Show HN: I made a simple PDF text editor • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: I made a simple PDF text editor

#21

Post by [deleted] » Sun, May 31, 2020, 5:06 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: I made a simple PDF text editor

#22

Post by chipperyman573 » Sun, May 31, 2020, 5:23 AM UTC

dellinspiron wrote: post #4

mhasbini wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried it with a bit complex pdf structure and it worked like charm +1. Would love to learn more about the underlying techniques/tech.

It just calls https://github.com/pdf2htmlEX/pdf2htmlEX on the server.

You could create a file named ; echo 'hi'; #

and it appears as if it would probably run anything you put between ; and # (in this case it will echo hi). Unless the filename is sanitized, which it appears to not be.

Re: Show HN: I made a simple PDF text editor

#23

Post by shashanoid » Sun, May 31, 2020, 5:29 AM UTC

mamurphy wrote: post #16

The website isn't loading anything for me right now.

It's back up again.

Re: Show HN: I made a simple PDF text editor

#24

Post by kyawzazaw » Sun, May 31, 2020, 5:44 AM UTC

I love it. How do I save it?

Re: Show HN: I made a simple PDF text editor

#25

Post by jnlar » Sun, May 31, 2020, 5:58 AM UTC

kyawzazaw wrote: post #24

I love it. How do I save it?

^ this

Re: Show HN: I made a simple PDF text editor

#26

Post by dheera » Sun, May 31, 2020, 6:02 AM UTC

jnlar wrote: post #25

kyawzazaw wrote: post #24

I love it. How do I save it?

^ this

there's a "Save and Download" option if you mouseover to the left.

Re: Show HN: I made a simple PDF text editor

#27

Post by dheera » Sun, May 31, 2020, 6:03 AM UTC

Now I just wish there were a version that could run locally. All the Linux PDF viewers suck -- they can't even save a fill-in PDF form or insert a signature.

Re: Show HN: I made a simple PDF text editor

#28

Post by jack20 » Sun, May 31, 2020, 6:08 AM UTC

dheera wrote: post #27

Now I just wish there were a version that could run locally. All the Linux PDF viewers suck -- they can't even save a fill-in PDF form or insert a signature.

The best editor I’ve found is Qoppa PDF Studio. Although not free it is cross-platform (written in Java) and their licenses are perpetual. They do have a free viewer app which can fill interactive forms and this works on Windows, Mac and Linux: Qoppa PDF Studio Viewer.

Re: Show HN: I made a simple PDF text editor

#29

Post by ray991 » Sun, May 31, 2020, 6:20 AM UTC

I really wish the PDF layout was easier to parse. No matter which library you use, you always run into edge cases which make text selection and extraction an issue on certain files. I was recently extracting financial data from a bank which provides only PDFs and every time they changed the format just a little bit I had to change large parts of my code to extract the transactions I wanted.

Re: Show HN: I made a simple PDF text editor

#30

Post by mrb » Sun, May 31, 2020, 6:31 AM UTC

dheera wrote: post #27

Now I just wish there were a version that could run locally. All the Linux PDF viewers suck -- they can't even save a fill-in PDF form or insert a signature.

I spent an afternoon trying a bunch of them some years ago. I settled on the freeware Master PDF Editor version 4 (version 5 inserts a watermark unless you buy a license). https://code-industry.net/masterpdfeditor/

It is super lightweight and opens any complex PDF. Can insert signatures, can edit anything in the PDF (without changing the font even if the font is embedded in the PDF—as long as all the glyphs you are typing are present in the font), etc. My only complaint is that it won't edit an encrypted PDF, but a one-liner Ghostscript command can remove the encryption automatically: https://gist.github.com/compleatang/6046249