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Show HN: I made a simple PDF text editor

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

#41

Post by J_cst »

punnerud wrote: post #32
gnicholas wrote: post #31

I tried using this with an invoice that I'd created using invoice-generator.com, in the hopes that it would be an easier way to make new invoices. When I tried to replace the To party's name, the text came back partly bold and partly not. There was also a weird overlay on an email address on the bottom that said something about email address protected. Would love to have a tool like this that worked for making new in…

In EU it is illegal to edit an invoice outside a program that keep track of all changes, bill number etc. Not the same in US?

Source?

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

#42

Post by distances »

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.

Which ones can't? At least the default viewer KDE ships definitely can do this, I use it all the time.

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

#43

Post by killerpopiller »

punnerud wrote: post #32
gnicholas wrote: post #31

I tried using this with an invoice that I'd created using invoice-generator.com, in the hopes that it would be an easier way to make new invoices. When I tried to replace the To party's name, the text came back partly bold and partly not. There was also a weird overlay on an email address on the bottom that said something about email address protected. Would love to have a tool like this that worked for making new in…

In EU it is illegal to edit an invoice outside a program that keep track of all changes, bill number etc. Not the same in US?

at least for Germany: digital invoices shall be processed in a way that manipulation can be ruled out (GoBD). Hence companies use special scanner and document management systems which document the Revisionssicherheit.

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

#44

Post by michaelmrose »

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.

There are actually a plethora of choices that are great for what most people are doing namely viewing documents. Forms and annotations are also supported by a number of choices.

Have you tried Okular for example? It supports filling and saving forms and annotations. You can draw a signature with the freehand annotation. This works great with a touchscreen not so great with a mouse.

It also supports a plethora of useful features and looks and works great out of the box.

It actually CAN insert a signature via its Stamp annotation but unfortunately this doesn't produce an annotation that works outside of okular due to a current limitation in poppler which is why all pdf readers based on it won't have that feature.

Here is the 10 year old bug that nobody is working on that would presumably make it possible for any reader to have this feature.

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/poppler/poppler/-/issues/522

I think it seems like a major missing feature for you but perhaps hasn't received much attention because if you use it to sign business documents you yourself may use this future a lot whereas 99% of users who are consuming documents or exporting them from word processing documents don't know this feature exists nor need it.

Maybe people ought to put money towards a bounty for someone to implement it?

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

#45

Post by x32n23nr »

Congratulations for the launch. Looks nice. For those that are cautious uploading sensitive PDFs, you can always just open them with Inkscape, and start editing pretty much anything in a document.

PS: I was once forwarded an application for someone who was supposed to replace me, and I had to interview them. The expected salary was hidden by placing a gray rectangle over it. I removed it using inkscape and saw the expected salary was 30% higher than what I made.

Inkscape Link: https://inkscape.org/

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

#46

Post by Flashtoo »

x32n23nr wrote: post #45

Congratulations for the launch. Looks nice. For those that are cautious uploading sensitive PDFs, you can always just open them with Inkscape, and start editing pretty much anything in a document. PS: I was once forwarded an application for someone who was supposed to replace me, and I had to interview them. The expected salary was hidden by placing a gray rectangle over it. I removed it using inkscape and saw the ex…

I'm curious how that interviewing situation worked out for you. Did you use it to negotiate a higher salary there or at your next employer? No pressure if you don't feel like sharing that, of course.

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

#47

Post by x32n23nr »

Flashtoo wrote: post #46
x32n23nr wrote: post #45

Congratulations for the launch. Looks nice. For those that are cautious uploading sensitive PDFs, you can always just open them with Inkscape, and start editing pretty much anything in a document. PS: I was once forwarded an application for someone who was supposed to replace me, and I had to interview them. The expected salary was hidden by placing a gray rectangle over it. I removed it using inkscape and saw the ex…

I'm curious how that interviewing situation worked out for you. Did you use it to negotiate a higher salary there or at your next employer? No pressure if you don't feel like sharing that, of course.

Once you put an employee in a position where the only way to get a salary hike is to change employers, there is no way back - you change employers. It worked out well for me, and AFAIK the role is not filled yet in the previous company.

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

#48

Post by dmoo »

ray991 wrote: post #29

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.

I’m sure you’ve looked at it but I have a lot of success with pdftotext -layout
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