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Completely new to this and don't even know where to start.

Specifically, the problem is to programmatically add a picture(JPEG) as a footnote when printing PDF/DOC/DOCX files on Windows/Mac.

Most people use MS Word(on both Windows and Mac)/Preview(on Mac)/Chrome(on both)/Adobe Acrobat Reader(on Windows) to issue the printing job, so is there any open source add-ons for those softwares for this job? I am hoping that there is one for Chrome.

Or I will have to develop a printing application for PDF, DOC and DOCX. Any suggestions for which language to use?(I don't need a fancy GUI).

Aiden
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  • We are not here to find/recommend software for you, or recommend for/against any particular language. That's YOUR job. – Marc B Jan 22 '16 at 16:05
  • @MarcB Hi, I think you probably misunderstood my purpose. It is not an outsourced job nor a programming assignment. It is for public welfare in the university. I want to add some educational stuff as footnote when students print lecture notes if they don't mind. I want to initiate this but I don't know where to start. Nobody will outsource a job to someone with no background, and I can always find help somewhere else if it is a programming assignment. Yes it is my job, but may I use some of your help for this? – Aiden Jan 22 '16 at 18:50

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The universal solution to this is to use so called "virtual printer": the driver that emulates the physical printer. So you just printing to it and it captures the printed document, adds images to it and saves into PDF or another format. There are some trusted virtual printers available on the market:

Eugene
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  • There are actually 2 different types of virtual printers. To create an application and control it by code, you can use the LEADTOOLS SDK mentioned in Eugene M's answer. If you want a ready end-user application, you can use LEADTOOLS ePrint. Note that both are Windows-only and neither of them works on Mac OS. – LEADTOOLS Support Jan 27 '16 at 19:28
  • @Aiden Colorpilot have solution for Mac OS X - http://www.colorpilot.com/spool_article.html though haven't tried it – Eugene Apr 01 '16 at 09:10