PDF Authoring tool, suggestions?

[Ltcddata]

On Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:47:28 +0100
Ltcddata <ltcddats at nildram.co.uk> wrote:

> On Fri, 17 Apr 2009 14:22:08 +0100
> Anton Shterenlikht <mexas at bristol.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 07:26:39AM +0200, Roland Smith wrote:
> > > On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 08:50:44PM -0600, Modulok wrote:
> > > > I'm looking for recommendations for a BSD-friendly, PDF
> > > > authoring tool (Not a viewer, see below.)
> > > > 
> > > > I have an image of a signature that I need to put into a PDF
> > > > document. I converted the original, un-signed PDF document to a
> > > > raster PNG, then used GIMP to place a photograph of the
> > > > signature where I need it. I then converted the PNG back to a
> > > > PDF using ImageMagick's 'convert' utility. The problem, is the
> > > > PDF is now HUGE. Both in dimensions as well as file size. It
> > > > went from 28kb to 292Kb. There must be a better way to do this.
> > > 
> > > Convert the PNG to a JPEG file with the gimp, then use jpeg2ps
> > > from the graphics/jpeg2ps-a4 or graphics/jpeg2ps-letter port to
> > > convert it to PostScript. Finally, use epstopdf from
> > > print/teTeX-base or ps2pdf from print/ghostscript8 to convert to
> > > PDF.
> > 
> > hard to get good quality because the result is likely to be a raster
> > image. Technically I'd do this with ImageMagick's composite -
> > overlaps one image over another, but the output pdf will be a poor
> > quality raster image and, yes, significantly bigger in size.
> > 
> 
> Don't know if I am missing the point here but why not use open office
> to create your pdf file with its export as PDF feature?