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…
Show HN: I made a simple PDF text editor
61–70 of 78 posts
Re: Show HN: I made a simple PDF text editor
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 :(
I don't agree with you that it sucks.
Re: Show HN: I made a simple PDF text editor
#63I 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
#64So 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 you…
What's so hard about PDF text extraction? https://www.filingdb.com/pdf-text-extraction
In a nutshell, PDF is fundamentally different than MS Word: it's a standard for visual layout, without notions of paragraphs or even words.
As OP said, it doesn't mean the tool is useless. It could quite often come handy for myself.
Re: Show HN: I made a simple PDF text editor
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
#66So 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 you…
I learned a lot from this article (discovered on HN I think): What's so hard about PDF text extraction? https://www.filingdb.com/pdf-text-extraction In a nutshell, PDF is fundamentally different than MS Word: it's a standard for visual layout, without notions of paragraphs or even words. As OP said, it doesn't mean the tool is useless. It could quite often come handy for myself.
Re: Show HN: I made a simple PDF text editor
#67Congratulations 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
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
I learned a lot from this article (discovered on HN I think): What's so hard about PDF text extraction? https://www.filingdb.com/pdf-text-extraction In a nutshell, PDF is fundamentally different than MS Word: it's a standard for visual layout, without notions of paragraphs or even words. As OP said, it doesn't mean the tool is useless. It could quite often come handy for myself.
One of the weirdest things I've seen is a PDF where the text is complete gibberish if you copy paste, but perfect if you export it to HTML or Word in Acrobat. Never figured out how or why that might happen.
Re: Show HN: I made a simple PDF text editor
#69Hi, I bootstrapped this simple website. Let me know what you think :)
Re: Show HN: I made a simple PDF text editor
#70So 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 you…
Figuring out more global properties like multi-column layouts and reflowing text is a much harder problem.