The form fill demo only prints a bitmap. Is that intentional? The quality is completely unacceptable.
Show HN: Pdf.js Express – PDF annotation, e-signatures, and form filling
11–20 of 136 posts
Re: Show HN: Pdf.js Express – PDF annotation, e-signatures, and form filling
#12This reminds me of the people who tried to sell Blender a couple of years ago [0].
[0] https://www.blendernation.com/2009/06/11/3dmagix-re-branding...
Re: Show HN: Pdf.js Express – PDF annotation, e-signatures, and form filling
#13Hi Nick,
Your product looks pretty awesome. It's super polished for your initial launch! Congrats!
I'm curious how long it took to build the product and how large your team is? Do you have some initial customers?
I'm building a similar paid Javascript Library business (https://www.dropkiq.com/). I would love to connect if you want to share some ideas? Feel free to shoot me an email if you're interested: adam@dropkiq.com
Adam
Re: Show HN: Pdf.js Express – PDF annotation, e-signatures, and form filling
#14FIle is here
https://registry.npmjs.org/@pdftron/pdfjs-express/-/pdfjs-ex...
They bundle both a Apache 2.0 "PDFJS-LICENSE" AND a "PDF.js Express Evaluation License.pdf" which seem to conflict with each other.
Re: Show HN: Pdf.js Express – PDF annotation, e-signatures, and form filling
#15Nicely done!
For non-React users (and React users, for that matter), I started working on wrapping PDF.js up into a web component for use in any framework or in plain HTML or Markdown: https://www.npmjs.com/package/pdf-viewer-element
The idea is to make a `` element that's as easy to use as if it were built-in to the browser.
As PDF.js Express shows, this is a pretty deep UI and feature area to tackle. My project is incomplete and doesn't have anywhere close to the features.
I think complex viewers are one of the ideal use cases for web components though. These components require a lot of work to do well, and we shouldn't have to re-implement them for every framework. The 3D gltf viewer, ``[1] is another great example.
Re: Show HN: Pdf.js Express – PDF annotation, e-signatures, and form filling
#16I have a startup and we are highly reliant on PDF rendering in our application. But here's the thing, Nik: your pricing model doesn't make sense to me. In general, most PDF SDK models don't make sense. I have searched a lot over the years, and am left consistently disappointed.
You charge the same amount to large commercial customers as you do to small startups, who are trying to save every penny. Even though I really value the technology you have built, you have not allowed us to "pay-as-we-go". I am not interested in your trial and the trials of your competitors because you don't allow me to start with a $5/month plan based on volume of usage. And so, we have resorted to writing the wrappers around PDFJS ourselves, slowly and steadily over months and years. Even though we might end up spending the same amount over 2 years by doing these things ourselves, at least we will understand the technology and own it perpetually.
Just charge us based on volume, so your revenue can align with our revenue. It will create much larger traction among small developers. If you are not targeting that audience, I understand, but I contend that most people on places like HN are that audience. Be more like Crocodoc (the company Box acquired). I really don't want us to keep reinventing the pieces here because this is not our core competency.
Re: Show HN: Pdf.js Express – PDF annotation, e-signatures, and form filling
#17I have a startup and we are highly reliant on PDF rendering in our application. But here's the thing, Nik: your pricing model doesn't make sense to me. In general, most PDF SDK models don't make sense. I have searched a lot over the years, and am left consistently disappointed. You charge the same amount to large commercial customers as you do to small startups, who are trying to save every penny. Even though I reall…
Have you thought of turning your wrappers into a service/SaaS offering? Sounds valuable!!
Re: Show HN: Pdf.js Express – PDF annotation, e-signatures, and form filling
#18Wow, if only this was open source...
It's open source.
Their website and marketing of this fact (is it a fact?) is very confusing or misleading. The comparison at https://pdfjs.express/pdfjs-vs-express says "PDF.js is an open-source PDF library that was created by Mozilla in 2011 to let you open and render PDFs in web browsers using JavaScript. PDF.js Express is a fully-featured commercial PDF.js viewer with a modern and customizable UI."
I would really like to know whether or not "PDF.js Express" is open source. Why? Because I've done a lot of work on react + pdf.js already (for a latex editor), and it's been high on my todo list to add annotation features. So PDF.js express significantly overlaps with something I'm very seriously planning to do...
Re: Show HN: Pdf.js Express – PDF annotation, e-signatures, and form filling
#19I have a startup and we are highly reliant on PDF rendering in our application. But here's the thing, Nik: your pricing model doesn't make sense to me. In general, most PDF SDK models don't make sense. I have searched a lot over the years, and am left consistently disappointed. You charge the same amount to large commercial customers as you do to small startups, who are trying to save every penny. Even though I reall…
I want to say there was something that reached pretty high on the HN front page a few days ago that discussed SaaS pricing models and they made this exact same point! Aligning incentives between you and the customer just makes sense, as your comment clearly demonstrates!
Re: Show HN: Pdf.js Express – PDF annotation, e-signatures, and form filling
#20I have a startup and we are highly reliant on PDF rendering in our application. But here's the thing, Nik: your pricing model doesn't make sense to me. In general, most PDF SDK models don't make sense. I have searched a lot over the years, and am left consistently disappointed. You charge the same amount to large commercial customers as you do to small startups, who are trying to save every penny. Even though I reall…
Have you thought of turning your wrappers into a service/SaaS offering? Sounds valuable!!
Or open sourcing it?
This seems like one of those complex-enough areas that having multiple groups and companies contribute to a common good could really pay off for everyone.