Because of the underlying PDF format's object and box models, all objects include various metadata in addition to the content, such as the location of the object, its attributes, and references to other objects. The contents of the window displayed in the Object Inspector then change so that you can check and also change all the relevant features. To use the Object Inspector, you first need to select an object (i.e., text, graphic, or link). For example, you can scan documents directly from within the application and convert the text via OCR.įigure 2: Thanks to the Object Inspector, even PDF non-experts can review and, if necessary, repair complex features in documents. The results were already quite impressive in version 3 of the application, but Master PDF Editor 4, published shortly before the end of 2016, now offers new features. The software tries to accommodate the process of editing PDF documents in an intuitive way in a graphical interface. On Linux, most of the functions can be tested and used without purchasing a license (see the 'License' box). Master PDF Editor is a commercial software tool available for Linux, Mac OS, and Windows. Today, hardly anyone uses that method: The documents are too complex, the PostScript code is anything but intuitive, and the pitfalls are too numerous to avoid during conversion.

Thus, the desire for editors that are able to load, modify, and again save the immutable PDF documents arose at an early stage.įor a time, Ghostscript was the tool of choice: You converted the PDF to PostScript, then edited the source code in a text editor, and finally converted the document back to PDF.

In practice, you often have good reasons for editing 'finished' print files – whether to add minor corrections, replace individual characters, remove short sections of text, or add annotations.

Editing PDF files therefore contradicts the stated aim of the file format: unchanged forwarding. It is based on the PostScript programming language, a PDF being a compiled – and thus no longer editable – version of the PostScript code. PDF was originally designed as a print format for forwarding and exchanging documents without allowing changes.

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