itext java_使用Java和Itext编辑PDF文本

When I wrote the first book about iText, the publisher didn’t like the

subtitle “Creating and Manipulating PDF.” He didn’t like the word

manipulating because of some of its pejorative meanings. If you consult the dictionary on Yahoo! education, you’ll find the

following definitions: To influence or manage shrewdly or deviously To tamper with or falsify for personal gain

Obviously, that’s not what the book is about. The publisher suggested

“Creating and Editing PDF” as a better subtitle. I explained that

PDF isn’t a document format well suited for editing. PDF is an end

product. It’s a display format. It’s not a word processing

format.

In a word processing format, the content is distributed over different

pages when you open the document in an application, not earlier. This

has some disadvantages: if you open the same document in different

applications, you can end up with a different page count. The same

text snippet can be on page X when looked at in Microsoft Word, and

on page Y when viewed in Open Office. That’s exactly the kind of

problem you want to avoid by choosing PDF.

In a PDF document, every character or glyph on a PDF page has its

fixed position, regardless of the application that’s used to view the

document. This is an advantage, but it also comes with a disadvantage.

Suppose you want to replace the word “edit” with the word “manipulate”

in a sentence, you’d have to reflow the text. You’d have to reposition

all the characters that follow that word. Maybe you’d even have to

move a portion of the text to the next page. That’s not trivial, if

not impossible.

If you want to “edit” a PDF, it’s advised that you change the original

source of the document and remake the PDF. If the original document

was written using Microsoft Word, change the Word document, and make

the PDF from the new version of the Word document. Don’t expect any

tool to be able to edit a PDF file the same way you’d edit a Word

document.

This being said, the verb “to manipulate” also means To move, arrange, operate, or control by the hands or by mechanical means, especially in a skillful manner

That’s exactly what you’re going to do in this chapter. Using iText,

you’re going to manipulate the pages of a PDF file in a skillful

manner. You’re going to treat a PDF document as if it were made of

digital paper.