Date: Tue, 15 May 2001 01:07:57 GMT From: Salvo Bartolotta <bartequi@inwind.it> To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Manipulating pdf/ps files Message-ID: <20010515.1075700@bartequi.ottodomain.org> References: <20010513.18294500@bartequi.ottodomain.org>
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>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Original Message <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< On 5/13/01, 8:29:45 PM, Salvo Bartolotta <bartequi@inwind.it> wrote regarding Manipulating pdf/ps files: > Dear FreeBSD'ers, > I would like to perform such operations as the following: > -- merge PDF/ps files > -- modify PDF/ps files in a more or less "graphical" (read: > human-understandable) fashion > -- convert PDF/ps files to other formats (eg text). > Browsing the archives, I learnt about pdf2ps, ps2pdf, pstotext and > psutils (both in the ports). I had also browsed the ports tree as well= as > the Doc-primer, but I am probably missing something trivial here. > I have found some difficulties: eg, psmerge seems not to work on a few= ps > files, which files I downloaded (originally as PDF files) from a www > site. I have reason to believe those files were generated from one mai= n > file (containing data arranged in a table) split into several pieces, > BTW. I couldn't convert the ps files to txt, either: pstotext generate= d > strings of hashes (the "#" character). I meet with problems when trying to convert PDF/ps files containing data= arranged in a table, each raw of data being preceded as well as followed= by a (continuous) horizontal line like this (the data were probably formatted with M$ excel): ------------------------------------------- data data data... ------------------------------------------- data data data... ------------------------------------------- For example, running pdfinfo on one of the files spits out: Creator: Windows NT 4.0 Producer: Acrobat Distiller 4.0 for Windows CreationDate: 20010511130351 ModDate: 20010511130351+02'00' Pages: 60 Encrypted: no Linearized: yes I tried xpdf (in the ports), namely pdftotext, but it didn't work. Summing up: I can convert those PDF files into ps, the information in th= e ps files IS displayed correctly, but I have managed to convert neither the above-mentioned PDF nor ps files into plain text. There is a txt2pdf= utility on the Net, but I can't seem to find a **working** pdf2txt or ps2txt one. BTW, the "clipboard" (ie the mouse middle button) DOES copy from Acrobat Reader (running in linux comp. layer) to other text editors= within X, but it copies (raw) PDF data. *Sigh* I don't want to have to use Winblows MTIA for tips, suggestions, pointers, Salvo To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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