PDF Split and Merge Utility for Ubuntu Linux: PDF Sam

If you deal with a lot of PDF files under Ubuntu and all you want is nothing but to extract certain pages... then you don't need PDF Sam, PDFMod should do it for you. But if you want more control over your PDF documents (meaning both split and merging with advanced features) then PDF Sam is a pretty good utility.

PDF Sam is an open source application written in Java and needs the Java virtual environment to run. It comes with two versions (both open source). One version is completely free (the one that I'm using) but for the commercial version (they called it enhanced version), for that you'll have to pay some fee.

There's no "fee limits", even a single dollar will do it! OR you can download the enhanced versions's source code and compile it for free as well.

Not the best looking GUI... but it gets the job done!...

But the enhanced version has its own features such as the ability to encrypt or decrypt PDF files, add a front-page, etc. But for simple split/merger needs, the free version is more than enough. 

Main features...

*. Split PDF files with following options (few to mention):

Split the source file into single pages, manually define the starting page, split after a certain pages (1/2/ any page numbers) or use bookmarks as split points, change the output file meta data (Acrobat 6/7/8 or use the source meta data), change the output file location, etc.

You can add more than one PDF file to the list.

*. Merge is pretty simple actually.

You just locate/add your files to the list and then change few settings such as the above mentioned meta-data version, destination (enable "PDF documents contain forms" option if needed) and hit the "Run" button.

*. Play alert sounds (don't think it worked in my Ubuntu 11.04 though).

*. Few languages supported.

Although default GUI is pretty darn ugly :D, I changed it using the "Settings" section (you'll have to re-start the app to apply the changes) and after that PDF Sam used the default GTK theme (an older version of the GTK actually) and it looked much nicer afterward.

You can install PDF Sam in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal (perhaps in 10.10 and 10.04) by using the below command in your Terminal window.

sudo apt-get install pdfsam

That's it.

PDFedit: A Powerful PDF Editor for Ubuntu Linux!

These days finding a decent PDF editor for GNU/Linux ain't that hard mainly due to the popularity of Ubuntu (I think :D). Although I'm not a PDF editing dude my self and have a very little knowledge about the subject as well.

When Adobe first released the PDF standard it was actually a proprietary standard and it was like that until recently (around 2008) that they realized to make it an open standard. I think it also must have helped the open-source developers to develop PDF editors with ease too (you know, developing an app for a "closed-source" standard can certainly bring some heat towards you :D) .

Anyhow, for all you guys who're searching for a PDF editor for Ubuntu, after a bit of a search, I came up with a one called "PDFEdit" which I then realized is something that's quite popular too.

And unlike with many other "text containers" in general, PDF is a single, platform Independent container that holds all the necessary information about the document such as Font, graphics (GUI), basic layout, images, encodings, etc which are called "objects" to render the file itself.

As mentioned before, this is not just a PDF "text editor" but rather a complete and powerful PDF object manipulator, thus won't suit all the users...

And our PDFedit app, in that sense lets you completely rearrange/change these core values that makes a PDF file rather than changing the text content within the PDF file. 

Main features...

*. As said before, change operators and their parameters.

*. Various tools such as : Text selection, flattern, PDF to XML conversion.

*. Enable/disable property window.

*. Command-line support.

*. Change font, color, zoom in/zoom out, rotate, draw rectangles, lines, etc.

*. Save PDF pages as images.

*. Extract text from the page... are just a few to mention.

You can install PDFedit editor in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 10.10 and 10.04 by using the below command in your terminal window.

sudo apt-get install pdfedit

As said before, I'm not the expert on these subjects and I'm pretty sure there are many other open-source PDF editors out there... if you know some, then you're more than welcome to tell me about 'em :).  

PDFMasher - Tool for Converting PDF files to (HTML) E-Book Reader Ready Formats (Ubuntu 11.04)

A lot of GNU/Linux desktops such as Gnome, KDE, XFCE, etc come with built in support (applications) for reading PDF files by default. Although the Gnome version has an almost useless PDF reader called Evince (document reader actually) because it tries to be notoriously simple. Anyhow, we do have other applications such as the recent Foxit-Reader which comes with reasonably amount of features, thankfully :D.  

But those are only for reading PDF files. What if you wanted a dedicated application that lets you convert PDF files to HTML e-book reader ready formats. Well, there is such an app and it's called PDFMasher. Now, unlike many other PDF converters, PdfMasher is especially designed for converting PDF files into e-book reader readable HTML formats thus you won't end-up with small font sizes or wrong page rendering in general where you always have to zoom in, etc which is a common complain among e-book geeks :).

It's an opensounce application and is absolutely free to use but unless you make a donation every time you launch the application it'll display a pop-up "reminder" where you have to click the "continue" button to start the application.

But you can either pay a small amount money or can drop an e-mail for the developer, then he'll give you a code for free which would resolve the whole pop-up thing ;-).

Anyhow according to the developer, unlike other similar apps it lets you manually assign X/Y (vertical/horizontal) lengths, editing foot-notes, Titles, etc thus creating the perfect e-book reader ready version of your original PDF file.

It seems that the reason for such wrong rendering in E-book readers are because of corrupted PDF header files and PDFMasher even lets you configure headers for each page of your original PDF file easily as well (including - ignoring certain errors, etc).

The application is at its early stages so you should be expecting bugs, thus the installation went pretty well in my Ubuntu Laptop yet I couldn't get it to open a singe PDF file :/. The application is written in Python and gave me the below error.

'str' does not support the buffer interface

Shi* happens :/...

I'm not a programmer but that's a Python data-buffer error, I think. Anyhow that doesn't mean it won't work on your PC/Laptop. Currently for GNU/Linux support, it only support Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal only .

So if you Ubuntu 11.04 then you can install PDF Masher by downloading the .deb package (has both 32/64 bit versions) from this page and simply double click on it and follow the on-screen instructions. The developer has created a video which shows what the application can do for you which makes understanding the whole process much easier as well :D.



Good luck and I hope it works on your PC.

How To Install PdfMod In Ubuntu

PdfMod is an easy to use Gtk+ based pdf file modifier for Gnome (you can still use it with Kde of course). This is an official Gnome project and uses the help of several other application libraries such as Banshee Hyena, Mono and Pdf sharp (.net library for processing pdf files), etc.

It has a simple GUI and lets you do things like...

*. Drag and Drop support.

*. Rotate pages.

*. Change the order.

*. Change titles.

*. Remove pages.

*. Edit author, subject, keywords, etc...

So, if you use Ubuntu and want to know how to install it using PPA, then open your Terminal and issue the below command...

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pdfmod-team/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install pdfmod