PDF ?

[Peter Brigham MD]

If you only want to fill in the stamp and then print the result, what  
I do is import the pdf as an image, overlay fields wherever I need  
them, then fill them in by script, and print the result. If you want  
to export it instead of printing it, you could take a snapshot of the  
result and export that as jpg or, I guess, as a pdf file, though I'm  
not sure about the latter, maybe use the pdfLib for that.

-- Peter

Peter M. Brigham
pmbrig at gmail.com
http://home.comcast.net/~pmbrig


On Dec 6, 2010, at 1:34 AM, Anthony Howe wrote:

> Thanks Jan,
>
> Great to hear the detail around this one. The feature you mention  
> that you're working on is actually all that we would require and  
> sounds ideal!
>
> We simply want to 'stamp' an existing document with a customers  
> unique ID and details. The area of the document to be stamped will  
> be blank space on each page....at a defined location (footer or  
> header area, for example) and requires no interaction with the  
> existing content.
>
> From there, just a re-export of the PDF would be required.
>
> What do you think?
>
>
>
> On 06/12/2010, at 5:24 PM, Jan Schenkel <janschenkel at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> --- On Sun, 12/5/10, Anthony Howe <anthonyhowe at me.com> wrote:
>>> My question was also not really
>>> around whether PDF export is possible, but rather if it was
>>> possible to open an existing PDF file (which was created in
>>> LC, or not) and add new data (like a personalized footer or
>>> header from LC app data for example), then, reexport it...as
>>> a PDF, ready for distribution.
>>>
>>> The answer to this one so far seems to be no.....but I'm
>>> hoping for an angle....:)
>>>
>>> Hope that clarifies things, and perhaps I should have
>>> started a separate thread on this question, as I accept it
>>> does stray somewhat from the original post.
>>>
>>> *gulp*
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> A.
>>>
>>
>> While I have written a library to create new PDF files from  
>> scratch, by script, I'm not sure where to begin taking apart an  
>> existing PDF file and modifying its content.
>> The structure of a PDF file is completely unlike Word DOC or RTF  
>> files. Word processing files are structured around a flow of  
>> paragraphs, sentences and words. PDF files are a set of low-level  
>> instructions (draw a line here, draw this bit of text there, now  
>> switch to font 'Times', set the drawing color to 'red', etc.) and  
>> there is no rigid flow structure.
>> More precisely, PDF has no concept of paragraphs - you're at the  
>> mercy of the producing application printing each bit of text in the  
>> 'right' order to ease extraction. In fact, PDF doesn't even have  
>> text styling concepts other than 'font'. You want an underline?  
>> Draw it yourself.
>> In fact, it's so complicated that the selection of text in Adobe  
>> Reader or Apple Preview is based on OCR (optical character  
>> recognition) algorithms: we know there's a bit of text here, and  
>> that other bit of text has the same baseline, so that could  
>> actually be a single line of text in the user's mind - let's select  
>> both!
>> So if you're looking to read an existing file, and modify the  
>> content - such as replacing placeholder text and expecting the  
>> whole flow of the text to update along with it - you have your work  
>> cut out for you.
>> One feature I have been working on, is the ability to open an  
>> existing PDF file, and use pages from it as a background on top of  
>> which you draw additional elements. In that scenario I'm not even  
>> really tweaking the content, and this is presenting its own  
>> gotchas...
>>
>> Jan Schenkel.
>> =====
>> Quartam Reports & PDF Library for LiveCode
>> www.quartam.com
>>
>> =====
>> "As we grow older, we grow both wiser and more foolish at the same  
>> time."  (La Rochefoucauld)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> use-livecode mailing list
>> use-livecode at lists.runrev.com
>> Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your  
>> subscription preferences:
>> http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
>
> _______________________________________________
> use-livecode mailing list
> use-livecode at lists.runrev.com
> Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your  
> subscription preferences:
> http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode