Looking for Cross-Platform Software to Draw Upon or Merge PDFs

September 14, 2004 3:30 PM

Hi, I'm looking for some PDF software that lets you draw ontop of an existing PDF (like lines, text), and some other software that lets you merge multiple PDF files (there was a similar question a few days ago but that was for OSX). If I get to be choosy, I'd prefer cross platform libraries. Thanks!

For the first one Ghostscript is the obvious choice, but I'd prefer not to write C and I can't find any better wrapper libraries.

posted by holloway to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

The cross-platform pdflib has exposures in python, php, perl, tcl, cobol, c, c++ and com.

Unfortunately, it's not free for the version which allows you to embed existing PDFs.
posted by tomierna at 6:12 PM on September 14, 2004

Response by poster: Hmm.. thanks. The API certainly looks better than Ghostscript.
posted by holloway at 6:39 PM on September 14, 2004

Acrobat Professional will do what you want. The cross-platform library part of your question confuses me but Acrobat Pro will allow you to annotate or draw on top of pdf's and it easily merges multiple pdf files. Your post didn't mention anything about free, because it's not. But you can get the 30 day tryout for Windows here.
posted by jeremias at 6:46 PM on September 14, 2004

Response by poster: Oh sorry - I didn't really specify but I mean a software library that I can programatically add to a PDF, not something for a person.
posted by holloway at 6:59 PM on September 14, 2004

Response by poster: Or can Acrobat Pro do that? (I don't know much about Acrobat)
posted by holloway at 6:59 PM on September 14, 2004

Acrobat Pro supports Javascript. So certain features can be automated, it would probably support merging with no problem, not sure about the drawing part.
posted by jeremias at 3:56 AM on September 15, 2004