How to make a PDF write-able ? (solved)

[bigphil]

Hi all, I'm running Fossapup64 9.5.
As the subject says I need to make a PDF write-able. The PDF was scanned in using Xsane but the PDF is not write-able. I know Xsane has an option to scan in text but I cannot get that to work, it always produces an empty file.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Regards

Phil.

[ozsouth]

@bigphil - couple of possibilities, best is:

Masterpdf4 (basic pdf editor)

This version should work in fossapup64: https://www.mediafire.com/file/fplg40yg ... l.pet/file

[darksun]

If you have a PDF containing text you can install LibreOffice or get the AppImage

https://www.libreoffice.org/download/appimage/

the software you are looking for is LibreOffice Draw

if you are looking for an OCR software have a look at gImageReader

Code: Select all

apt install gimagereader

[wizard]

@bigphil

As the subject says I need to make a PDF write-able. The PDF was scanned in using Xsane but the PDF is not write-able

We have two different cases to consider.
1. A document is created with a program like a word processor, spreadsheet, etc that creates text and is then saved as a PDF. That PDF can be edited.
2. A text document is scanned and saved as a PDF, that document only contains a "picture" of text. That PDF can be "annotated" (add text), but cannot have the original text edited unless it is converted using a OCR (optical character recognition) program.

You have a scanned document and can annotate it using one of the suggested programs above.

wizard

[bigphil]

Many thanks for all the replies.
Masterpdf4 does the job.

Once again thanks

Phil.

[Doggy]

If Xsane isn’t working for you, you might want to try using OCR software like Tesseract or gImageReader. They’re pretty effective at converting scanned images to editable text.

[fernan]

Also, if you need to make a PDF to be filled with data, you need to create a "PDF form" and add fields, they can be text or tick boxes, with different formats.