Post #3196124

2026-06-08 15:25 UTC

Sorry to be that guy but… why? The whole motivation behind PDF is precisely NOT to be edited, NOT to be responsive, but rather to provide the SAME output, mostly text based, anywhere and everywhere. I’m not saying she shouldn’t edit PDF but I also have to clarify it is not "normal’. I’ll refrain from recommending anything before actually understanding the motivation behind her workflow.

Replies (1)

@EdTheMessenger@lemmy.world 2026-06-09 01:48

I'm not OP, but my wife unfortunately has a similar problem with editing PDFs. She works as a special education teacher, and one of her regular tasks is to modify tests to adapt them to a specific child’s disability (e.g., simplifying the content of questions or using less distracting images so that the test actually assesses the child’s knowledge, rather than their ability to analyze complex sentences or their ability to concentrate) The problem is that most subject teachers do not prepare tests themselves, but rather send her PDFs that they downloaded from the internet or received from the textbook publisher. If my wife needs to change the wording of two sentences, remove one image, and perhaps switch the order of two questions, editing the PDF will take her 10 minutes compared to the several hours of work it would take to rewrite the entire test from scratch. This is probably a very unusual use case, but I’m sure there are a thousand other unusual use cases that legitimately can’t be handled any other way, so holding off on a recommendation for the OP until they explain themselves is a bit wierd

Open ##3286914