PDF Editor for Linux
Q. I would like to have a PDF editor for Linux. Are there any options?
A. That hand has a lot of low cards in it, but you may be able to find something to do basic editing.
PDFEdit
On top of the list we have PDFEdit, which is free and open source. Its not Acrobat Professional, but it does what most people need - rotate pages, combine several PDFs, add comments, etc.
URL(s):
https://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfedit/
https://pdfedit.petricek.net
Install in Ubuntu:
sudo apt-get install pdfedit
Oracle PDF Import Extension
PDF Import Extension allows you to import and modify PDF documents. PDF documents are imported in Draw (an application that is a part of Open Office suite) to preserve the layout and to allow basic editing. This is the perfect solution for changing dates, numbers or small portions of text with a minimum loss of formatting information for simple formatted documents.
Note 1: This requires to have OpenOffice 3+ installed
Note 2: It will take down your system on large, graphics rich PDFs. So watch out.
URL:
https://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/pdfimport
Libre Office
LibreOffice natively supports PDF edit (using Draw), so no need to get the plugin above.
PDFTK
Not sure if this can be considered a PDF Editor, but you can do many things with it on the command line:
- Merge PDF Documents
- Split PDF Pages into a New Document
- Rotate PDF Pages or Documents
- Decrypt Input as Necessary (Password Required)
- Encrypt Output as Desired
- Fill PDF Forms with FDF Data or XFDF Data and/or Flatten Forms
- Apply a Background Watermark or a Foreground Stamp
- Report on PDF Metrics such as Metadata, Bookmarks, and Page Labels
- Update PDF Metadata
- Attach Files to PDF Pages or the PDF Document
- Unpack PDF Attachments
- Burst a PDF Document into Single Pages
- Uncompress and Re-Compress Page Streams
- Repair Corrupted PDF (Where Possible)
URL: Download and for more info
The Others
flpsed
A WYSIWYG PostScript editor. Saves files as PS (I believe). Was not able to open the PDF it created using Acrobat Reader.
Install in Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install flpsed
URL: https://flpsed.org
GIMP
Has the capacity of importing PDFs and saving them as an image.
URL: https://www.gimp.org
PDFEscape
Online PDF editor. Pretty neat.
URL: https://www.pdfescape.com/
Good luck!
https://omghowto.com/top-10-best-free-pdf-editor-software-for-everyone.html
https://www.qoppa.com/pdfstudio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_a8B0JVZJk
crocodoc.com
I'm using Wine 1.3 and Foxit 4.3. PDF Xchange works pretty well but while scrolling parts of the screen are not properly shown until you click on them. Foxit 5 installs but crashes immediately. Would be nice to have evince with annotation capability. It seems they depend on poppler which lacks this feature till now.
Review, Annotate and Edit PDF Documents in Windows, Mac and Linux
Available in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish
This Software is great, easy to use, and a lot better priced than other PDF editors
Look at all it can do:
and this is not a complete list
to see complete list go tools
‬https://www.qoppa.com/index.html
Reviewing and Annotating
Highlight, cross-out, underline text
Add sticky notes, text boxes, and freehand (pencil) annotations
Add hyperlinks (web url, file, or email)
Add graphical annotations: circles, rectangles, lines, arrows, polygons, clouds
Add sound annotations and record audio right into the PDF document
Add rubber stamps, choose from predefined stamps or build your own
Attach files to a PDF document
Precision measuring tools for distances, areas and perimeters
Annotation review status (as part of the review cycle)
Import and export annotations in FDF/ XFDF / XDP formats
Flatten annotations
Creating and Assembling Documents
Scan papers directly to PDF (except on Mac OSX Lion in version 6)
Convert Word (.doc, docx), images and text files to PDF
Extract, insert, move, rotate and delete pages
Split by bookmarks, page range, text search
Sophisticated bookmark / document outline creation
Set document properties and initial view
Editing Content
Edit, delete text content, change text properties
Manual redaction for text and images
Move, resize, and save images
Move, resize shapes and path objects
See discussion at
https://www.gnurou.org/blog/2008/09/09/finally_real_pdf_annotating_under_linux
gscan2pdf does OCR, but there's no comparison to Adobe.
I've managed to get around with those 2-3 tools, but if I need something more sophisticated (like filling out forms), I go back to windows and adobe.
FLPSED is self-described as a 'PDF annotator' by the author, so NOT a PDF editor.
GIMP is fine for images, but is really only meant for single-page editing of raster graphics and there are scant useful things you can use it for with PDFs, if you want to maintain any real Postcript/PDF benefits.
Qoppa's PDF Studio $50 is only marginally better, Qoppa's Studio Pro $99 -- neither even include OCR features let alone full editing capability, it is really a poor copy of Acrobat Reader (ie. annotate, form fill, redact, comment, paste images, links, stamps) -- -- the main selling point is the multiplatform nature, but for Mac and Windows there are a multitude of vastly better options, eg. Nitro PDF
PDF Escape is similar to PDF Edit, but far slower being online and you have to upload/download (as you might do in Google Docs).
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are there any REAL contenders on linux ?? I love to know -- so far nothing very useful and certainly not of a daily use standard -- I have experimented with WINE, with NitroPDF/Acrobat/Foxit but it seems stability is a big issue.
URL: https://gscan2pdf.sourceforge.net/
https://www.qoppa.com/pdfstudio
Not free but the only "real" PDF editor on Linux that allows for pdf annotations and maintains compatibility with the PDF format.