Combining elements from multiple PDFs -what options do I have, what tools can I use?

Question

Here is my problem: I am creating mindmaps with Mindjen MindManager (see an example here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mindmanager.png)

The problem is that this program has very poor printing capabilities. You have the option to print either an entire map or a subtree of this map with its children or branches to call them so.

If your map is big one you can chose to print it in a poster like manner (the map is scaled to cover let's say 2x2 letter pages) but the result is disappointing because you waste lots of paper. If you chose to print all in one page then because of the down scaling the text can not be read.

The solution that I found it reasonable was to print subtrees of the map. I print that to PDF. The program will let you select and print just one subtree at a time :-(

So if I have two such small subtrees the result will be two PDF documents of one letter page each with just 50% of the space of each page used. What I would like to do is to merge the content of the two PDFs in one letter page now used 100% because now I will have two subtrees on the same page.

Practically that means that I have to open the two documents and copy and paste the content of one into the other and rearrange the content What tools can I use for that ?

Answer 1

I finally got around it (sort of). Mindjet has the option to print with borders. When you print with borders it groups the border object and some text in the nodes together and you can not do much about editing the pdf. When you try to copy and paste you get the borders too so the merged document is a mess. Deleting the borders will also delete the text.

Here is how I did it: I selected no border at printing and in that way I was able to select and manipulate the group of nodes together in one or two moves. I was able to obtain the layout and and the efficient editing as I wanted. Man ..what a mess is this PDF/SVG world. Each product with its own implementation and rendering ...I learned a couple of things but my target was different. Wasted a lot of time. Thanks guys for everything!

Please if you have any other idea I would be glad to hear it. I am not completely happy with my solution but this is better than nothing.

At this point I am not sure if this is because Mindjet or because of the PDF printer implementation.

Also a free SVG printer driver for Windows would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 2

A PDF is essentially a 'end of the line' file format. It's not meant to be an editable document in and of itself.

As such, you need to get the PDF into a software program that lets you manipulate the content/elements.

Many programs can do this. Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape, etc.

How well a program can import a PDF into an editable format is primarily dependent on how the PDF was created. Sometimes it's an easy task. Sometimes it's not so easy.

Instead of combining, what I'd do is export your mindmap as one PDF on one page. Then open that in something such as AI and delete what you don't want, and scale up the rest. That is likely the least painful workflow.