PDF 
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| Summary | |
| Description: | Through PDF Handler, we can display thumbnails of PDF files uploaded into the wiki |
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| Notes: | relies on gs convert and pdfinfo
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| Example: | The example on the right is used here and on the page Cloning. |
More than ever, the Adobe "Portable Document Format" or PDF is a critical format for communication. One feature of the format is that it bridges the world of the web with the world of print very well.
Saving PDF Forms[edit]
Annoyingly, Adobe Software does not allow you to save the contents of PDF forms using Adobe Acrobat Reader. The software tells you to print the form if you wish to have a copy. The solution is to avoid Adobe Reader (I left out the 'acrobat' since it's not even flexible -- hardly an acrobat). Okular or Evince will allow you to save the contents of that application/healthcare/insurance/DMV form that you filled out so that you have an electronic record rather than a paper record.
PDF Tools[edit]
Surprisingly, I could not easily create a new PDF that was a combination of two other pdf documents. That's when I found the "PDF Toolkit" http://www.pdfhacks.com/pdftk/
OpenOffice does output pdf, and so does KPrinter, but the PDF Toolkit offers many more features that really should be present in a GUI program like Okular (formerly Kpdf) -- which is a viewer rather than an authoring application. At least you can install the "Service Menus" into Konqueror to get some easy right-click integration. It would be interesting to use DCOP to create a simple merge GUI.
PHP developers should look at the libraries and functions provided there for manipulating PDF forms.
See Also[edit]
- Format conversion
- see the Collections page for creating books which can be printed as PDF
- The Cloning article shows an example of how the PDF Handler extension allows the wiki to generate thumbnails for pdf files as if they were regular images.
