3 ms·

Is this some weird kind of satire I don't understand? Being read-only is the thing why we have PDF in the first place. If you want to do changes, go back to th

by runxel 7y ago

Is this some weird kind of satire I don't understand? Being read-only is the thing why we have PDF in the first place. If you want to do changes, go back to the program where it came from. It's simple as that! :)

tom_mellior 7y ago
I've often needed to fill in PDF forms that were not using PDF's fillable form fields, or to paste in a scanned signature. This is an important use case for PDFs, and the people who send you these forms expect you to have a printer, nice handwriting, and a scanner. Instead you can do the whole thing in software, with only standard Ubuntu packages, but it can be painful for multi-page documents: I typically have to use a sequence of pdfseparate/edit each page in isolation/pdfjoin.
- lxgr 7y ago
  PDFs specifically support the form use case (I remember using this a few times for things like applying for credit cards etc). That was on Ubuntu too! Inserting a scanned signature is also not a problem at all these days, and even fits the PDF model quite well.
  - tom_mellior 7y ago
    > PDFs specifically support the form use case Yes, but the person creating the PDF must know this, and must know how to do it with the software they have. In practice, many forms I've seen came out of situations where this was not the case. > Inserting a scanned signature is also not a problem at all these days, and even fits the PDF model quite well. It's not a problem to open a one-page PDF in Inkscape or the Gimp and paste a signature in there. That's what I said. It gets tedious with multi-page PDFs. Do you have a better solution for this?
- howard941 7y ago
  This is one area where Acrobat (The Full Version) shines. It has a typewriter mode allowing adding arbitrary text set in arbritary fonts to a preexisting .pdf as easily for a single page pdf as for a 100 page pdf.
- zcrackerz 7y ago
  MacOS's built-in Preview app can do this. It's fairly limited, but it supports text boxes and signatures, which I have found very useful for not needing to install custom software.

by runxel 7y ago

tom_mellior 7y ago

I've often needed to fill in PDF forms that were not using PDF's fillable form fields, or to paste in a scanned signature. This is an important use case for PDFs, and the people who send you these forms expect you to have a printer, nice handwriting, and a scanner. Instead you can do the whole thing in software, with only standard Ubuntu packages, but it can be painful for multi-page documents: I typically have to use a sequence of pdfseparate/edit each page in isolation/pdfjoin.

lxgr 7y ago
PDFs specifically support the form use case (I remember using this a few times for things like applying for credit cards etc). That was on Ubuntu too! Inserting a scanned signature is also not a problem at all these days, and even fits the PDF model quite well.
- tom_mellior 7y ago
  > PDFs specifically support the form use case Yes, but the person creating the PDF must know this, and must know how to do it with the software they have. In practice, many forms I've seen came out of situations where this was not the case. > Inserting a scanned signature is also not a problem at all these days, and even fits the PDF model quite well. It's not a problem to open a one-page PDF in Inkscape or the Gimp and paste a signature in there. That's what I said. It gets tedious with multi-page PDFs. Do you have a better solution for this?
howard941 7y ago
This is one area where Acrobat (The Full Version) shines. It has a typewriter mode allowing adding arbitrary text set in arbritary fonts to a preexisting .pdf as easily for a single page pdf as for a 100 page pdf.
zcrackerz 7y ago
MacOS's built-in Preview app can do this. It's fairly limited, but it supports text boxes and signatures, which I have found very useful for not needing to install custom software.