ubuntu/linux: what is the best known pdf book compostion tool?

[Tom H]

On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 9:55 PM, Sarunas Burdulis
<sarunas at math.dartmouth.edu> wrote:
> On 05/02/2013 05:18 PM, ping wrote:
>>
>> in windows I know there is acrobat, I'm not talking about "producing
>> pdf" here.
>>
>> I'm talking about, given a pdf book, how to:
>> * delete , add, re-arrange pages
>> * rotake ,flip some pages
>> * generate the index,
>> * make a printer friendly layout, like 2 pages per side, with some gaps
>> for each page.
>> * etc...
>
> In my opinion, PDF wasn't meant for the operations above. It's supposed
> to be a final format; for distribution, printing, archival. Optimally,
> all of the above manipulation on contents should be done in an authoring
> application, i.e. LaTeX, Libre/OpenOffice, Scribus etc. Then a PDF is
> produced with a corresponding intent (printing, web distribution,...)

If there's software that manipulates PDFs, then there's a need for
such software irrespective of your opinion; ideally it's better to
save as PDF or export as PDF from an authoring program but a direct
PDF editing's needed by and useful to many.

I haven't had to use them for a while but PDFedit and PDFtk do some of
the things listed above.