[Arlen G. Holder]

On Sun, 5 May 2019 15:15:56 +0200, Carlos E. R. wrote:

> Wow! I wanted that thing when I was in college. The copies we got were ugly.

We barely scraped the microwave realm in those days, many moons ago.

Just curious what color your Smith Charts were in college?

Mine were all in a specific "orange" color, for some reason unknown to me,
where, today, they seem to be in green.

[Arlen G. Holder]

On Sun, 5 May 2019 14:55:06 +0200, Carlos E. R. wrote:

> This is not a fail: it is intentional. If you want to edit the text with
> adobe products, you have to pay.

Hi Carlos,

I'm not going to argue with you simply because you're completely right, and
even the common troll 'nospam', is right in a few posts of this thread
(which is surprising for him as his factual accuracy is generally worse
than a coin toss).

However, I will say that Paul is "comprehending" the semantics, in that
we're using terms loosely such as "fail", and "edit", as in the colloquial
useage in that it "didn't do what we wanted it to do" in the case of
"fail", and that "it did what we wanted it to do" in the case of "edit".

> Again, this is not a failure, it is intentional.

All of us (even nospam) comprehend what _you_ mean by using "fail" and
"edit" in their strictest interpretation, where you're attempting to
enforce your strict interpretation, while Paul and I are simply using more
pragmatic colloquial interpretations of the terms.

edit === it did what we wanted it to do
fail === it didn't do what we wanted it to do

> 128 bits is old.

No problem with that statement, as, again, not only was that an old
tutorial from 2013, as I recall, but also, I can simply state that every
time I needed to remove the permissions of a PDF, I was able to remove
them, but that I haven't needed to do that in a long time (years).

> Editing PDFs is not something you are supposed to do. And don't get
> started that you do it all the time. Of course we do. That's not the point.

Hi Carlos,
Do you know about Myers-Briggs personality profiles?

Some people are highly judgmental, which kind of sort of means that they
order their lives and to a great extent, and that they wish others to order
their lives accordingly.

I'm highly perceptive, which kind of sort of means the opposite, which is
that I don't order my life, nor do I expect others to follow my rules.

Might you be highly judgmental perchance?
<http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp>

> If you have to edit a PDF, there is a failure somewhere.

We have completely different personalities, it seems, Carlos.

In my world, if I can't modify a PDF using freeware, there's a failure
somewhere. :)

[Arlen G. Holder]

On Sun, 05 May 2019 04:10:59 -0400, Paul wrote:

> http://ecee.colorado.edu/~kuester/smith/smith.ps

Hi Paul,

Woo hoo!

I was _easily_ able to edit the TEXT in Adobe Acrobat 6!
<https://i.postimg.cc/L5tTb7fX/pdfedit13.jpg>

Clearly it is too easy to start with the PostScript file, but, as a proof
of concept, I belatedly started with the PostScript instead of starting
with the PDF (which is, I agree, kind of, cheating).

In doing so, I just now opened the PostScript file in vim freeware, and did
a global search and replace in that vim freeware editor of "Smith", to
"Paul", which performed 8 substitutions on 8 lines, but where 7 of those 8
instances were in the comments section.
:%s/Smith/Paul/g

Obviously this clearly "edited" the original PS file with presumably zero
losses, so I won't bother to upload that resulting PostScript text file,
but I did "distill" the results by opening that postscript result into the
Adobe writer, version 6, which created this PDF.
<http://s000.tinyupload.com/?file_id=00576262809580134412>

Where this screenshot shows that direct "text edits" worked just fine:
<https://i.postimg.cc/52156nz5/pdfedit12.jpg>

I also globally searched & replaced "Palatino-Roman" to "Helvetica" and
every instance of "Palatino-Bold" to "Helvetica-Bold", and again, distilled
to this PDF:
<http://s000.tinyupload.com/?file_id=05794981986510346913>

The summary is that, had the original PDF not used a font which wasn't on
my system, then I would have been able to edit the text of the PDF from the
start, which is all that I had wanted to do anyway.

Once I substituted the Palatino-Roman font for something that was on my
system (i.e., Helvetica), then I _could_ directly edit the existing text,
as text, in the PDF using Adobe writer, version 6.
<https://i.postimg.cc/L5tTb7fX/pdfedit13.jpg>

The moral of the story is that if you want a PDF to be edited on any
system, try to choose fonts that you can expect to be on that system.

[Arlen G. Holder]

On Sun, 5 May 2019 17:31:55 -0000 (UTC), Arlen G. Holder wrote:

> I suspect
> that there's a chance that a focused font-based approach perhaps would have
> worked.

My suspicion that a font-based fix to the original non-portable PDF, turned
out, as far as I can tell, to be wholly correct! :)

The modified PDF was _easily_ editable _and_ with zero losses, AFAICT.
<https://i.postimg.cc/L5tTb7fX/pdfedit13.jpg>

It turned out that the only problem I had when initially attempting to edit
the PDF that Paul supplied was that my system didn't have the prescribed
"Palatino-Roman" font which was used in that PDF that Paul supplied.

*So I made my own more portable PDF from the PS that Paul supplied!*
o Without _any_ losses to quality (AFAICT).

Hence, the original PDF was simply a "bad PDF", in that it was a PDF that
wasn't as portable as it could have been, had the author been a bit more
judicious about portability. As far as I can tell, the only flaw in
portability of the original PDF was that the originator didn't think to
have the entire font set embedded, I suspect.

That simple portability "mistake" on the part of the author was all that I
needed to repair, in order to make his document even more portable (with
respect to text edits).

Hence, the original PDF that Paul unearthed was not completely portable,
where I strongly suspect had the originators simply embedded the full font
set, or, better yet, had they chosen a more portable font set, then the
initial test on the PDF would have worked as well as my tests on the more
portable PDF that I created from the original PostScript file.

In short, if you really want your PDFs to be more portable for text edits,
you should simply consider either embedding the full font sets used, or,
better yet, simply choose basic fonts that you know are to be found on most
systems.

[Paul]

There is a very nice book that describes how to program in PostScript.
It was available only in paper form (I have a copy). (The spine of the
book is easily damaged if you don't treat it with respect.) Later, it
was released as a PDF for free.

7.4MB, 912 pages, Released in 1999.

https://web.archive.org/web/20140405054348if_/http://www.adobe.com/products/postscript/pdfs/PLRM.pdf

( was http://www.adobe.com/products/postscript/pdfs/PLRM.pdf )

Paul

[Paul]

They were green.

You bought a packet of them, and never used them all.

You'd do the tuning stub lab, and that would be about it.

That's why those clever people made their own.

Paul

[Paul]

The Tailor editor allowed editing PostScript files
with your mouse.

You could do massive movements of thousands of objects
at a time. Which would take eons to do with a text editor,
doing maths on the x,y coordinates one at a time.

Yes, you can do edits with a text editor. No, it's not
practical when the document is 100MB in size. You'd
go crazy.

I edited some CAD output for exposition purposes that way.

Paul

[nospam]

In article <qanh98$llb$1...@dont-email.me>, Paul <nos...@needed.invalid>

wrote:

> >> I had a Postscript editor, on the Mac. Cost around
> >> $200, only one version was ever made (company went out
> >> of business).
> >
> > postscript is text. any text editor will work. even free ones.
>
> The Tailor editor allowed editing PostScript files
> with your mouse.
>
> You could do massive movements of thousands of objects
> at a time. Which would take eons to do with a text editor,
> doing maths on the x,y coordinates one at a time.

that rendered it, which is more than just an editor.

adobe illustrator's file format was originally postscript.

[Carlos E. R.]

On 05/05/2019 20.52, Arlen G. Holder wrote:
> On Sun, 5 May 2019 17:31:55 -0000 (UTC), Arlen G. Holder wrote:
>
>> I suspect
>> that there's a chance that a focused font-based approach perhaps would have
>> worked.
>
> My suspicion that a font-based fix to the original non-portable PDF, turned
> out, as far as I can tell, to be wholly correct! :)
>
> The modified PDF was _easily_ editable _and_ with zero losses, AFAICT.
> <https://i.postimg.cc/L5tTb7fX/pdfedit13.jpg>

The graphics have lost detail, they are pixelated.

That is not a PDF you can edit that easily. The graphics are not a
bitmap. It is a perfect PDF because the purpose is to generate a
graphics at the highest possible resolution of the printer, no matter
how high it is.

A perfect example of a non editable PDF.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

[Carlos E. R.]

On 05/05/2019 22.28, Paul wrote:
> Arlen G. Holder wrote:
>> On Sun, 5 May 2019 15:15:56 +0200, Carlos E. R. wrote:
>>
>>> Wow! I wanted that thing when I was in college. The copies we got
>>> were ugly.
>>
>> We barely scraped the microwave realm in those days, many moons ago.
>>
>> Just curious what color your Smith Charts were in college?
>>
>> Mine were all in a specific "orange" color, for some reason unknown to
>> me,
>> where, today, they seem to be in green.
>
> They were green.

Ours were photocopies, IIRC. Or you could buy the expensive "real" ones.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

[Carlos E. R.]

On 05/05/2019 20.34, Arlen G. Holder wrote:
> On Sun, 05 May 2019 04:10:59 -0400, Paul wrote:
>
>> http://ecee.colorado.edu/~kuester/smith/smith.ps
>
> Hi Paul,
>
> Woo hoo!
>
> I was _easily_ able to edit the TEXT in Adobe Acrobat 6!
> <https://i.postimg.cc/L5tTb7fX/pdfedit13.jpg>

And the graphics is pixelated.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

[Carlos E. R.]

On 05/05/2019 19.31, Arlen G. Holder wrote:
> On Sun, 05 May 2019 08:15:21 -0400, Paul wrote:


> As I recall, I first opened the smith.pdf in Microsft Word 2007, but not
> everything was there, where I didn't bother to debug. I also tried the
> Adobe Acrobat Reader, but it wouldn't change the text (saying it didn't
> have the font), which was the change that I had originally wanted to do (I
> was gonna change the title to "Paul Chart" or something like that).
>
> In the Adobe "writer", version 6, I could select the text in the word
> "Smith Chart", which were recognized as Palatino-Bold text, but the error I
> got when I tried it just now again to reproduce for you was:
> "All or part of the selection has no available system font. You cannot
> add or delete text using the currently selected font"
> <https://i.postimg.cc/QCvPjX78/pdfedit11.jpg>

Again, a proof that the format is not designed for "edit". The entire
font was not embedded, which is a normal thing to do on PDF to conserve
size.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

[Paul]

"Here, hold my beer"

https://pastebin.com/LZtUKUjG

That pastebin contains a PDF file in (mostly) text mode.

Line 43 contains a transformation matrix.

Using a text editor, paste the text into Notepad and
save as "smith_out.txt". Close Notepad. In File Explorer
change the extension to .pdf , then double click to open
in Acrobat Reader.

Line 43 without changes is

0.12 0 0 0.12 0 0 cm

That's a translation, rotation, scaling matrix, a 2x3, which
changes the "view" of the object.

I changed it to

0.12 0.12 0 0.12 0 0 cm

and you can see that some sort of transform has been
carried out on the drawing. If you zoom in, all the fonts
render smoothly, no jaggies.

To do that transformation required two runs

mutool clean -d -a smith.pdf smith_out.pdf
mutool clean -d smith.pdf smith_out2.pdf

I then opened one of the PDFs as a text file, and copied
the ASCIIHEX font streams into the other document which
still had the "binary" fonts. This gave me a hybrid
document, that I could successfully edit with Notepad
and mess around.

If you change the second 0.12 back to 0 on line 43,
that should return the PDF to its normal view.

I don't know what to make of Line 2 of the document,
as to whether there is a better representation for that
or not.

Paul

[Carlos E. R.]

As I said, a perfect example of a non editable PDF - LOL!

Now, a word document with an SVG graphics included (in a manner that
double clicking on it would open an SVG editor), that would be an
editable document.

Sure, of course, it is editable... in the same sense as an EXE file is
editable and you can change a text, even a jump... But it is not created
for that. Instead you take the source code, do the change, and recompile.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

[Chris]

Yes. They describe the content of the image in terms of lines etc. Which is
why they are scalable with no loss of resolution.

> You can write programs in them. An editor then,
> is an "impossibility".

That makes no sense. It's very easy to edit programming languages. If not
then software coding would also be an "impossibility". PDFs are no
different otherwise nothing would be able read them.

> If the editor recognizes a pattern,
> it may treat a chunk of code as an "object". It's my guess,
> if you put your mind to it, you could leave the editor
> quite confused, or you could create objects for which no
> simple editor operations are practical. (Like, say you
> created a document consisting of "a million dots" sitting
> in space, and the boss asked you to "change those two lines
> of text there". Well, you couldn't, and keep within the
> confines of the original concept of the document. The text
> added that way, simply wouldn't look the same as the rest
> of the document, so the edit would be a failure.)

And yet editors like Illustrator and inkscape manage just fine.

I'm really struggling to understand why you guys are making such a big meal
of this?apart from Arlen of course - he makes a big meal of everything! A
well produced PDF (i.e not a bitmapped scan) is relatively straight forward
to open and edit. There's no impossibility.

[Carlos E. R.]

On 06/05/2019 10.05, Chris wrote:
> Paul <nos...@needed.invalid> wrote:
>> Carlos E. R. wrote:
>>> On 05/05/2019 01.49, nospam wrote:
>>>> In article <qal5l5$8e2$1...@news.mixmin.net>, Arlen G. Holder
>>>> <arling...@nospam.net> wrote:

...

>> You can write programs in them. An editor then,
>> is an "impossibility".
>
> That makes no sense. It's very easy to edit programming languages. If not
> then software coding would also be an "impossibility". PDFs are no
> different otherwise nothing would be able read them.

We edit the source code of the program, not the resulting code. The PDF
is the resulting code, and it is harder to edit than the source code.

...

> I'm really struggling to understand why you guys are making such a big meal
> of this?apart from Arlen of course - he makes a big meal of everything! A
> well produced PDF (i.e not a bitmapped scan) is relatively straight forward
> to open and edit. There's no impossibility.
>

We must be bored :-)

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

[Paul]

The left-hand column of this page contains
the code to write "Hello World" on a PDF page.

https://brendanzagaeski.appspot.com/0004.html

I can easily edit the "Hello World" part.
I can add the equivalent of a MoveTo, then
emit another string, and so on.

And that would be editing.

For her font, she selected /Times-Roman, and
for once, it's not embedded/subset :-)

There's no guarantee this will survive transmission
over USENET (line 2 is problematic), but anyway, this
is to show the simplicity of PDF once the binary,
stream, compression obfuscations are removed.

*******

%PDF-1.1
%¥±ë

1 0 obj
<< /Type /Catalog
/Pages 2 0 R
>>
endobj

2 0 obj
<< /Type /Pages
/Kids [3 0 R]
/Count 1
/MediaBox [0 0 300 144]
>>
endobj

3 0 obj
<< /Type /Page
/Parent 2 0 R
/Resources
<< /Font
<< /F1
<< /Type /Font
/Subtype /Type1
/BaseFont /Times-Roman
>>
>>
>>
/Contents 4 0 R
>>
endobj

4 0 obj
<< /Length 55 >>
stream
BT
/F1 18 Tf
0 0 Td
(Hello World) Tj
ET
endstream
endobj

xref
0 5
0000000000 65535 f
0000000018 00000 n
0000000077 00000 n
0000000178 00000 n
0000000457 00000 n
trailer
<< /Root 1 0 R
/Size 5
>>
startxref
565
%%EOF

*******

Paul

[Chris]

Nice example!

[Dan Purgert]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Chris wrote:
> Paul <nos...@needed.invalid> wrote:
>>

>> over USENET (line 2 is problematic), but anyway, this
>> is to show the simplicity of PDF once the binary,
>> stream, compression obfuscations are removed.
>>

>> [...]
>>
>
> Nice example!

The internet has scarred me. I'm expecting if one opened that, it'd be
a rickroll... possibly even something a little more shocking.

It might not be, maybe I'll have a look-see when I get back home.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

iQEzBAEBCAAdFiEEBcqaUD8uEzVNxUrujhHd8xJ5ooEFAlzQOJcACgkQjhHd8xJ5
ooFxOQf/QvhqvoBk+NKWYE6CXQZj5bTdio7+s/4fzORlv4NhA1bOrSY2JQjVv2G9
rKR+q8YZv4EMfxWlUrf+Qq1CdCIo+rkCO1enXDIEDQI9/i2wGQ72TJz1bNIIYeZx
jdAnFt5hLJLSioEJoB/xyifDatuuX8E//RKTv9fTPWdTYFv/wHQ+VqJatqVU7hVu
3VMa6I9oxaUyGm7LFGF/3xrRN7Na7vMqTLuTuD64QvYDSY+eyEA9ojONrbF/hyrz
dEEOqPULUec2VH7kTCO4qr+bl9eIsPuk/K28zIT6M8cW7ii8DRUBa0lSMWPUx4fX
M2LDzTdozpfI2plWRw9gdbCTHbkI6A==
=kNkD
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--
|_|O|_|
|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
|O|O|O| PGP: 05CA 9A50 3F2E 1335 4DC5 4AEE 8E11 DDF3 1279 A281

[Arlen G. Holder]

On Mon, 6 May 2019 10:00:40 +0200, Carlos E. R. wrote:

> As I said, a perfect example of a non editable PDF - LOL!

Hi Carlos,

Facts first; then rational logic is all that I expect from adults:
o Let's stick to the facts when we're making conclusions about test results.

Q: Did the Adobe Distller create a crappy PDF from the perfect PS?
Q: If it did, then what could we do to create a better PDF from perfect PS?

I realize you may have bought too many arguments this week, but let's look
at this factually please, bearing in mind that Paul gave us a curve ball as
our testcase (which is a good thing for him to have done for us).

FACT #1:
o The PS I created was _perfect_ as far as I can ascertain, without even
_looking_ mind you, I can tell you that is the case, since the only thing I
changed was the font to make it more portable.

Since that PS was perfect, I didn't even bother to upload it, given that
fact, which I'm sure you agree with.

FACT #2:
o The PDF I created from that perfect PS, is very likely _not_ perfect, but
that's only due to whatever method I chose to render that PS to a PDF,
which, in my case, was the Adobe Distiller. I trust Paul to tell us whether
that uploaded PDF created from Distiller was perfect or not, as you were
talking about an idiotic JPEG screenshot which I downsized tremendously and
which was just there to save time on the concept.

FACT #3:
o You appear to have been looking at the JPEG, which is a tremendously
downsized screenshot, and as such, is NOT illustrative of the actual PDF
which I had uploaded for you to look at.

FACT #4
o Once I made a more portable PS (by replacing non-standard fonts in the
PS), and then once I had converted that PS to PDF (using Adobe Distiller),
the great news is that the Windows Acrobat 6 (writer) had no problem
_editing_ that PDF in terms of changing the text and adding text, which is,
and was, the entire point of this thread.

LOGICAL ASSESSMENT:

Now, we can move on to logical assessments of those salient facts, where I
would assume all rational adults will agree with them, unless I said
something wrong, in which case I would expect and welcome a correction.

Assuming those facts are correct, and, assuming that the more-portable PDF
that I created from the perfect PS was "jagged" (as Carlos intimated), then
that would indicate that the Adobe Distiller settings I used 'sucked',
would it not?

Since Usenet is a medium where we share our tribal knowledge to help
everyone at all times, I ask Paul to help answer that question, since I
suspect the logic of Carlos is tainted, where my only question here is
whether the Distiller created a crappy PDF from the perfect PostScript,
and, if it did, what could we do in the future to make a better PDF from
that perfect PostScript?

Q: Did the Adobe Distller create a crappy PDF from the perfect PS?
Q: If it did, then what could we do to create a better PDF from perfect PS?

[Arlen G. Holder]

On Mon, 6 May 2019 09:32:11 +0200, Carlos E. R. wrote:

>> They were green.
>
> Ours were photocopies, IIRC. Or you could buy the expensive "real" ones.

I always wondered why, in college, the graph paper was blue, and yet, the
Smith Charts were orange (or, later in life, green).

Just one of those things in life that we ponder...

Oh look! A butterfly!

--
PS: I'm an aspy, if you didn't know that. Facts are paramount, where
details are everything, and where details in facts are what make them fun.

[Arlen G. Holder]

On Mon, 6 May 2019 09:34:48 +0200, Carlos E. R. wrote:

>> <https://i.postimg.cc/L5tTb7fX/pdfedit13.jpg>
>
> And the graphics is pixelated.

Hi Carlos,

Facts first, then rational adult logic can proceed...
Q: Did the Adobe Distiller create a crappy PDF from the perfect PS?

Q: If it did, then what could we do to create a better PDF from perfect PS?

I realize you want to prove a point that a PDF isn't editable, but you
can't prove that point looking at the vastly downsized secondary
screenshot.

You have to deal with the basic facts instead of desperately trying to
prove that a PDF isn't editable, when everyone else but you and nospam
edits them all the freaking time, Carlos.

I realize you're playing semantic games with the word 'edit', but this
isn't a legal case in court - it's a pragmatic thread about editing PDF.

1. The fact is that my Postscript edit was perfect.
2. It was so perfect, that I didn't bother to upload it.
3. I simply assumed everyone would agree that substituting fonts doesn't
make jagged edges in the resulting perfect Postscript.

Then we move to the next step of converting the perfect PS to PDF.
A. I used the Adobe Distiller (default options) to convert that perfect PS
to a PDF.
B. If you think that PDF (which I uploaded) has "jagged edges", then that
simply means that the Adobe Distiller (default options), sucks at creating
a PDF from a perfect Postscript file.
C. If your comments are true that the Distiller sucks, then all we need to
ask are two very good questions to ask of people who care about editing
PDF:

Q: Did the Adobe Distiller create a crappy PDF from the perfect PS?

[Carlos E. R.]

On 06/05/2019 17.46, Arlen G. Holder wrote:
> On Mon, 6 May 2019 10:00:40 +0200, Carlos E. R. wrote:
>
>> As I said, a perfect example of a non editable PDF - LOL!
>
> Hi Carlos,
>
> Facts first; then rational logic is all that I expect from adults:
> o Let's stick to the facts when we're making conclusions about test results.
>
> Q: Did the Adobe Distller create a crappy PDF from the perfect PS?
> Q: If it did, then what could we do to create a better PDF from perfect PS?
>
> I realize you may have bought too many arguments this week, but let's look
> at this factually please, bearing in mind that Paul gave us a curve ball as
> our testcase (which is a good thing for him to have done for us).
>
> FACT #1:
> o The PS I created was _perfect_ as far as I can ascertain, without even
> _looking_ mind you, I can tell you that is the case, since the only thing I
> changed was the font to make it more portable.
>
> Since that PS was perfect, I didn't even bother to upload it, given that
> fact, which I'm sure you agree with.

That's for us to judge, don't you think? :-)

> FACT #2:
> o The PDF I created from that perfect PS, is very likely _not_ perfect, but
> that's only due to whatever method I chose to render that PS to a PDF,
> which, in my case, was the Adobe Distiller. I trust Paul to tell us whether
> that uploaded PDF created from Distiller was perfect or not, as you were
> talking about an idiotic JPEG screenshot which I downsized tremendously and
> which was just there to save time on the concept.

But I did not see the uploaded PDF to judge.

>
> FACT #3:
> o You appear to have been looking at the JPEG, which is a tremendously
> downsized screenshot, and as such, is NOT illustrative of the actual PDF
> which I had uploaded for you to look at.

But the PDF was not uploaded. It was a JPG.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

[Carlos E. R.]

On 06/05/2019 14.37, Chris wrote:
> Paul <nos...@needed.invalid> wrote:
>> Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

>
> Nice example!

For some reason I don't understand, Dan Purget response to this post
Thunderbird refuses to download. Even "view as source" is empty.

This happens now and then on random posts.

What has his post of special that I can not see?

I can see it on another machine - but in that machine there are other
posts I can not see (both use the same nntp server).

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

[Carlos E. R.]

On 06/05/2019 17.53, Arlen G. Holder wrote:
> On Mon, 6 May 2019 09:32:11 +0200, Carlos E. R. wrote:
>
>>> They were green.
>>
>> Ours were photocopies, IIRC. Or you could buy the expensive "real" ones.
>
> I always wondered why, in college, the graph paper was blue, and yet, the
> Smith Charts were orange (or, later in life, green).

Was the paper different?

Because I have seen blue and kind of orange graph paper, and they were
different. The orange one was translucid, similar to what here we call
"onion paper".

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

[Carlos E. R.]

On 05/05/2019 20.34, Arlen G. Holder wrote:

> On Sun, 05 May 2019 04:10:59 -0400, Paul wrote:
>
>> http://ecee.colorado.edu/~kuester/smith/smith.ps
>
> Hi Paul,
>
> Woo hoo!
>
> I was _easily_ able to edit the TEXT in Adobe Acrobat 6!
> <https://i.postimg.cc/L5tTb7fX/pdfedit13.jpg>
>
> Clearly it is too easy to start with the PostScript file, but, as a proof
> of concept, I belatedly started with the PostScript instead of starting
> with the PDF (which is, I agree, kind of, cheating).
>
> In doing so, I just now opened the PostScript file in vim freeware, and did
> a global search and replace in that vim freeware editor of "Smith", to
> "Paul", which performed 8 substitutions on 8 lines, but where 7 of those 8
> instances were in the comments section.
> :%s/Smith/Paul/g
>
> Obviously this clearly "edited" the original PS file with presumably zero
> losses, so I won't bother to upload that resulting PostScript text file,
> but I did "distill" the results by opening that postscript result into the
> Adobe writer, version 6, which created this PDF.
> <http://s000.tinyupload.com/?file_id=00576262809580134412>

«File ID is not correct. File doesn't exist.»
«Check the link to file and try again.»

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

[Carlos E. R.]

On 06/05/2019 17.58, Arlen G. Holder wrote:
> On Mon, 6 May 2019 09:34:48 +0200, Carlos E. R. wrote:
>
>>> <https://i.postimg.cc/L5tTb7fX/pdfedit13.jpg>
>>
>> And the graphics is pixelated.
>
> Hi Carlos,
>
> Facts first, then rational adult logic can proceed...
> Q: Did the Adobe Distiller create a crappy PDF from the perfect PS?
> Q: If it did, then what could we do to create a better PDF from perfect PS?
>
> I realize you want to prove a point that a PDF isn't editable, but you
> can't prove that point looking at the vastly downsized secondary
> screenshot.

Well, the PDF link is broken.

Anyway, you edited the text. Can you bend a line by clicking on it, and
keep it a vector graphic?

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

[Chris]

Carlos E. R. <robin_...@es.invalid> wrote:
> On 06/05/2019 14.37, Chris wrote:
>> Paul <nos...@needed.invalid> wrote:
>>> Carlos E. R. wrote:
>
> ...
>
>>
>> Nice example!
>
> For some reason I don't understand, Dan Purget response to this post
> Thunderbird refuses to download. Even "view as source" is empty.
>
> This happens now and then on random posts.
>
> What has his post of special that I can not see?

A pgp signature.

> I can see it on another machine - but in that machine there are other
> posts I can not see (both use the same nntp server).

Rogue killfile?

[Dan Purgert]

Chris wrote:
> Carlos E. R. <robin_...@es.invalid> wrote:
>> On 06/05/2019 14.37, Chris wrote:
>>> Paul <nos...@needed.invalid> wrote:
>>>> Carlos E. R. wrote:
>>
>> ...
>>
>>>
>>> Nice example!
>>
>> For some reason I don't understand, Dan Purget response to this post
>> Thunderbird refuses to download. Even "view as source" is empty.
>>
>> This happens now and then on random posts.
>>
>> What has his post of special that I can not see?
>
> A pgp signature.

Oh, that breaks it for tbird? Well let's try this one sans-pgp?

>
>> I can see it on another machine - but in that machine there are other
>> posts I can not see (both use the same nntp server).
>
> Rogue killfile?

Aw, I hope not.

[Carlos E. R.]

On 06/05/2019 19.35, Chris wrote:
> Carlos E. R. <robin_...@es.invalid> wrote:
>> On 06/05/2019 14.37, Chris wrote:
>>> Paul <nos...@needed.invalid> wrote:
>>>> Carlos E. R. wrote:
>>
>> ...
>>
>>>
>>> Nice example!
>>
>> For some reason I don't understand, Dan Purget response to this post
>> Thunderbird refuses to download. Even "view as source" is empty.
>>
>> This happens now and then on random posts.
>>
>> What has his post of special that I can not see?
>
> A pgp signature.

No, I see signed posts just fine. In that case, looking at the "raw
text" I would see headers and such. In this post I see zero bytes. In
fact, in the panel with the lists of posts, it says it is yours.

>> I can see it on another machine - but in that machine there are other
>> posts I can not see (both use the same nntp server).
>
> Rogue killfile?

No, then I would not even see the existence of the post.


Mmm... I'm going to try "repair folder" [...] No, still his post is empty.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

[Mayayana]

"Carlos E. R." <robin_...@es.invalid> wrote

| No, I see signed posts just fine. In that case, looking at the "raw
| text" I would see headers and such. In this post I see zero bytes. In
| fact, in the panel with the lists of posts, it says it is yours.
|

Possibly AV set off by his signature bytes?
Longshot, but not out of the question. But
the main thing is that he signed it, so there's
no way the text of his message could end up
being leaked to the public. :)

[Dan Purgert]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

That would be "encryption". Signing just means that the "Dan P" signing
this message is the same "Dan P" who owns the keypair.

Granted none of you know me / have actually traded keys with me, so it's
probably a moot point anyway.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

iQEzBAEBCAAdFiEEBcqaUD8uEzVNxUrujhHd8xJ5ooEFAlzQglwACgkQjhHd8xJ5
ooEScAf/c+N9VxySmuFkE2rzTTsfiYRyPbeGUxAPPfJVjCSY7naYwANkjtVgAJaD
pHEgFp6iB5gHtjBi5jsyQcBH2rN8CWvF4RAhVKZwkpX8SFBzDWxSndKrve92QZKY
XfyN/bMOtGQa9jUdCBbyTmZU+4q55qvq9tJPQrk5ZEaKxXcAymp5W1zb5rbnP3MQ
I7lj3u3/zMzmZCgCvRfcB55/o9jwkUDS9+BEeyYXUx+tML8KkdqArI29qQeIv+oR
RKq19Z04zQJIlQNbQuwcBqzyv2AWpSPMrdzxtA0fNrjTCIXNDTAZ+dfuz7Vs3cV/
fohmmMPe9P/idghX8C23TKg3GyQEIQ==
=rE/1
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

[Carlos E. R.]

On 06/05/2019 20.45, Mayayana wrote:
> "Carlos E. R." <robin_...@es.invalid> wrote
>
> | No, I see signed posts just fine. In that case, looking at the "raw
> | text" I would see headers and such. In this post I see zero bytes. In
> | fact, in the panel with the lists of posts, it says it is yours.
> |
>
> Possibly AV set off by his signature bytes?

No AV here :-D

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

[Joe Beanfish]

On Mon, 06 May 2019 15:53:11 +0000, Arlen G. Holder wrote:

> On Mon, 6 May 2019 09:32:11 +0200, Carlos E. R. wrote:
>
>>> They were green.
>>
>> Ours were photocopies, IIRC. Or you could buy the expensive "real"
>> ones.
>
> I always wondered why, in college, the graph paper was blue, and yet,
> the Smith Charts were orange (or, later in life, green).
>
> Just one of those things in life that we ponder...
>
> Oh look! A butterfly!

IIRC, the blue grid tended to disappear when photocopied. Now to
ponder why that... lol. Perhaps to show just your graph without
the "distracting" grid?

[Peter Flynn]

On 04/05/2019 00:44, nospam wrote:
> In article <gj3sba...@mid.individual.net>, Carlos E. R.
> <robin_...@es.invalid> wrote:
[...]
> yes it does, since there are a lot of changes with pdf in the past 15
> years, which will cause a 15 year old app to not properly read a more
> recent pdf, let alone modify it.

The fundamental problem is that PDF simply is not designed to be
editable. It's an end-of-the-workflow output format designed for viewing
and printing. The fact that some very clever people have managed to
create software that lets you edit little bits of it (or even lots of
it, in the case of the ill-fated pdfedit) doesn't mean that it's the
right solution.

>> Someone asked me to help them edit a multi-page PDF form
>> where they wanted it to look professional.

I'm always fascinated by this. Do they have the owner's permission to
modify the document? If so, why not get the source, edit it, and
regenerate the PDF. If not, this has the hallmarks of a breach of some
kind. We regularly get requests for this kind of thing, and we ask for
evidence of permission first, evidence of ownership second, or evidence
of abandonment third. "Looking professional" wrt PDF forms really needs
the use of a designer and a document engineer.

Peter

[Joe Beanfish]

On Mon, 27 May 2019 13:05:43 +0100, Peter Flynn wrote:
> >> Someone asked me to help them edit a multi-page PDF form where they
> >> wanted it to look professional.
>
> I'm always fascinated by this. Do they have the owner's permission to
> modify the document? If so, why not get the source, edit it, and
> regenerate the PDF. If not, this has the hallmarks of a breach of some
> kind. We regularly get requests for this kind of thing, and we ask for
> evidence of permission first, evidence of ownership second, or evidence
> of abandonment third. "Looking professional" wrt PDF forms really needs
> the use of a designer and a document engineer.
>
> Peter

Permission is implicit sometimes. For example, I recently had to fill in
and sign insurance documents. They emailed the form as a regular PDF (not
a fillable form). Rather than print it, scribble on the paper, scan it
back in, shred paper (such a waste). I brought it up in gimp to put nice
clean text into the fill-in areas and draw my signature. Save as .mng
and convert back to PDF with "convert -reverse file.mng file.pdf".
Not the slickest procedure and I'd hate to use that for any continuous
production but it got the job done with no wasted trees/ink.

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