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Show HN: I made a simple PDF text editor

simpdf.com

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

#51

Post by lowwave »

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…

Inkscape to Illustrator is what GIMP is to Photoshop.

Glade someone brought it. For most common tasks is there really a point even using Photoshop and Illustrator now days? Especially with the cloud direction they are moving towards.

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

#52

Post by AnssiH »

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?

Even before issuance? No such requirement in Finland at least, so clearly not an EU level requirement.

The Finnish VAT Act does, however, require that companies sending and receiving invoices ensure that the mandatory invoice data is not modified after issuance (209 g §).

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

#53

Post by maaarghk »

lowwave wrote: post #51
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…

Inkscape to Illustrator is what GIMP is to Photoshop. Glade someone brought it. For most common tasks is there really a point even using Photoshop and Illustrator now days? Especially with the cloud direction they are moving towards.

because GIMP sucks, maybe, and also because most people are required to interoperate with the rest of the profession. i am very disappointed that photoshop et al cannot be run under WINE :(

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

#55

Post by saradhi »

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 agree to this, it's the same with insurance companies too when resolving claims. Feels like they certainly want to make the extraction look complicated for an unknown reason. Not often and not all companies but edge cases

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

#56

Post by corty »

killerpopiller wrote: post #43
punnerud wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And that is the new, more relaxed situation. At first, digital invoices were required to be signed with a qualified signature, i.e. spend a few hundred quid a year on certificates by a few select CAs (only the usual german "suspects" could qualify due to intentionally onerous requirements).

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

#57

Post by flak48 »

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…

But the candidate's expected salary can be anything, right?

Or is the fact that the company is going ahead with interviewing them, a sign that they may be willing to pay that figure?

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

#58

Post by jfk13 »

So it claims to

> Edit pdf like a word doc while preserving structure and format.

While I'm sure there are cases where this works pretty well and can be very useful, it may be worth noting that -- just like every other tool in this space -- there will be many PDFs where it simply can't work. It'll be hugely dependent on exactly how the PDF-generating application/tool went about things.

One simple example: suppose your PDF uses a specific font (not one of the standards like Times or Helvetica), so the PDF-generating tool embedded the font. (This is common.) Further, suppose the generating tool embedded a re-encoded subset of the font, including only the glyphs that were actually required. (This is also common.)

Now, suppose the edit you wish to make involves adding a character that was not present in the original document -- let's say you want to change the date from "May" to "June". But the original document contained no occurrences of capital J (in this particular font/style), and so the capital J glyph is not present in the embedded font. No "PDF text editor" can get around this; the best you can hope for is a "J" in some fallback (such as Times) that may look terrible alongside the intended custom font.

And as for edits that would require reflowing multiple lines of text, maybe inserting a new paragraph in the middle of a page, etc.... not much chance of this working out well.

Yes, a tool like this can (in many cases) make it possible to make minor changes (perhaps fixing a typo or updating a word here and there). To suggest that it can "edit pdf like a word doc" seems patently false to me.

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

#59

Post by Scarblac »

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 old advice is still true - the best way to get help with Linux problems online is to claim it can't do something :-)

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

#60

Post by jfk13 »

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…

> When I tried to replace the To party's name, the text came back partly bold and partly not.

Most likely, the PDF used a subsetted embedded bold font, so it only worked for letters that happened to be present in the original text; any new letters were missing from the font and you got a fallback.

Just one of many reasons why a tool like this is the wrong way to approach pretty much any document creation/editing task, because PDF is the wrong document format to use for these purposes.

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