> Yeah, well, if digital printouts have only the same functionality as real 
> printouts, then they're rather pointless.

Except I can send a "digital printout" to 50 different people in 5 different 
countries within a few seconds from my desk, try doing that with real 
printouts :-)

> Both Ghostscript and Acrobat will happily transform PDF into a bitmap 
> image. (Though Acrobat will only produce Windows Bitmap - the most 
> braindead image format in widespread use.)
>
> The trouble is, then the pages would be bitmap images. That means that I 
> can manipulate then with IrfanView. On the other hand, it means they'll 
> either be vastly lower resolution than the original vector graphics, or 
> they'll be absolutely huge files...

What's your printer? 600dpi?  Just convert them into bitmaps using that 
resolution and do your work on it, then save them to PDF again.  It's quite 
common to work on A4 size at 600dpi on a normal PC these days...

Or, presumably, if you are meant to be modifying these documents, then you 
can just ask the original author for the original files to modify?  That 
might be easier in the end.

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