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 main > file (containing data arranged in a table) split into several pieces, > BTW. I couldn't convert the ps files to txt, either: pstotext generated > 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 the 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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