Mailing-List: contact users-help@pdfbox.apache.org; run by ezmlm
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: users@pdfbox.apache.org
From: Kevin Ternes <KTernes@thegeneral.com>
To: "users@pdfbox.apache.org" <users@pdfbox.apache.org>
Subject: RE: How to manipulate a pdf object
Thread-Topic: How to manipulate a pdf object
Thread-Index: AdGJ4/iOfobERFLhSz+LBXuj6EuLyQAIzhUAAAgPZ9A=
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2016 18:46:13 +0000
Message-ID: <6dcc4db40d7a43a6b9832cccbe9b5307@TGI-EX13BE02.pgac.com>
References: <c4a38c0449204ea08d06cde6b89b71ac@TGI-EX13BE02.pgac.com>
 <2789D7FD-7498-42EE-A3E4-07CB83EF1121@fileaffairs.de>
In-Reply-To: <2789D7FD-7498-42EE-A3E4-07CB83EF1121@fileaffairs.de>
Accept-Language: en-US
Content-Language: en-US
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=WINDOWS-1252
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Maruan and Tilman,
I think you have answered my question--that I am basically out of luck.
I already ran one through the usual PDF-Tools Debugger but it did not tell =
me anything that I thought was useful.  I also tried looking at the PDF und=
er Acrobat's preflight.

But here is the use case:
I have a large number of PDF "templates" that in our usual business process=
, we use PDFBox to load, set form field values, add images, merge, flatten,=
 protect, . . .

However, it turns out that the specification for many of these templates ha=
s changed so that a piece of text needs to be moved slightly up, a cm to th=
e left and have the font size changed.  Then there are some places where so=
meone drew lines around hundreds of form checkboxes!!!  So while I'm at it =
I'd like to delete those lines and set the form field widgets to have a bor=
der.

I wanted to write a quick command line program to do this.
I estimate that to do this one-pdf-at-a-time would take 10-20 hours.  That =
would not be a problem except that we don't have an intern.

Any suggestions appreciated.

-----Original Message-----
From: Maruan Sahyoun [mailto:sahyoun@fileaffairs.de]=20
Sent: Tuesday, March 29, 2016 1:06 PM
To: users@pdfbox.apache.org
Subject: Re: How to manipulate a pdf object

Hi,

> Am 29.03.2016 um 19:54 schrieb Kevin Ternes <KTernes@thegeneral.com>:
>=20
> I have successfully updated form widgets on pre-existing PDFs.
> But what about ordinary non-form objects like a box of text?  I can add N=
EW objects to the PDPageContentStream.
> But how do I even get a reference to an existing object?

What is it that you are trying to achieve? You can parse an existing conten=
t stream and look for individual tokens. But there is no guarantee that, wh=
at your are calling a box of text, is treated like that in the PDF as there=
 is no such concept. E.g. individual lines, word, characters forming a word=
 ... could be placed individually in different operations. It even might no=
t be text but a vector or bitmap image. Your best bet is to look into the c=
ontent using the PDFDebugger and see if you can identify the parts you are =
looking for.

Maybe you can elaborate a little more on your use case.

BR
Maruan

> Viewing the document in Acrobat does not give me a clue as to what the ob=
ject might even be called.
>=20
> PDFBox-2.0.0


---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscribe@pdfbox.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: users-help@pdfbox.apache.org