[Coco] OT: PDF files

[John R. Hogerhuis]

On Fri, 2004-08-27 at 21:31, Arthur Flexser wrote:
> Speaking of PDF files, does anyone know if there is anything available to
> print out a PDF file that has the Print option disabled?  That is, one
> where Print on the file menu appears in faded letters to indicate the
> non-availability of this option?
> 
> Art

First of all I would try some other viewer than acrobat reader, like
ghostview or xpdf.

Even if these give a problem, which I doubt, you can always hack the
code to remove the problem.

Also, PDF is a text format (it is a restricted form of PostScript) so if
there is a restriction in there unless it is encrypted you should be
able to just edit the file. Complete references for PostScript are
available for download at Adobe's web site.

Also consider some of the utilities like ps2ascii that can dump out the
text in the PDF (assuming it's not just being use as a container for
scanned images). Command line tools like ImageMagick convert can split a
pdf file into a set of image files (it actually just acts as a front end
to gv [ghostview]).

-- John.