LibreOffice Draw
This impressed me:
sudo apt-get install libreoffice
libreoffice my.pdf
Just open the PDF, edit, and export as PDF.
The editing tools appear in a toolbar at the bottom of the window (took me some time to find it...)
Relevant feature set I have found so far (Ubuntu 13.04, LibreOffice 4.0.2.2):
- Remove pages Right click on the page on the left page list > Delete page
- Change page order: Drag drop pages on the page list
- Edit existing text fields (edit text, formatting and position). Just click twice with the select tool to enter edit mode.
- Add new text fields. Choose the text tool at the bottom (T), select the desired text area, and write.
- Edit non text fields objects like lines or bullets.
- Create fillable PDF forms (Enable the Form* toolbars and be sure to select "Create a PDF Form")
I could not find an extremely convenient highlight method, but you could get away with editing text attributes like setting the colour red and boldface. I could not change the background colour tough.
If I missed good features, please edit and add them!
Here is a screenshot of me editing a PDF exported from this ODT: https://github.com/cirosantilli/media/blob/f3497274fffcb043b9751c903c9fe715a5b023ce/test.odt on 6.4.6.
Of course, as you can see in the screenshot above, PDFs don't have as much information as the original ODT, and e.g. I can only edit one visible line at a time of a paragraph, and the following paragraphs won't "wrap back" to the correct size, since PDFs simply aren't designed to be editable.
Note: I know that it fails for a few type of PDFs, it has already happened to me.
If that is the case for you, please open a minimal, super detailed and reproducible bug report on their bug tracker https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/ so that devs may solve it, and post the link as a comment. When it happened to me I was lazy/inexperienced and didn't do that :-)
Despite this, it was still the best open solution when I last checked, and it works most of the time.
If Master PDF Editor (MPE) is not listed all you need is to create a MasterPdfEditor.desktop file. Just press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open Terminal. When it opens, run the command(s) below:
gksudo gedit /usr/share/applications/MasterPdfEditor.desktop
Copy and paste the following, and then save and close the file. (Note that the *.desktop files should be in /usr/share/applications).
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Master PDF Editor
Comment=PDF and XPS files editor
Exec=/opt/master-pdf-editor/master-pdf-editor %f
Path=/opt/master-pdf-editor
Icon=/opt/master-pdf-editor/master-pdf-editor.png
Type=Application
StartupNotify=false
Terminal=false
Categories=PDF Editor;XPS Editor;Office;Utility;Text Editor;
Then
Right click on the PDF file --> Open With --> Open With Other Application
If you don't see Master PDF Editor in the list, click on Show Other Applications
Scroll down to Master PDF Editor, highlight it, and click on Use as Default.
Best Answer
pdftk
is a useful multi-platform tool for the job (pdftk homepage).you pass the filename of the main pdf, then you tell it to only include certain pages (12-15 in this example) and output it to a new file.