Inkscape

how do I edit existing text? I'm having difficulties

Asked by John Fitzgerald on 2011-01-20

I am trying to edit text in an existing PDF file and am having a very difficult time. Your site was recommended to my by a friend who is a computer programmer and said it is one of the best. The PDF file that I am working with is 14 pages and only one page comes up at a time. This is making things even more difficult. How do I open the file and have all the pages there? PLEASE HELP..

Question information

Language:: English Edit question

Status:: Answered

For:: Inkscape Edit question

Assignee:: No assignee Edit question

Last query:: 2011-01-20

Last reply:: 2011-01-20

Revision history for this message

su_v (suv-lp) said on 2011-01-20:

> How do I open the file and have all the pages there?

Inkscape as SVG editor is based on the SVG file format [1]. This imposes some restrictions / limitations when handling other vector-based file formats:

a) Multi-Page documents
The SVG file format does not support multiple pages within one document (for plans, see [2]), so imports of other file formats are limited to what can be handled by the SVG file format - among other things this affects multi-page PDF documents. You can only import one page at the time, edit it, and export that page as individual PDF again.

If you need to edit one page in the middle of a big multi-page PDF document, you would best use external tools (possibly to split the original PDF file first and) to merge the parts again after editing the pages that required changes.

b) Editing text of imported PDF files
When editing text of an imported PDF file, please keep some limitations in mind, as described in earlier release notes [3] - mainly the 'Text editing tips', which still apply to the current versions (0.48.0 and trunk). Any progress on editing absolutely positioned (kerned) text in Inkscape can be followed in the bug tracker [4]

c) Round-trip editing of PDF files in Inkscape
Also keep in mind that round-trip editing PDF files with Inkscape cannot always produce precisely the same results: PDF is not the native file format used in Inkscape, therefore PDF files have to be converted to and from the SVG file format each time you open, edit and save a PDF file in Inkscape. Some limitations are inherent to the differences between the two file formats, some are 'work-in-progress' as the external libraries, which Inkscape uses for PDF support (poppler for import, cairo for export), develop and improve as separate projects.
See also the release notes from 0.47 [5] describing the current state of export to (aka save as) PDF.

[1] <http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG11/>
[2] <http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/SVG_WorkingGroup#Areas_of_Inkscape_Interest>, <https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/170369>
[3] <http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Release_notes/0.46#PDF_and_AI_import>
[4] <https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/188794>
[5] <http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Release_notes/0.47#PDF.2C_PostScript.2C_and_EPS_export>

> How do I open the file and have all the pages there?

Inkscape as SVG editor is based on the SVG file format [1]. This imposes some restrictions / limitations when handling other vector-based file formats:

Revision history for this message

su_v (suv-lp) said on 2011-01-20:

Related feature request:

Bug #569087 “Import all pages from a PDF in one go”
<https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/569087>