Post by zepherusbane on Aug 10, 2018 15:44:23 GMT -5
As I'm sure many of you have noticed, the US and Canada use different size paper for their standards. As stamp collectors, we might be impacted by this more than the average person who probably doesn't even realize there's a difference.
I was wondering if anyone has developed good methods for taking PDF's created in A4 and converting them to letter size while still saving the scale of items on the page. I know some reformatting would be needed to make the taller pages fit into letter, but was just checking if anyone found some good help to do this kind of thing.
Specifically, I downloaded PDF album pages for Italy (in Italian) from www.ibolli.it/php/album_index.php, I really like their pages that have images of the stamp, they have several versions to choose from even. However, I wanted to make a few changes before actually printing:
I converted using Microsoft word, which works fine. Then I changed the size to letter with the expected result of messing up all the borders and having stamps flow into the next page. I can move the stamps around and resize the borders, but what I have problems with has to do with the way Word does the converting. It uses a lot of paragraph resizing to make the pages come out looking like the original, forcing you to adjust a setting for "space after paragraph" which is only available one paragraph at a time. It's not an optimal thing to have to change the spacing after each paragraph on several lines of stamps on the page, you have to fiddle with all of them to get the page back to being symmetrical and it's really time-consuming and an irritating process. I've also had issues with text from a follow-on page being stuck above a line of stamps from the previous page and I can not get the text to drop back down below that line of stamps even when I move them stamps around.
My laptop has Linux (Ubuntu) too, so I was thinking of trying the same conversion with libreoffice, openoffice, or one of the other office suites, but I don't know if they will have the same kinds of conversion issues.
I know a bunch of you are heavy linux users, have to you tried anything of this sort with any kind of success? What tools did you use?
Anyone else, if you have low/open source/low cost ideas on tools you use for converting PDF's into editable files, particularly if you have done this with stamp album pages, please share!
I was wondering if anyone has developed good methods for taking PDF's created in A4 and converting them to letter size while still saving the scale of items on the page. I know some reformatting would be needed to make the taller pages fit into letter, but was just checking if anyone found some good help to do this kind of thing.
Specifically, I downloaded PDF album pages for Italy (in Italian) from www.ibolli.it/php/album_index.php, I really like their pages that have images of the stamp, they have several versions to choose from even. However, I wanted to make a few changes before actually printing:
- They are in A4 and I want to change them to letter size despite the headache's to adjust the borders and spacing of the stamps.
- Add Scott or possibly Sassone numbers.
- Translate some of the Italian text into English and yet leave the Italian too in most cases.
- Add pictures of watermarks to pages where that mark is first used on a stamp.
- Add some history/descriptions to various stamps that I have a stronger interest in.
I converted using Microsoft word, which works fine. Then I changed the size to letter with the expected result of messing up all the borders and having stamps flow into the next page. I can move the stamps around and resize the borders, but what I have problems with has to do with the way Word does the converting. It uses a lot of paragraph resizing to make the pages come out looking like the original, forcing you to adjust a setting for "space after paragraph" which is only available one paragraph at a time. It's not an optimal thing to have to change the spacing after each paragraph on several lines of stamps on the page, you have to fiddle with all of them to get the page back to being symmetrical and it's really time-consuming and an irritating process. I've also had issues with text from a follow-on page being stuck above a line of stamps from the previous page and I can not get the text to drop back down below that line of stamps even when I move them stamps around.
My laptop has Linux (Ubuntu) too, so I was thinking of trying the same conversion with libreoffice, openoffice, or one of the other office suites, but I don't know if they will have the same kinds of conversion issues.
I know a bunch of you are heavy linux users, have to you tried anything of this sort with any kind of success? What tools did you use?
Anyone else, if you have low/open source/low cost ideas on tools you use for converting PDF's into editable files, particularly if you have done this with stamp album pages, please share!
Stamps - the bear necessities of life.