[Scribus] Re: Proofing and marking up PDF

[Neil Williams]

Peter Linnell wrote:

> Undertaking to directly edit, previously created PDF's, is a very
> complex task.  To do so would require building a complete PDF parser  -
> a complex coding task in itself. There are only a handful of
> applications besides Acrobat itself, which can do this.  These PDF
> editing applications are developed by ISV's who have a close
> relationship with Adobe and possibly some NDA with them - none run on
> Linux. 

A few years ago I worked for 5D Solutions - the original developers of 
Jaws. Unfortunately I was in another business unit and didn't touch 
Jaws. I could try to find out some info from my old colleagues though.

> I would note full Acrobat 5.0.5 and special Acrobat plug-ins like Pit
> Stop and PDF Inspektor run fine on recent versions of Wine. I have yet
> to be be successful with Acrobat Reader or Acrobat Pro 6.0.

I've failed with Acrobat using Wine also. I am not familiar with the 
plugins you mention. Are they useful?

> That said, the Scribus team would certainly welcome discussion on this
> for future versions.

I accept that *full* editing of previously created PDF's is going to be 
difficult. But I can suggest a few work arounds that may be useful.

You can currently bring a PDF into Scribus as an image - well us this 
image as a background and put a transparent layer on top which could be 
painted onto. By providing brushes and pens we could emulate the 
highlighter and pencil tools in Acrobat. In combination with the 
existing ability to add notes and freetext you have a useful tool for 
marking up PDFs.

The PDF created from this Scribus document would be a mutation rather 
than a minor modification of the original, but I don't think this is a 
huge issue.

As well as adding pencils and brushes, we would have to streamline the 
import of PDFs into Scribus and enable multipage imports.

Brain dump completed! What are the show stoppers?

Best Regards

Neil