Re: editing a PDF [Re: emacs 30.5.0 editing epub]

[Yuri Khan]

On Mon, 20 Mar 2023 at 14:16, gebser@mousecar.com <gebser@mousecar.com> wrote:

> It is kinda weird that, with all the many things that emacs can do, it
> can't take the info from doc-view (which obviously understands all the
> pieces of a pdf-- down to its bits-- and how they all go together to
> make a document) and edit it... it's pretty much implausible to believe
> emacs *can't* do that.  But then, I've always thought reality was
> completely implausible.  :^/

PDF is not really meant for editing. It’s not even a data format.
Rather, it’s an executable program that has instructions like “select
this font” and “display this word in the selected font at this
position on the page” and “make a new page”.

You don’t normally edit executable programs, you compile them from
source. In the same vein, to get a modified PDF, you find the source
document from which it was produced, modify that, and re-export.