It would be most helpful if Portable apps had an application that would allow users to open pdf and then save it in an editable format, such as .pdf to word or .pdf to .odt. Many of us use, or have to use, documents in pdf format and it would be good to open them in either editable form or open and save in .doc, .odt, or even .rtf. That way we can save selections or figures.
There are a few free open source pdf converters/editors out there. Can any of them be made portable? Thanks.
Jojo
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PDF is an output format. It's generally not meant to be edited. Apps that properly edit PDF are commercial, closed source, and very expensive. The best thing you can do is work on the original. Think of it as akin to working on your original image file (PSD, TIF, etc) or sound file (WAV, multi-track) to make a change rather than the lossy JPG or MP3 output.
We have great apps that can produce PDFs like LibreOffice. As well as apps that can add/remove pages to PDFs like PDFTK Builder. If you want to full-on edit a PDF, you'll have to buy something.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
furthermore we have to consider that many of the converters which promise to convert pdf to let say word can do the job only under some very special circumstances.
Only when the pdf was created from some similar office document and it has all the elements as fonts embedded and no fancy formating etc, might be able to recreate an approximate original word document for example.
But for example many scanners will produce pdf output too. Such pdf are simply not convertible unless you go to a process of OCR conversion and complex manual reconstruction of the formating, removing and repositioning all graphic components etc.
So even with lot of money and effort: reliable pdf to document converter will remain a future dream.
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland
Thanks for the quick and detailed replies. I thought that might be the case but was hoping otherwise. There is an online site, Zamzar, that does a pretty good job on documents up to a couple of Mb, I think. Other than that I suspect you are correct, you have to buy something.
On that note, there was an exchange on this forum a while ago about Adobe Acrobat 7 being released by Adobe for free. The question is whether a person could use that legally or not. I'm not sure that was ever answered. It seemed to be that you could download it and the serial number from Adobe and that you could use it, but Adobe didn't want to come out and say it was ok. The question is whether it was out there to download and use, or if it was, use at your own risk and you might get busted? Not very clear or nice. Was that ever resolved? Thanks.
also the online converters will fail in many cases or produce just very rough results. If original produced by an office output, all components embededded, then you may get some half way useful result.
If you feed it with pdf output from a scanner, you will not get any result as well there.
And you can not buy anything what will convert any pdf to some useful document format. It is simply not possible. There is no such tool and as stated, most of the converters will produce some output only in some special cases.
You can ge tthe acrobat7 from adobe, for your own purpose it is OK.
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland
Thanks Otto Sykora. I was only going to use the Acrobat 7 for home use on study material for courses I am taking anyway. I think the matter is clear for me and this thread can be closed successfully as far as I am concerned. Thanks to all.
all the best
Jojo