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PDF tools grouped by feature

https://www.portablefreeware.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=25411

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PDF tools grouped by feature

Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2021 10:40 am
by webfork
Background

There are ongoing problems with PDF tools:
  1. Either you have loads of functionality at the cost of being bulky and slow or lightweight quick but missing power features
  2. Sensitive documentation is still very connected to PDF, so important data like taxes or customer information can't be used in even very mature, web-based services
  3. Available freeware options for PDF tools invariably have one or two great features but never all in one place.

Portable software is particularly well suited to address issues with this format, letting you gather a group of programs and then apply the best tool for the job. This is also for my own use as it’s happened a few times that I wished we had a PDF tool for a given task and then I find out later we’ve had a program that could do that for years now.

Disclaimer

This is just an initial collection, I’m not aiming to be the source for a PDF tool and features matrix (that’s a bit larger of a project than I can take on) but feedback/contributions are welcome and appreciated.

(The fancy nested list below was generated using LibreOffice and Hotditor.)

Tools grouped by feature



Related:

Re: PDF tools grouped by feature

Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2021 3:31 pm
by Midas
Quick note to point out that all applications of Softmaker Office suites can save directly to PDF. And, as they can also open the most common office file formats, they can be considered another viable path for document conversion.

Re: PDF tools grouped by feature

Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2021 4:14 pm
by juverax
FaststoneViewer can assemble several images (BMP, JPG, TIF, etc.) in one PDF file.

Steps:
- Place the images in one folder
- Open the folder in FaststoneViewer, you can now see thumbnails of all the images
- Select with the mouse the files you want to assemble in a PDF file
- In the menu bar, select Create, then Multi-Page-File Builder, and follow the instructions.

Re: PDF tools grouped by feature

Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2021 9:40 pm
by webfork
Thanks juverax and Midas, I'm underway with an update and I'll get those added.

EDIT: TBA:

- Save images as PDF using FocusOn Image Viewer (just save as - PDF)
- Add passwords using PDFXchange (under Protect - Security Properties)

Re: PDF tools grouped by feature

Posted: Sun Feb 14, 2021 3:28 pm
by juverax
( @webfork » Mon Feb 08, 2021 2:40 pm)

"Identification of unit tasks"

Section "Convert to PDF"
- Tools to convert ONE image to ONE pdf file
- Tools to combine SEVERAL images into ONE pdf file

Section "Extract and Export images from a PDF file"
- Tools that allow the manual extraction of one image contained in a pdf page. Sumatra allows you to do that, then you have to paste the image in a graphic editor.
- Automatic extraction tools that simply perform a "sort of screen capture of the image" (the resulting images have a low resolution)
- Automatic extraction tools that extract the original image and retains its original quality
( See viewtopic.php?p=100625#p100625 )

Re: PDF tools grouped by feature

Posted: Sun Mar 21, 2021 11:37 am
by freakazoid
Irfanview is missing from the "Image to PDF" section. Not sure if Irfanview also applies to "PDF to image" though.

Re: PDF tools grouped by feature

Posted: Mon Sep 26, 2022 9:48 am
by Midas
Tentative post about FLOSS pdfgrep mostly for future referrence, as currently there's no Windows port...
pdfgrep: a commandline utility to search text in PDF files.
@ https://pdfgrep.org/

FYI, latest pdfgrep release is v2.1.2 from 2018-11-19.

I decided to make this post because someone apparently managed to make it work under Windows using cygwin (cf. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24780428/).

Moreover, there's a GUI frontend called PdfgrepGui in active development (Linux only, too; v0.6 released 2022-08-13):
Shout out to any able developers... :wink:

Re: PDF tools grouped by feature

Posted: Mon Sep 26, 2022 6:43 pm
by dmiranda
Hi there. Great topic. One thing missing is thumbnails' view of multiple pdf in a given folderl. The only one I know, most likely not portable, and that does not allow (in my set up, at least) changing the number of thumbnails is https://www.coolutils.com/PDFViewer.

The idea is to be able to inspect a folder with a bunch of pdfs on it, so as to choose what to do with those selected after visual inspection of first page/title. The coolutils viewer is almost there, but not quite there yet.

Re: PDF tools grouped by feature

Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2022 2:29 am
by Cornflower
Irfanview with the PDF Plugin (https://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=49) has thumbnail view!

Open a file in the folder of PDFs, then press {T} There are many options of what you can do with selected PDFs there.

Re: PDF tools grouped by feature

Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2022 6:09 pm
by webfork
Cornflower wrote: ↑Wed Sep 28, 2022 2:29 am Irfanview with the PDF Plugin (https://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=49) has thumbnail view!

Open a file in the folder of PDFs, then press {T} There are many options of what you can do with selected PDFs there.
Great addition

Re: PDF tools grouped by feature

Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2022 10:47 am
by Midas
FYI, here's an excellent and comprehensive related article:
This post is an attempt to (finally) bring together my go-to PDF analysis and processing tools and commands for a variety of common tasks in one single place.
www.bitsgalore.org/2021/09/06/pdf-processing-and-analysis-with-open-source-tools

Re: PDF tools grouped by feature

Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2022 4:19 am
by Cornflower
Midas wrote: ↑Sat Oct 22, 2022 10:47 am FYI, here's an excellent and comprehensive related article:
This is quite the tour de force, Midas, thanks. I quickly looked at the capabilities of the CLI tool pdfcpu, and it appears to rival cPDF in its comprehensiveness, but as open-source without the "free for non-commercial use" restriction that cPDF has.
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