Editing PDF fies

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   Hi

Can I use your library to open an exiting PDF file, read it contents as text or images (if picture), modify those items (e.g change exiting text to another) and write my changes to that PDF or at some other name.

If this is possible can you tell if your setup contains sample for that.

Best regards,
Johannes

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niseko Members Profile Find Members Posts Beginner Joined: 25 Aug 09 Status: Offline Points: 3	Post Options Post Reply Quote niseko Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Topic: Editing PDF fies Posted: 25 Aug 09 at 8:38PM
	Hi Can I use your library to open an exiting PDF file, read it contents as text or images (if picture), modify those items (e.g change exiting text to another) and write my changes to that PDF or at some other name. If this is possible can you tell if your setup contains sample for that. Best regards, Johannes

Ingo Members Profile Find Members Posts Moderator Group Joined: 29 Oct 05 Status: Offline Points: 3530	Post Options Post Reply Quote Ingo Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 25 Aug 09 at 9:44PM
	Hi Johannes! The sample you're asking for should be worth about few hundred euros ;-) You're asking for a pdf-editor ... This is pdf-developement on the highest level. If you're working few years with this library perhaps then you can develope something similar to a pdf-editor. A pdf-library offers functions for pdf-development ... something like a pdf-editor is much more. If you are new and not familiar to a library you should start small ("hello world"). Sorry... But i've written this to take you back to the ground ;-) Cheers, Ingo

Michel_K17 Members Profile Find Members Posts Newbie www.exp-systems.com Joined: 25 Jan 03 Status: Offline Points: 297	Post Options Post Reply Quote Michel_K17 Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 26 Aug 09 at 4:22AM
	Hi, I'm with Ingo on this one (actually, I'm with Ingo on most things ). QuickPDF is: a great tool for managing PDF documents such as adding/removing pagers, modifying attributes, merging files, etc. is perfect for creating new PDF files programmatically, particularly for on-the-fly work from a web site but does not provide all that would be needed to pull all of the data in a manner that would allow editing a PDF file. But honestly, the PDF file is an optimized file format for viewing, but not editing. Furthermore, the market is starting to be flooded with PDF-to-Word converters that really, if a user wanted to edit a PDF file, he would be better served to convert to Word, and edit using that (ie MS Word is a capable editor). Cheers!
	Michel

niseko Members Profile Find Members Posts Beginner Joined: 25 Aug 09 Status: Offline Points: 3	Post Options Post Reply Quote niseko Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 26 Aug 09 at 6:43AM
	Thanks guys I know PDF is very complex format and it is not easy to edit it. This is why I want to use a componet that does the reading and writing job easier. I just want to know if QuickPDF contains API to read all data from exiting PDF and then I woudl create a new document and write the same elements I just read and possible modified into new PDF. I need to implement PDF editor. My choices are 1) Get PDF specification, write my own code to read and write it. 2) Use some 3rd party PDF component to read and write. There are several PDF libraries for Delphi. I just wanted to know if QuickPDF is right for me. Does the library provide this kind of API? Best regards, Johannes

Ingo Members Profile Find Members Posts Moderator Group Joined: 29 Oct 05 Status: Offline Points: 3530	Post Options Post Reply Quote Ingo Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 26 Aug 09 at 8:48AM
	Hi! You need a statement like "this pdf-library is best suitable for creating an pdf-editor" ... You have to check the libraries by your own. What functionality is offered and what functionality do you need for the job. I don't think that you'll get a suitable library below EUR 1.000,00 ... Sorry. In this case i don't think that QuickPDF is the best choice for you. It's the best choice for a lot of work but not for yours ;-) Cheers, Ingo

niseko Members Profile Find Members Posts Beginner Joined: 25 Aug 09 Status: Offline Points: 3	Post Options Post Reply Quote niseko Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 26 Aug 09 at 10:19AM
	I have been studing PDF format more deeply and noticed that it is indeed very print/display oriented. For example a text sentence is not a single entiry in PDF but could be splitted as many items depending how many lines it takes. This will make editing very very difficult. For example if you change text such way that ity is longer than original and need to splitted into two lines or you have to combine two entties to get one meaningful sentence. All this is difficult. I now see that reading and writing PDF is not the difficult part. Combining read items as meaningful elements is very difficult. I downloaded many so called "PDF editors" or "PDF to Word converters". None of them combined the items correctly but let you edit only single PDF text block. Pretty useless on many cases. Thing combining is the hardest part an is relatively easy if original PDF contain only plain text. However when it contains embedded images, different fonts mixed, etc combining gest much harder. I have a huge job ahead. Thank you for helping me. Best regards, Johannes