Solved PDF Editor on FreeBSD?

[veryuniquename]

Are there any good pdf editors here on FreeBSD? Doing pkg search pdf | grep editor yields nothing. I do not really need anything fancy, I just want to highlight and draw inside a PDF file.

 

[eternal_noob]

What about editors/pdfedit/?
Other than that maybe use editors/libreoffice/ and export to PDF?

 

[Minbari]

editors/pdfedit

 

[eternal_noob]

Doing pkg search pdf | grep editor yields nothing.

The trick is to use a minimal search term
pkg search pdf | grep edit will find pdfedit

 

[Cath O'Deray]

FreeBSD bug 257625 – editors/pdfedit: unbreak the build (Fix "call to 'advance' is ambiguous")

(It was marked as broken for FreeBSD 13+ in May last year.)

---

PDFedit aside: is any good editor with a GUI on the horizon?

I'm aware of PDF Arranger print/pdfarranger, but that's for arranging pages of non-modified content.

I'm more interested in editors that have some ability to edit PDF content (without conversion).

 

[GailFrem]

Most of them are bad. I tied to use one of them, and none worked out for me.

 

[digifuzzy]

For open source-based solutions, slim pickings at best. I did find Master PDF Editor but only used on Linux. It is functional for the most part (re-arranging pages and minor edits to contents). Install is of a binary blob and requires QT and other libraries installed. YMMV

 

[Cath O'Deray]

a binary blob

Does it work in Linuxulator?

% sysrc linux_enable ubuntu_unable
linux_enable: YES
sysrc: unknown variable 'ubuntu_unable'
% sysrc linux_enable ubuntu_enable
linux_enable: YES
ubuntu_enable: NO
%

I laughed at my own typo there.

 

[eternal_noob]

I laughed at my own typo there.

Rather, a Freudian slip

 

[freezr]

I can suggest you xournal or LibreOffice Draw.

The former probably does what you desire, my only issue with this software is that rasterizes the PDF when it time to export the PDF again with your notes...

 

[digifuzzy]

Does it work in Linuxulator?

No Clue. Linuxulator is new software to me. I have not used so I'm not able to comment. Recommend going boldly where no bits have gone before.

 

[Cath O'Deray]

I'm more interested in editors that have some ability to edit PDF content (without conversion).

… xournal … export the PDF …

Thanks, I probably will keep Xournal, however it's not an editor of content.

 

[kpedersen]

Possibly not a perfect solution but I find that I simply can't find a better PDF editor than Acrobat Pro 9.x (The best version before all that cloud bullsh*t was added).

So much so that I generally just spin up an offline Windows XP VM in VirtualBox just to use that program.

(Weirdly doing this often drags in less dependencies and feels less heavy than some of the native PDF viewers too. However if I only need to read PDFs (i.e compiled from LaTeX), then xpdf3 is pretty good.)

 

[fernandel]

It is not in FreeBSD but exist:

https://apdf.sourceforge.io/

 

[tyson]

Not native FreeBSD program but did You tried some Web PDF editor? For basic text insert highlighting and drawing there are at least one working pretty good.

 

[bgroper]

For open source-based solutions, slim pickings at best. I did find Master PDF Editor but only used on Linux. It is functional for the most part (re-arranging pages and minor edits to contents). Install is of a binary blob and requires QT and other libraries installed. YMMV

I've also used Master PDF Editor on linux. It works as advertised. ?

 

[6502]

Master PDF Editor [/URL]on linux. It works as advertised. ?

Buy Now - interesting link for Linux software. The key word is "works".

 

[yuripv79]

Buy Now - interesting link for Linux software

What’s wrong with paying for software?

 

[6502]

What’s wrong with paying for software?

Nothing wrong. But it is not usual in Linux world. Not "compatible" with GPL way of thinking.

 

[kpedersen]

What’s wrong with paying for software?

Paying for *not* being given access the source code is... weird right?

I don't see how this can compare to open-source (and less importantly, free) in the long run. Places like winworldpc are full of old dead proprietary software, it is too wasteful (and sad) to support this dead end way of computing.

 

[6502]

Paying for *not* being given access the source code is... weird right?

I don't see a way (in practice) to sell software whose source code is freely accessible. Usually the fully functional executable files are sent after payment (or there is activation code) and potential customers can download only demo version. It means that demo has limited features. With source code everybody can compile the full version. In other words, without limitation of distribution of full version, the sales will be much lower. I assume that this software is developed for profit and sales are important thing.

About dead software - do you think that someone will continue the development of program for OS/2 because its source code is available? The platform is dead and for that reason the corresponding proprietary software is dead, not because it is not open source. In addition, if the program is very good and functional, why you need permanent upgrades and new versions? There is final version which works well. It is not dead.

 

[kpedersen]

I don't see a way (in practice) to sell software whose source code is freely accessible.

Indeed, for restricted demos this is hard. Though this really is a problem for them to solve if they want to compete with open-source in the long run. They are potentially risking lagging behind. If Microsoft goes cloud only with i.e Microsoft Office, then there will be very little way for a proprietary office program to ever compete with LibreOffice again.

Databases is also something where a brand new proprietary startup will rarely be able to compete with the open-source solutions. They are considerably far behind *and* lack of source code will not inspire confidence.

Of course it can happen, there are exceptions to any rule, but you will see it happen less compared to i.e the 90s. Startups will find it increasingly difficult to secure i.e seed funding / venture capital. Perhaps this is why companies are leaning towards "cloud" and web solutions.

About dead software - do you think that someone will continue the development of program for OS/2 because its source code is available?

I certainly do. It will first be ported to a modern OS, and then maintained. This happens quite a lot. Vim itself is a good example (started on the good ol' Amiga).

 

[tanis]

I know this thread has already been marked as solved.

So just for the record my preferred way of editing PDFs is importing them into GIMP, adding my wanted adjustments and just save it as PDF again. pdftk helps me to keep multiple PDFs structured.

 

[6502]

It seems in GIMP you have images of pages. This is far from PDF editor.

 

[Mirror176]

Having done so, yes gimp editing was converting the pdf into pixel images. More pdfs than I want to admit are just pixel images inside of a wrapper called pdf so it depends on your workflow. I thought other vector art software like inkscape had basic loading capabilities too. LibreOffice/OpenOffice has been useful for some work but sometimes has import bugs or limitations that made it not feasible. Thought there was even xpdf or something supporting basic 'draw on pdf' capabilities too where its like a basic painting program placed on top of the document.

If the files are your own creation, OpenOffice(+pdf plugin?) and LibreOffice had an option to create a pdf that contains the original odf formatted document in the file too so if opened in either program you get back to your office editor's capabilities. During 'file>export as>export as pdf...' type of creation, make sure 'hybrid pdf' is checked to get this capability; this dialog should be reviewed/studied if you want control of LibreOffice/OpenOffice pdf output to include/exclude comments, fonts, etc. into the file or even make a pdf form (though seemed tacky in appearance last I tried to use related form controls).