Editing a PDF

December 6, 2004 11:38 AM

I want to edit/reformat a pdf document. I don't have Acrobat. ...

The output of my google search is overwhelming. It seems like people are primarily concerned with advanced features of pdf docs. I just want to change the margins. I am trying to make homemade reprints of a journal article. The reprints are 7'' x 10''. The pdf was generated by a LaTeX document and is letter size. The left margin is smaller than the right margin. Ideally, I would be able to make the margins alternate on odd and even pages so that the text would appear in the upper left hand corner after printing double sided and only two slices of the paper cutter would be needed. I would settle for being able to center the text horizontally. Is there an easy/free way to do this? I have linux and Windows XP.

posted by noether to computers & internet (9 comments total)

...and we're assuming that you don't have the original Word/Excel/InDesign/whatever file the PDF was made from? (Just clarifying.)
posted by gimonca at 11:43 AM on December 6, 2004

It was made in LaTeX. I do have the LaTeX file that I sent the journal, but I don't have the version they used with their style files and fonts.
posted by noether at 11:52 AM on December 6, 2004

You can open PDFs in Illustrator and save them out with changes.
posted by pepcorn at 11:55 AM on December 6, 2004

You may be able to use Ghostscript (sample conversion process).
posted by RikiTikiTavi at 11:57 AM on December 6, 2004

I guess I should have said that I don't have anything Adobe except the Reader. I might be able to get access to PageMaker.
posted by noether at 12:04 PM on December 6, 2004

It looks like KWord can handle such a task, though I've never used it myself.
posted by schustafa at 12:35 PM on December 6, 2004

It might be more work than it's worth, but you could regenerate the pdf file from the source using MiKTeX, a windows implementation of TeX.
posted by bachelor#3 at 1:42 PM on December 6, 2004

I thought about using my LaTeX file, but I want the reprint to match the published article exactly. I can't get my LaTeX output to match up without the journal's style file and fonts.
posted by noether at 2:39 PM on December 6, 2004

Quick and dirty:

Fire it up in reader, take screenshots (alt + printscrn), paste into any image editor and resize as necessary - it won't look fantastic but, depending on how much resizing you do, it should be quite workable. Remember you can take the screenshot at a larger size than 100% in reader to give you some wriggle room in the resizing department.
posted by Sparx at 3:29 PM on December 6, 2004