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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

#71

Post by blitmap »

jfk13 wrote: post #58

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 you…

Would be neat to do font recognition against available web fonts to try go find a match, then convert the web font to truetype or whatever format the pdf used, and re-embed the front.

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

#73

Post by gnicholas »

jfk13 wrote: post #60
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…

> 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.

Wow, that seems to be exactly right, based on which letters were bold and which weren't. Very interesting!

To the folks downthread who asked about the legality of modifying invoices, I was trying to use one invoice as a template for a second invoice. Most things are the same, so it would have been great if I could have made a simple change!

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

#75

Post by pacamara619 »

maaarghk wrote: post #53
lowwave wrote: post #51

Earlier 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 :(

It doesn't suck. It has nearly all features you could possibly need, and then some. People who expect GIMP to be identical to Photoshop suck.

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

#76

Post by lowwave »

maaarghk wrote: post #53
lowwave wrote: post #51

Earlier 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 :(

For sure. If one (and myself included) use the to nicety of Photoshop Illustrator GIMP's user interface is left much to be desired. However, from a open platform perspective, do I really want many hours of editing work to be tight to a cloud platform to a proprietary format?

Think not just about now or one year from now, but 10 years, 20, 50 years from now, 100 years? Open format and open source software is much desired for creation based software. There is the paradox of the making money for the open source software, and I don't have an answer for that. Seems like some kind of sliding scale payment will be needed for these software. May be also some kind of sliding scale payment for eventual money earned form the software up to a limit.

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

#77

Post by Tsiklon »

mehrdadn wrote: post #66
saint-loup wrote: post #64

Earlier 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.

I read somewhere (likely here) that this oddness comes from the idea that PDF is a way of structuring documents for print first, and presentation in a user interface is secondary.

That the rendering of the document on screen is paramount as opposed to ability to manipulate the text itself. "These characters should be displayed at this position in the document precisely"

It would make sense that exporting the document as HTML or Word would make this easier - as these document formats have different goals.

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

#78

Post by alok-g »

citizenkeen wrote: post #67
lowwave wrote: post #51

Earlier 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.

I've been incredibly happy with the Affinity Suite. Smoother and cleaner than GIMP/Inkscape/Scribus, and a desktop app for $50 ($25 during Covid), which makes it more palatable to me than the Adobe options.

Is this referring to Affinity Designer, to Affinity Publisher, or a bundle of the three apps (Photos, Designer, Publisher)?
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