[Novalug] some pdf editing experiences

[Doug Toppin]

I thought that I would pass along something that I had not done before
having to do with pdfs if anyone is interested.

For some school work I need to sign an NDA, scan it and send back the
image.  Just out of interest, I decided to generate the 4 page form
(MS Word file) as a pdf and overlay my signature (from a jpg file) and
send it back as a pdf.  There are probably a number of ways to do this
but I did it using inkscape and pdftk (having never used either
before).  I tried to use pdfedit but could not find a way to overlay
the signature image with it.

As far as I could tell, inkscape will only work on a single page so
when I opened the pdf I had to open each page and save it back as an
individual pdf file.  When I got to the file with the signature block,
I also opened my signature image file, copied it and pasted it onto
the signature block (with a resize) and saved back the file.  At that
point, I had 4 pdf files (one for each page).

To combine the individual pdf files into a single file I used pdftk as
follows (the resulting file is called output.pdf).
pdftk page1.pdf page2.pdf page3.pdf page4.pdf cat output output.pdf

One thing that I neglected to try was using my wife's Wacom graphics
tablet to actually do the signature directly on the pdf file so I may
give that a try tonight.  When I first used it with gimp a year or so
ago it worked reasonably well.

If anyone wants to pass along an easier/more interesting way to do the
above please do.  btw, on occasion I intentionally do things a little
bassackwards just to use stuff that I haven't tried before (and this
may be one of those cases).  I pass along how I did it just so other
folks might learn about the tools/approach and maybe generate some
conversation.

Also, my wife put together a 2009 newsletter for us (as if it were a
little local newspaper).  If anyone would like to take a look you can
find it off http://dougtoppin.com
Someday, I am going to get around to improving that site to be a bit
more modern.

doug