[reportlab-users] How to read and edit an existing PDF file

[Gregory Piñero]

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll look into that.

On 1/27/06, Tim Roberts <timr at probo.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 26 Jan 2006 14:21:54 -0500, Gregory Pi?ero
> <gregpinero at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >Hi guys,
> >
> >cool library.  I didn't see in the documentation how I can read in a
> >PDF file and just change a few words in it.  Is there a simple way to
> >do that?
> >
>
>
> If the PDF is not encrypted, then this is not so hard.  The only issue
> is that most PDFs are compressed, so that all you see in the PDF is a
> big base64-encoded block of garbage.  Fortunately, that's easy to work
> around.
>
> Go fetch pdftk, a toolkit that no PDF jockey should be without.  Use
> "pdftk incoming.pdf output outgo.pdf uncompress".  Now outgo.pdf will
> contain ordinary Postscript code.  Bring that up into your favorite
> editor, and you should be able to find the words you want to change.
> You can then recompress it, if you want to.
>
> Note that the Postscript code places each string (or substring, or
> letter, in some cases) individually.  This kind of tweaking is only
> possible if your replacement is about the same size as the original.  If
> you want to replace "1976" with "2012", that will work fine.  If you
> want to replace "Clinton" with "President George Walker Bush", that
> won't work.  The new text will overlap other stuff.
>
> There are some incredible tools used in the web press business that they
> call "pre-flight" tools.  They do some incredible PDF manipulations.
> They're almost like a PDF-based word processor.  However, they are
> fabulously expensive.
>
> --
> Tim Roberts, timr at probo.com
> Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.
>
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--
Gregory Piñero
Chief Innovation Officer
Blended Technologies
(www.blendedtechnologies.com)