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Show HN: Pdf.js Express – PDF annotation, e-signatures, and form filling

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Re: Show HN: Pdf.js Express – PDF annotation, e-signatures, and form filling

#101

Post by martin-adams »

niknikson wrote: post #41
2pointsomone wrote: post #16

I 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…

The biggest challenge to pricing based on volume is the exercise of tracking usage. In a typical SAAS product determining usages is fairly linear. For PDF.js Express because you would be deploying from your environment we would not have an accurate way to measure usage. Fundamentally I agree with you - you should pay for what you use. Unfortunately at this time we are not able to implement that effectively. Also keep…

As a startup founder, here are a few alternatives that I would prefer.

1. Community edition - no direct support, maybe some enterprise features no available (like Sencha.com)

2. Hosted version - easier to PAYG with a lower price point per use (like Typekit)

3. One off purchases with updates for just 12 months. Updates then require licensing (like Sketch)

The other option is that you only got for enterprise and exclude the startup and indie developers. Enterprises tend to have no issue doing the right thing. If you're worried about smaller developers taking advantage, then you need to weigh up the long term benefits.

Just remember, if it's hard to do, it doesn't automatically make the wrong choice the right choice.

Re: Show HN: Pdf.js Express – PDF annotation, e-signatures, and form filling

#102

Post by bassdigit »

martinald wrote: post #67

Some feedback. Website design is poor. You could definitely do with a designer to make it look nicer. $5000ish a year is a weird price point. It's too expensive for a hobbyist or small dev shop, but too cheap for an enterprise to buy (when you consider the time of working on procurement problems you'll experience). You either need to make it cheap, like $200/yr, or much more expensive. Right now you are in no mans la…

> Website design is poor. You could definitely do with a designer to make it look nicer.

Really, in what way? In my view it's clean and simple.

> You either need to make it cheap, like $200/yr, or much more expensive. Right now you are in no mans land.

Another unsubstantiated statement. How much market research have you done on PDF libraries?

Pricing is a sensitive topic and many factors play a role in it. Too many to be assessed by an armchair expert.

> Don't worry about it not being open source; that's fine.

Where did OP express any worries about it not being open source?

Re: Show HN: Pdf.js Express – PDF annotation, e-signatures, and form filling

#103

Post by mkl »

IvanK_net wrote: post #95
crazygringo wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow that's insane. It never would have even occurred to me to use Photopea for editing PDF's. But it does indeed import each element of the PDF as a separate layer, and you have PDF export with options to leave text as-is, rasterize text, or vectorize it. Two questions: 1) Does it set the resolution of the Photopea file, and the default resolution to re-export the PDF, to trying to detect the original resolution of i…

1) In a PDF file, the measure units are Inches. The page size is in inches. Any dimension is in Inches. There can be a bitmap having 200x200 pixels placed at 3x3 inches. Next to it can be a bitmap of 5x5 pixels placed at 5x5 inches. That means, that PDF does not contain any DPI information. It is not needed at all. PDF rasterizer (e.g. a raster printer) can render it at any DPI. Photopea decodes and saves back bitmap…

Don't you mean points, not inches?

That's why page dimensions are things like "/CropBox [0.0 0.0 595.27576 841.89001]". PDF points are the same as Postscript points, 1/72 of an inch, that is 25.4/72 mm. So those numbers mean a page 210mm wide and 297mm high: A4.

Re: Show HN: Pdf.js Express – PDF annotation, e-signatures, and form filling

#104

Post by mkl »

niknikson wrote: post #43
williamstein wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evidently I should clarify that by "open source", I mean "released under an OSI approved license" ( https://opensource.org/licenses ). Maybe robocop2018 means "open source" in the sense of "there is possibly minified non-human readable source code that you can look at under a very restrictive non-OSI license"?

Thank you for your feedback and question. My apologies if it’s unclear. The source code for the UI is available on GitHub [1], but is minified in the download package for efficiency. Note that even though the code is "open source" in that repo, we still have a custom license [2]. [1] https://github.com/PDFTron/webviewer-ui [2] https://github.com/PDFTron/webviewer-ui/blob/6.2/LICENSE

The license reads "WebViewer React UI project/codebase or any derived works is only permitted in solutions with an active commercial PDFTron WebViewer license. For exact licensing terms please refer to your commercial WebViewer license. For use in other scenario, please contact sales@pdftron.com".

That is a proprietary source-available license, very much not open source at all.

Re: Show HN: Pdf.js Express – PDF annotation, e-signatures, and form filling

#105

Post by mkl »

robocop2018 wrote: post #60
phonon wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was asking "robocop2018". Are you him?

I am not "him" :) though I work at PDFTron As Nick says the project is open source ( https://github.com/PDFTron/webviewer-ui ). Express is available under under dual AGPL/commercial license ( similar to iText and lot's of other popular OSS )

There is no mention of AGPL anywhere in that repository. There is just a LICENSE file with a completely different proprietary license: it is not open source at present. If you intend to make it open source, you need to change the license to an open source one.

Re: Show HN: Pdf.js Express – PDF annotation, e-signatures, and form filling

#106

Post by ghego1 »

IvanK_net wrote: post #44

I spent about three years building the support for PDF into my graphics editor https://www.Photopea.com . While other editors "add stuff on top of PDF", Photopea "chews through" each byte of a PDF, and tries to make as much sense of it as possible. You can rewrite the existing text (with the same formatting), edit bézier curves, edit gradient fills. You can edit bitmaps on a pixel level. You can see the parameters as…

Photopea is an incredible piece of software. Really thanks for it.

Re: Show HN: Pdf.js Express – PDF annotation, e-signatures, and form filling

#107

Post by ash »

IvanK_net wrote: post #44

I spent about three years building the support for PDF into my graphics editor https://www.Photopea.com . While other editors "add stuff on top of PDF", Photopea "chews through" each byte of a PDF, and tries to make as much sense of it as possible. You can rewrite the existing text (with the same formatting), edit bézier curves, edit gradient fills. You can edit bitmaps on a pixel level. You can see the parameters as…

Awesome feature!

Is there a way to change resolution during editing? When I zoom in in Photopea, I can see individual pixels of text characters. With some PDFs pixels show up sooner, making text barely readable during editing.

Re: Show HN: Pdf.js Express – PDF annotation, e-signatures, and form filling

#108

Post by ghego1 »

chirau wrote: post #72
IvanK_net wrote: post #44

I spent about three years building the support for PDF into my graphics editor https://www.Photopea.com . While other editors "add stuff on top of PDF", Photopea "chews through" each byte of a PDF, and tries to make as much sense of it as possible. You can rewrite the existing text (with the same formatting), edit bézier curves, edit gradient fills. You can edit bitmaps on a pixel level. You can see the parameters as…

I absolutely love Photopea. Thank you for making it. It's my number 1 go to Photoshop alternative. Any chance you will package it for desktop? It would be great for Linux.

As a random user my thought is that as a PWA it's already desktop worthy in any environment, but I must agree that the average user does not know what a PWA is and how to use it.

Perhaps packaging it with electron could be an option, but it's an additional burden (I know by experience) that I'm not so sure is worth it.

Re: Show HN: Pdf.js Express – PDF annotation, e-signatures, and form filling

#109

Post by neumann »

IvanK_net wrote: post #44

I spent about three years building the support for PDF into my graphics editor https://www.Photopea.com . While other editors "add stuff on top of PDF", Photopea "chews through" each byte of a PDF, and tries to make as much sense of it as possible. You can rewrite the existing text (with the same formatting), edit bézier curves, edit gradient fills. You can edit bitmaps on a pixel level. You can see the parameters as…

I had no idea. This is revelation. I am thinking that if more people knew about these features you would have 10 times that a month!
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