[Scribus] PDF in Windows

[Steven Boothe]

On 1/6/07, Tom Davidson <mail at tomdavidson.org> wrote:
>
> So, quite a few can open the irs pdf with scribus or is everyone talking
> about useing adobe reader?
> With this particular pdf, we can use reader to save our formfill info, but
> others we can not. I had thought scribus would allow use to open the pdf,
> edit with our info, then export as a pdf again or save in xml to pass back
> in forth for editing....


Hi Tom and glad to see you finding an interest in Scribus (my family loves
it).

It appears to me you are attempting to use Scribus to open PDF files the way
MS Word would open a '.doc' file. This is not how Scribus is designed, and
as I recall, even Adobe Acrobat Writer is not intended to do that. As I
understand, while Adobe Acrobat does have some rudimentary capacity to open,
edit, and re-save PDF's, it is far from anything resembling the way
OpenOffice would open a native .odt file.

>From the previous discussions I have read on here, PDF files are just not
meant to be used as a native word processing file format or equivalent. Try
to think of them rather as either an alternative or intermediary output to
paper that is "derived" or "generated" from a "source file".

Thus if your intention is to edit the content of the PDF, what you really
need is to go back to the "source" and edit that, and then
re-generate/export/output the PDF.

Okay, there is another way too... Convert the PDF into a PNG image, open
Inkscape, import the PNG file, lock the layer, add a new layer for entering
text, use the text tool to fill out the form, and then re-output to PDF and:
attach to email or print and send via postal...

Someday I intend to write up an easy to follow guide on that last option,
but right now I need to get back to my school work. :-)

Cheers,

Steven
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