Is there anything better then Only Office for Editing and modifing PDF documents on Linux?
I need to modify and delete some parts of text in pdf document which with OnlyOffice is not so easy.
I remember when I was still using Mac OS it was very easy to do such a thing.In here in Linux with the above app is really painful especially when I remember how easy it was with Mac Os.
You can edit PDFs with Libreoffice Draw,not sure if itās any easier than Only Office as Iāve never used it.Take a look at this:
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/techtips/how-to-edit-pdf-in-libreoffice/
There is also
2 Likes
Try Xournal++
sudo apt install xournalpp
for me, itās the best
{rant: on} Why is everybody trying to edit PDF-Files ? A PDF is what you give somebody if you donāt want that somebody to change it ! Thatās what it is meant for ! Itās a āprint previewā you can send to people. Itās a horrible format - basically a multi-page vector graphics format with the ability to embed everything and the kitchen sink (including executable (JavaScript) Code). It destroys all internal logic of a document keeping only the appearance. The right way is to go back to the document the PDF was created from and edit that.{rant: off}
LibreOffice Draw might be OK for simple PDF-files, but for a complex file it will break in unpredictable ways (e.g. in a PDF created from LibreOffice Write of a document with lots of images and tables the tables where missing some ā but not all ā of the lines dividing the table). The same goes for Inkscape, which also has another problem: it will only import a single page of a pdf. You can work on that page, export it back to PDF, and than have to use some other tools to splice the changed page into the original file ā¦
I canāt say anything about Master PDF Editor except that I have a pathological distrust of closed source software, so I havenāt tried it.
Xournal++ doesnāt actually allow you to change the PDF, it allows to make annotations to it in a layer on top of the contents of the PDF which get stored in a separate file. I would not call it a PDF editor at all, except that it does allow you to basically paint over parts of the PDF in the background color and then fill in your own content and export that back to a PDF.
2 Likes
I personally like LaTeX (specifically pdflatex). It makes beautiful technical documents, but the learning curve is steep.
I think it is much easier to get started with Markdown and Pandoc. Basically, you write your document in plain text with special markdown syntax, and then run pandoc to covert it to the file format that you want.
Iāll second this, a very good application and by far cheaper than Adobe Acrobat Pro.
By the way, I didnāt know it was a Snap.
I have both Libreoffice and OnlyOffice. I donāt like to use the first one because it is graphically unrefined. Maybe it would do the job, but I want to find something I like to use. Something that is not only borderline interesting but also does things in a transparent way. I have always liked the graphics and intuitiveness of Mac OS, and maybe that is why I am reluctant to use something that is not graphically and intuitively refined.
Let me try that. I have checked it a bit and I like it. ā¦ can not find a eraser ,though.
I have watch a bit videos of users on YouTube and I kind of like it. Definitely I want try it. Thanks.
I need to find how to replace text in the PDF file ,modify it and change some of it but all with the same fonts and the same size of fonts.For now I can not find this kind of option.
I can see it can erase text easily like it was with Mac Os which is nice to have.
ā¦ but if Xournal++ will not let me change things like replace text or delete it or change it then will not do anything what I need.
Let me try these too.
Thank you for all of your advice. Appreciate that a lot.
1 Like
Master PDF Editor: If itās text, you can highlight the text and delete it. If itās a graphical object, you can select it and delete it. Another option is to create a rectangle of the appropriate color (usually white) and move it over the object you want to obscure. Master PDF Editor (once registered) will also allow you to save an optimized copy of the PDF which often makes it much smaller and easier to Email. Iāve been using it for years. At this point itās as close to using Adobeās Acrobat software on Linux (but for a lot less money). Iāve no objection to closed source software if itās reasonably priced and works on Linux. Supporting native Linux software is always a good thing. Now if someone would only make a native Blu-Ray player/burner Iād be ecstatic.
I try to figure it out how to do that and I canāt. I know this way from other programs but I can not find it here.If you say it is possible I will keep trying to find it then. Eraser would be also so much helpful which it seems is not build into this app.
Unfortunately, I wonāt be able to help you with this problem of yours.I do not have a knowledge about such an option.
1 Like
Among the various apps that allow you to edit a PDF but not delete part of it is the editor integrated into Firefox.
My threat model doesnāt allow me to do anything online with my pdf using the browser. I need to do everything locally.
1 Like
Since I dual-boot into Windows 11, I use PDF-Xchange Editor Plus for pdf creating/editing. Though itās a windows program its works very well when running in a Wine environment.
The license covers a single use/machine so I can use the same version under Windows and Ubuntu for cost of a single license which is comparative with Master PDF Editor.
Something to consider if you dual-boot.
Probably very good tool for Windows environment. I do not have dual boot. I have Linux only.
Do any of these pdf editors have the ability to extract text from a pdf file? I am thinking of a pdf scan from which I would like to extract text. If not, are there any other tools to extract such text.
Master PDF Editor has OCR which works pretty well (unless youāre dealing with some fancy fonts).
Alternatively, if you donāt like or want Master PDF and you arenāt afraid of the command line, you can use a combination of pdfimages from the package āpoppler-utilsā and tesseract from the package ātesseract-ocrā to extract the images from the pdf and read them.
Dear @molar ,
Slightly off topic. Optical Character Recognition OCR and Handwritten Text Recognition HTR with Scribe. Open source.
There are several such tools and frameworks out there. Not what is required specifically in this post but related.
The EU does quite a lot of work in this area too.WS .
Transkribus WS OCR for HTR with AI machine learning. Signup for free some free credits every month.
And Bealdung recommend the following Linux OCR tools WS
Yours,
York
I made a tutorial to help get you started:
Good luck!
1 Like