[pdftex] Editing PDF LaTeX -> Acrobat

[Prof Brian Ripley]

Why don't you ask for the LaTeX files and work with them yourself?
That is standard practice for books and journals in my field.

BTW, I find PDF produced by pdftex to be no less editable than postscript 
produced from LaTeX (or figures produced by most statistics packages), and 
the latter is normally identical across OSes.  Both PDF and postscript are 
produced in the subunits that the orginating application works in: that 
means that a circle could be a unit or it could be 100 line segments, and 
words could be words or individual characters or individual glyphs (with 
accents separate).

On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 pdf at futuristick.org wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I appreciate the feedback, but invariably authors do not send in 'perfect'
> manuscripts, if such things really exist! I am speaking from an editorial
> perspective, mind you, where correcting errors is de rigeur, e.g., moving
> text to fit margins, or changing the font of a character, all of which can
> be done if, unfortunately or not, the file was orginally created with a
> postscript driver 'native' to Win32 environments. (I would certainly not
> claim any superiority for Windows, by any means, but alas this is what I
> must work with).
>
> I agree that authors should be typesetting to a T, pun not intended, but
> many of them are rather helpless and/or clueless, depending on one's take.
> The ultimate point to be recognized, nonetheless, is that the need exists
> and a solution is necessary to accomodate efficiency, compromised by
> having authors resubmitting again and again when the work could be done
> here. And I certainly don't want to demand that authors stop using LaTeX
> and switch!
>
> Best regards,
> D. Milam
>
>> On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 pdf at futuristick.org wrote:
>>> Why aren't PDF files generated in LaTeX editable in Acrobat? In my
> case,
>>> I
>>> am using Acrobat 5.0, and yes, unfortunately, must work with a Windows
> system. There are various clients who submit LaTeX-generated PDFs,
> which
>>> are fine to use if they are 'perfect', but it is frustrating not being
> able to make changes to them in a Win32 environment.
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> And what exactly do you mean by "editing PDF files". PDF files are
> _supposed_ to be perfect and final, i.e. you should not be able to edit
> anything in them, except meta-things, like annotations/comments,
> attachments, various interactive objects etc etc. But the actual text
> layout cannot be reflowed (except for this modern thing called "tagged
> PDF" but as far as I know this is not yet supported by pdfTeX).
>>
>> Imagine what a total disorder would there be if publishing houses
> started
>> editing author's submitted PDF files :) Instead, the original authors of
> the PDF files should have the required typographical/typesetting skills
> if
>> they take upon themselves such a serious task as producing PDF documents :)
>>
>> (smiles added to avoid flames --- I know my opinions are controversial
> and
>> should be taken with a "pinch of salt", as I normally take them myself
> :)
>>
>> Kind regards
>> Tigran
>>
>> =========
>> http://www.bibles.org.uk --- Bibles in PDF format (not editable :)
>>
>
>
>
>
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>

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595