PDF Authoring tool, suggestions?

[Anton Shterenlikht]

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.

-- 
Anton Shterenlikht
Room 2.6, Queen's Building
Mech Eng Dept
Bristol University
University Walk, Bristol BS8 1TR, UK
Tel: +44 (0)117 928 8233 
Fax: +44 (0)117 929 4423