Pdfarranger
Version: 1.7.0 Web: https://github.com/pdfarranger/pdfarranger
Every so often we review small desktop utilities designed to edit PDF files. The problem they’re all trying to fix originates from the nature and the initial purpose of PDF. This format guarantees a document will look the same across all devices and platforms, but it was never designed to be editable. These days things are a bit different – for example, Inkscape can save directly to PDF and open it natively – but complex and multi-page documents in PDF are still not meant to be edited. Pdfarranger solves a specific problem around such documents when it comes to page arrangement. It’s a graphic application that enables you to load a multi-page PDF file and rearrange its pages the way you need. Swap, move back and forth, rotate, crop, remove or duplicate pages with ease. Initially we thought it was yet another superminimalist GTK3 application with just one feature (hopefully implemented with care and attention). Although rearrangement is implemented beautifully here, Pdfarranger has plenty of other manipulation features, as we discovered when we noticed that the application is based upon pikepdf, a powerful toolkit that originates from QPDF. Both carry dozens of advanced features for various structural, contentpreserving transformations on PDF files.
So, in some way the Python-powered Pdfarranger stands on the shoulders of giants. It’s certainly very easy to get things done with the help of this tool. Load a PDF (a digital magazine is a perfect example), select one or several pages and then drag and drop them to a different position. You can also right-click the selection to access extra features. Pdfarranger enables users to crop selected pages, split, and add borders with just few mouse clicks. This is a musthave tool for anyone involved in altering or adding adjustments to PDFS.