21–30 of 198 posts
The lack of a good PDF editor in Linux has always seemed strange to me, considering the relative frequency of "fiddle with a PDF" tasks like splicing pages and so on. Sure you can do it with Pdftk (or stapler these days), and a mish-mash of pdfinfo, Imagemagick and so on but the GUI programs mostly seem pretty bad offerings considering they're a fairly thin shell around library operations.
Big fan of the idea of offline in-browser tools: works on any device, and "installing" the program is as simple as visiting a webpage or opening the saved HTML file. This one uses WebAssembly, but even that isn't necessary: I wrote a couple of PDF tools for my own use that simply use pdf-lib: https://shreevatsa.net/pdf-pages/ https://shreevatsa.net/pdf-unspread/
"uses WebAssembly" - forgive me but what? How do I know my PDF isn't going to Russia? or China? I mean, I could wireshark it but I'd like to know more about what's in the webassembly. PDF's are sensitive to some organizations. As already stated, some orgs even block online pdf tools for obvious reasons. I'm interested in this but I would be even more so if there was source so I can audit. Since it's running locally i…
> going to Russia? or China? always ironic when ppl say this on websites hosted in the us, a country with the most documented cases of governmental organisation backdooring/spying :/
"uses WebAssembly" - forgive me but what? How do I know my PDF isn't going to Russia? or China? I mean, I could wireshark it but I'd like to know more about what's in the webassembly. PDF's are sensitive to some organizations. As already stated, some orgs even block online pdf tools for obvious reasons. I'm interested in this but I would be even more so if there was source so I can audit. Since it's running locally i…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> going to Russia? or China? always ironic when ppl say this on websites hosted in the us, a country with the most documented cases of governmental organisation backdooring/spying :/
True, though that's because the US has a fairly free press and the Freedom of Information Act.
So most common online pdf tools like smallpdf.com and ilovepdf.com are blocked on office networks for obvious reasons. Can we save this page as .html file on a local folder and run it from browser -- never triggering the firewall / websense blockers etc?
> You do not believe us? We know that websites on the internet promise a lot of stuff. You can try our promise by yourself. Load the webpage, disable your internet connection and start editing PDFs. You are gonna be surprised.
"uses WebAssembly" - forgive me but what? How do I know my PDF isn't going to Russia? or China? I mean, I could wireshark it but I'd like to know more about what's in the webassembly. PDF's are sensitive to some organizations. As already stated, some orgs even block online pdf tools for obvious reasons. I'm interested in this but I would be even more so if there was source so I can audit. Since it's running locally i…
> going to Russia? or China? always ironic when ppl say this on websites hosted in the us, a country with the most documented cases of governmental organisation backdooring/spying :/
That is because other countries do not let you document/publish this information. :-)
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/04/world/europe/russia-censo...
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/08/uks-online-safety-bill...
At least not as much as American courts will allow. The US has it's own censorship laws, but American resistance/choosing to ignore, is quite strong.
> We modify your PDF files in your browser, no upload required. I can do all of this offline for free already with Acrobat or Preview.app on macOS. > We try to make up some of the cost that we pay for hosting this service by employing a small amount of ads on our website. Why?
The free version of Acrobat is bloated, full of spam, and can’t actually do all of this (eg splitting and merging)
Reordering pages, splitting, joining all worked in the free version, and it's not bloated. Windows only though. I think they might watermark the output when using the Save option directly, but you can get round that using Print to PDF.
Their site looks a bit "scammy", but it's actually decent software.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You do not believe us? We know that websites on the internet promise a lot of stuff. You can try our promise by yourself. Load the webpage, disable your internet connection and start editing PDFs. You are gonna be surprised.
The question is about being able to load in the first place. Can it be loaded in one machine, saved , and then opened in the browser of another machine?