Ah, Adobe Acrobat.

Of course, you can obtain Acrobat Reader for free. (What good is an 
authoring tool without a ubiquitous platform to deploy for?) But the 


But what the hell do you actually *get* for your money?

Of course you get the ability to generate PDF files. But you know what? 
Any number of freeware tools can do this also. (E.g., Ghostscript can 
transform PostScript to PDF. All you need is a PostScript printer driver 
- and Adobe just happen to have one available for free download - print 
your document to a PS file, and then have GS convert it to PDF. Done.)

My goal today was very simple:

1. Take a PDF file and remove the headers and footers.

2. Overlay one PDF file over another.


achieve this trivial goal.

As far as I can tell, Acrobat can rearrange pages, delete pages, insert 
pages from other files, and this split or merge seperate PDF files. It 
can rotate pages, and it allows you to edit metadata and security 
restrictions.

What it does *not* appear to allow is modifications to the actual 
contents of the pages. You can add [extremely limited] additional 
graphics and text, but you *cannot* remove what is already there. Which 
is obviously absurd. You also can't copy content from one page and paste 
it onto another page, completely preventing the overlay I want to do.

In short, I've got two digital files in front of me and the premium 
editor program for that file format, yet I cannot achieve my trivial 
aim. I am actually going to have to PRINT THIS STUFF OUT and play with 
glue and scissors. How pathetic.

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