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

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

#41

Post by niknikson » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 11:29 PM UTC

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 in mind for some organization the value created from this product will far outweigh the final price tag.

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

#42

Post by niknikson » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 11:31 PM UTC

transitivebs wrote: post #5

I'm all about the open core business model.. but are you guys affiliated with the core pdf.js team? $440 / month is pretty hard to swallow. I love that you guys included a build vs buy section, but I think it's going to be difficult to land clients at this price point because higher end clients are more likely to choose the build vs buy option. Anyhow, the product itself looks well structured. Congrats & best of luck…

Thanks for the feedback! We are not part of the core pdf.js team. In regards to pricing we found that for some companies creating their own viewer requires a fair amount of upfront resources - after trying to create their own viewers they realized the time to build and maintain was not economical. The other big consideration is the opportunity cost of sinking developer resources into a viewer that is not a core differentiator.

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

#43

Post by niknikson » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 11:32 PM UTC

williamstein wrote: post #21

williamstein wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 whet…

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

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

#44

Post by IvanK_net » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 11:35 PM UTC

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 CSS or export it into an SVG.

Also, it is free. People open about 150,000 PDF files a month in it, but I hope it will get more popular in the future.

Demo PDF: https://www.photopea.com/api/img2/WEBSITE-ZLONIN-uprava.pdf

Photopea: https://www.photopea.com#%7B%22files%22:%5B%22https://www.ph... (press T and click into the text to edit it)

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

#45

Post by niknikson » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 11:37 PM UTC

battery_cowboy wrote: post #4

Do you just use the open source PDF.js engine or do you contribute back to the project with fixes and features?

Our intention with PDF.js Express is to provide a solution that meets a market need for a PDF.js viewer with out-of-the-box features. Building this viewer that wraps around the PDF.js engine was no small task and we do hope that it will provide some value to developers. With that said, our goal is to grow usage of PDF.js Express and the PDF.js project. Ultimately the more developers we can bring to the platform the better it is for us and for the open-source community. We’ve started by creating articles that should help others get started with vanilla pdf.js: How to Build a PDF.js Viewer in React + Typescript [1] and How to Add Zoom Controls to a PDF.js Viewer [2]. We plan on creating more of these guides and now that we've launched this product, we will be looking to help move the pdf.js project forward.

[1] https://pdfjs.express/blog/building-pdfjs-viewer [2] https://pdfjs.express/blog/build-pdfjs-viewer-ui

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

#46

Post by patrickaljord » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 11:38 PM UTC

williamstein wrote: post #21

williamstein wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 whet…

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"?

PDF.js Express is not open source.

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

#47

Post by niknikson » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 11:44 PM UTC

phonon wrote: post #30

robocop2018 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's open source.

Are you affiliated with PDFTron, the company that created this? Your posting history suggests you are. Please disclose if so.

Yes, I am employed by PDFTron. I've been leading this project since early 2019.

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

#48

Post by saradhi » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 11:50 PM UTC

niknikson wrote: post #39

mmckelvy wrote: post #10

RE: the "Extract & parse content" feature, does this mean you can parse and extract data from PDF documents like bank statements or invoices?

We can extract text and form data -- we'll try to get some documentation around that in the next week or so.

"can" - easier said than done, especially tables.

I don't see it in the Demo. Did I miss it ?!

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

#49

Post by phonon » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 11:53 PM UTC

niknikson wrote: post #40

phonon wrote: post #11

The form fill demo only prints a bitmap. Is that intentional? The quality is completely unacceptable.

Yes, unfortunately the printing is done with a bitmap because of the lack of browser APIs to print scalable canvas content. It looks like our default print quality is a bit on the low side though, so we'll probably change that. You can use the API to increase the quality as well https://pdfjs.express/api/WebViewerInstance.html#setPrintQua... , for example instance.setPrintQuality(2).

Well, capturing a 72 dpi screenshot and converting to JPEG (which more or less seems to be what you're doing) kind of makes the form filling pointless. Fillable PDF forms exist so they can be printed (or saved and then printed, which I don't think you have an option for either?)

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

#50

Post by niknikson » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 11:55 PM UTC

akdarrah wrote: post #13

Hi 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@dropki…

Thanks for your feedback and your questions Adam! PDF.js Express has been in development since early 2019. We have a number of customers signed up and using it in production, and so far the feedback has been really positive. Your website looks great.