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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> My goal today was very simple:
>
> 1. Take a PDF file and remove the headers and footers.
>
> 2. Overlay one PDF file over another.

I always thought of PDFs as the digital version of print-outs.  Think what 
you would do if someone gave you two printed out sheets and asked the 
above...

BTW, you might be able to find some software that renders a PDF to an image 
file, then use some paint program to do what you want.

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> 
> 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.

Before doing this, you can also simply use the copy tool (the one with 
the camera icon). Copy and paste the parts of the documents you need 
into a grapical program (or combine them as povray image_maps :-). nd 
you're done without scissors.

Thibaut

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scott wrote:

> I always thought of PDFs as the digital version of print-outs.

They are. Except that unlike a PostScript page description (which is an 
unstructured arbitrary Turing-complete program which may or may not 
produce an image as a side-effect of its execution), a PDF file contains 
sufficient metadata to be easily manipulatable. (E.g., it's not 
Turing-complete, it's easy to locate a specific page, it has a bounding 
box included, etc.)

> Think 
> what you would do if someone gave you two printed out sheets and asked 
> the above...

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


> BTW, you might be able to find some software that renders a PDF to an 
> image file, then use some paint program to do what you want.

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...

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> 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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>> 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 :-)

Sure. But you don't need Acrobat for that, just Acrobat Reader. We paid 
a shedload of money for the full Acrobat Professional package on the 
expectation that it would allow us to, you know, *modify* PDF files. :-P

>> 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...

Mmm, A4 at 600dpi. That's going to be a few megapixels...

In the end, I ended up just double-printing the damned thing. Which 
meant I had to print it three times before I figured out the paper path, 
scaled everything so the new headers don't overprint the document 
content, and so on and so forth. All of which would have been *so* much 
easier with some suitable software... but hey, Adobe has our money. Why 
should they give a damn?

> 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.

Right. Because BackupExec *totally* has options for customising the 
header and footer on the job logs it prints out. ;-)

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Just when you thought your day couldn't get any worse... it does.

I now have to phone a lady who doesn't speak propper English and make 
her PC work. Oh, did I mention? She's in a different country...

Yay, me. :'{

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Invisible wrote:
> Just when you thought your day couldn't get any worse... it does.
> 
> I now have to phone a lady who doesn't speak propper English and make 
> her PC work. Oh, did I mention? She's in a different country...
> 
> Yay, me. :'{

I'm almost glad the number doesn't work... :-P

Still, I don't suppose there's any way I can realistically get rid of 
this person.

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> Sure. But you don't need Acrobat for that, just Acrobat Reader.

Of course.

> We paid a shedload of money for the full Acrobat Professional package on 
> the expectation that it would allow us to, you know, *modify* PDF files. 
> :-P

Did you read the "features" page of Acrobat Professional?

http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatpro/features/

> Mmm, A4 at 600dpi. That's going to be a few megapixels...

I make it 35MP, about 3x what consumer digital cameras are up to now, 
shouldn't be a problem to edit a file this size.

> Right. Because BackupExec *totally* has options for customising the header 
> and footer on the job logs it prints out. ;-)

You mean it only gives you job logs in PDF format?  That's a bit pants.

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>> Mmm, A4 at 600dpi. That's going to be a few megapixels...
> 
> I make it 35MP, about 3x what consumer digital cameras are up to now, 
> shouldn't be a problem to edit a file this size.

On my old wreck of a PC? It's not going to be much fun...

>> Right. Because BackupExec *totally* has options for customising the 
>> header and footer on the job logs it prints out. ;-)
> 
> You mean it only gives you job logs in PDF format?  That's a bit pants.

Actually they're XML files with a custom schema. My guess is that it's 
using the Internet Explorer rendering engine to print them. Suffice it 
to say, this is a backup program. It has a button marked "print", and 
that's basically it. You have no control over formatting. I did, 
however, manage get it into PDF format.

(Print to a PostScript printer, send to file instead of the printer, use 
Ghostscript to convert PS to PDF. Yay, I have a working PDF file now.)

I stupidly assumed that since we have PDF editing software, it would be 
easy to, you know, edit the PDF file.

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