How to reformat pdf (change page size) using Master PDF Editor or ___

Need help with how to reformat a pdf to make it easier to read on a smaller screen.

Changing the page size of the pdf via a reader just shrinks the document, not very useful.

If it was an Office document, just changing the page size to 5in x 6in (approximately 12cm x 14cm) and reducing the margins would do it. The number of text characters in a line would decrease automatically, the font would remain the same. The graphics (images, diagrams, tables) may not fit the page, but those can be scrolled.

How to do that with Master PDF Editor? It took a while to figure out the following:

$ masterpdfeditor3

File -> Open

Tools -> Edit_Document

Document -> Page_Layout

Result: Changing the page size crops the page, truncating information, instead of fitting the text in the new page size.

Tools -> Edit_text

Edit -> Select_All # Selects only one page

"Object Inspector" panel (on the right) -> Geometry

Result: Changing the dimensions here affect the font; becomes very difficult to read.

Any ideas how to do it with masterpdfeditor ie change the page size of whole pdf document (similar to changing the page size of an Office document)?

Does it have to done one page at a time?

Using an editor gives the advantage of preserving the equations and may give the opportunity to reposition the graphics (images, diagrams, tables), but if that is not easily possible are there any scripts to do this, something as simple as just parsing the pdf and replacing the page size specified in the it? Or would the uneditable nature of pdf preculde that.

Anyone use pdf2htmlEX or pdftops or something else to easily change the page size of pdf (similar to changing the page size of an Office document)?

Thank you.

PS. tried pdfedit; but that did not do it either

Solution 1:

I think you won't get it done easily. Pdf is like a digital print, so you can't format text any more as in an editor. That's what pdf was developed for. What you can do with simple pdf's, mostly text with few images and tables, is to copy everything to a text editor (e.g. writer) and delete backspaces with 'search and replace', using regular expressions. Later you could print out again to a pdf of the desired size or an ebook-format, which are designed to fit the text to the screen.