I've obtained a copy of a manual in PDF format. There is no index with it. What I'd like to do is create an index - and one where clicking on the appropriate line takes you to that section in the file. Easy to use and preferably free. ;-)
More recent versions of Word will import a PDF. I've never done an Index in Word, but it is pretty capable if you need to create a list of references with cross references.
He said 'free'. ;-)
I wonder if Libre / Open Office Writer could do the same though?
Cheers, T i m
Looks like the answer is 'yes'. Just tried opening a pdf that Libre-office created, and it's happy to edit it... ...in a slight odd fashion - where every line is a text block - but it can edit it. Adrian
Acrobat 8 Professional (2006, for XP) can be downloaded free from various sites. This link gives some suggestions for installation on Windows later versions:
If you are only wanting to do a single file then download the Adobe evaluation copy and be sure to finish inside the 30 day period. I wouldn't call it easy to use though... YMMV
Failing that I found one free PDF editor that actually worked (but only after I had shelled out $100 for one that didn't). I don't have access to the machine with them on ATM but will look next time I get chance.
Regards, Martin Brown
LibreOffice supports 'editable PDF' which you might be using without realising. This is obviously intended to support editing.
Files created in other applications may be a lot less structured.
Owain
Unless it's changed recently, openoffice edits PDFs within its drawing app, not its workprocessing app. But mainly PDFs edit awkwardly because they're designed to be an output format (i.e. for viewing/printing) not an editable format.
Tends to be what I've found with Adobe products. ;-)
Thanks. I can quite easily add a page with an index - but would like the clickable links.
Probably not much help, but you can create bookmarks and notes within a pdf document (effectively annotated hyperlinks) in Mac OS's Preview app
- the native pdf viewer. Then view the list in a sidebar.
Other than that clunky method (which may well be doable in other free programmes - the Mac Adobe Reader can do something similar)), I don't think there's any easy way to do what you want. Maybe try your OS's native pdf reader, or (spit) Adobe's own?
It all depends on how the pdf was made. So many of them aare just photos of pages and hence have no real words in them at all.
Brian
Yes we blind have major issues with pdf as if the reading order is not tagged the reading order can ignore columns and read right across all of them in a line and all sorts of other messed up formatting. The original idea of pdf was to stop people fiddling with the file so there are many protected files out there that nothing seems able to interact with once they are created. Brian
The original idea was an unambiguous page description. So that it would look the same on any device. Including paper.
reversal of the creation process was not part of the specification.
ISTM that the PDF creator is entirely free to replace the text with images containing the rendered text. Which would then be completely uneditable.
The specification called for embedded images, and they are just images.
That's when OCR gets handy.
Wouldn't the best thing be to copy from PDF to some format which does make editing and indexing fairly easy?
If it was me I'd go for some sort of simple mark-up language with links (e.g. reStructuredText) but if you want a more GUI approach then even HTML (behind some sort of front end) might make sense.
I try and keep things like this in a Wiki (in my case Dokuwiki).
Creating an index that is meaningful is hard. You have to flag up all the items you want indexed in some way. If there are headings and sub-headings, you could do it that way. Otherwise, it's a major manual job.
Word lets you build a table of contents based on headings and sub-headings, ie you just "press a button" and it does the work. However, that depends on the headings being marked as such within the word document, which in turn requires a very sophisticated conversion programme to import the doc from pdf.
I think a concordance simply indexes every word in the document. I've never used one, but I doubt it's what you want.
The problem IME has been that the export makes a right horlicks of the original. If the OP's pdfs are anything like the ones I have, they're non-editable, text can't be selected and the pages are watermarked.
I use the bookmark/notes device in workshop manuals I've downloaded - but for that to work it would depend on the OS/software the OS has access to, adn whether such a clumsy/basic system is of use.
It would, if the text/graphics could be exported. Which I doubt.
Good thinking! I'll take a look.
I've remade the factory wiring diagrams for the old SD1 - mainly to use the correct colours for the wires, rather than a code in B&W, as in the manual. Making them very much easier to use. I used my favourite CAD prog for this on the old Acorn machine. It will also covert its own files to industry standard ones and PDF. The latter I send them out in to anyone who wants a copy. And being vector? based, can be enlarged to any size without loss of quality. Obviously, any text is an Acorn font. And when viewed on a PC, a different font is used. Yet some PDFs I've seen use vectors for fonts too - so can reproduce them exactly, but make near impossible to edit that text. And I've also seen some PDFs that must have started out as a JPEG - perhaps a scan - or whatever. As they go all fuzzy when enlarged.
Looking at just one of the files, there are perhaps 40 'chapters' that I'd index. I'd have to scroll through and type them out in order (or copy/paste) so still quite a bit of manual work. A job for a winter evening. ;-)
I'd rather not use Word. Beauty of PDF is pretty well all formats can read it. Word sometimes has problems with itself. ;-)
I've got lots of PDFs which do exactly what I'd like this one to do. On my most used ones, the index is to the side of the main PDF viewer, and clicking on any takes you straight to the required part. But I'm not sure if this can be done to an existing PDF by editing - or is part of creating the original.
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