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I'm talking about a pdf document that was created via LaTeX (probably pdflatex) but the tex source of which is not available. I'd appreciate a solution that is less manual than trying to convert the pdf to tex and then changing the style (if that even works, the only answer there suggests it's far from functional).

edit with more readable I meaning changing the style in the original but unknown tex source such that I obtain a pdf that looks like e.g. a publication instead. This would of course in the ideal case include the pages renumbered etc. - so maybe it's impossible to achieve without texifying the pdf somehow first...

edit2 For those interested in this, a SU question about batch cropping pdfs mentions two tools that might be useful: briss, which crops borders (so that a two pages per page printing remains readable) and k2pdfopt which even rearranges a document's structure (untested).

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Tobias Kienzler
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  • @Tobias I think if there would be a better solution someone would have mentioned it... tex->pdf is pretty much a one way street and there is no going back, at least not with little effort – Martin H May 10 '11 at 12:53
  • @MartinH: I'm afraid so... – Tobias Kienzler May 10 '11 at 13:46
  • What do you mean with "something more readable"? You want to change the style of an existing PDF? That's not easily possible if at all and would also be off-topic on this site. – Martin Scharrer May 10 '11 at 14:08
  • @MartinScharrer: yes, changing e.g. the lineskip etc. I know this is close to off-topic, but since it is about pdfs generated by latex I thought I could give it a try – Tobias Kienzler May 10 '11 at 14:33
  • @Tobias: Changing the lineskip and the caused different page breaking is a major change for PDFs. The format isn't build for this. I don't think you will get a lot of good answers here. Asking on a different SX site might be better. – Martin Scharrer May 10 '11 at 14:43
  • @MartinScharrer: you're right, so I tried to clarify my question that I also want page braking etc to be taken care of by latex, I just thought maybe there's an automated solution that doesn't require manual (and possibly not working) conversion into tex first. but I guess the answer will be no... – Tobias Kienzler May 10 '11 at 14:51
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    @Tobias: No, you can forget about that. Maybe Adobe Acrobat (the full thing, not the Reader) can do some of that, but I would be very surprised if it happens automatically and still looks good. PDF is simply not a format intended to be reformatted later. Adding some notes etc, yes, but not different line breaks with updated numbers... LaTeX can't help you here at all and a straight-forward high-quality PDF-to-TeX is basically not possible. – Martin Scharrer May 10 '11 at 14:58
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    @MartinScharrer: I guess you could repost that as answer that I'd accept until proven wrong. if ever... – Tobias Kienzler May 10 '11 at 14:59
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    Regarding your edit, pdftk and pdfcrop are included in TeXLive and can do what you describe and more. But that's not what you originally asked for. All of that type of tool treats a page as a single entity and doesn't try to deconstruct it. – Andrew Stacey Oct 26 '11 at 09:10
  • @Andrew yes, cropping is not enough for preprints. k2pdfopt actually does deconstruction, but from a bitmap of each page – Tobias Kienzler Oct 26 '11 at 16:51

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No, you can forget about that. Maybe Adobe Acrobat (the full thing, not the Reader) can do some of that, but I would be very surprised if it happens automatically and still looks good. PDF is simply not a format intended to be reformatted later. Adding some notes etc, yes, but not different line breaks with updated numbers... LaTeX can't help you here at all and a straight-forward high-quality PDF-to-TeX is basically not possible.

Martin Scharrer
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  • accepted until proven wrong... knowing the document was created via latex brute-force tex creation could work, but then again that's not worth the time – Tobias Kienzler May 11 '11 at 07:30