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Stirling-PDF: local web application to perform various operations on PDFs

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Re: Stirling-PDF: local web application to perform various operations on PDFs

#81

Post by mlfreeman »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #72
RyanShook wrote: post #12

I have a PDF problem that I thought was simple but has proven difficult to solve and there is no paid solution I’ve found… I want to forward an email to an inbox, have the email body converted into a PDF, and then email that attachment to someone all automatically. I’ve tried Make, Zapier, pdf.co, pdftool, and a few other tools but have had no success. Has anyone solved this problem reliably?

I think Mail.app in macOS can do that with Automator. At the very least, the PDF emails coming from an email address and forward as attachment bits.

Anecdotal bug warning:

Mail.app can "Export as PDF" from the File menu, but I noticed on 13.6 that it exports blank pages if the email is plain text only.

I had to choose to print the emails and then save as PDF from the print dialog.

Re: Stirling-PDF: local web application to perform various operations on PDFs

#82

Post by cmrx64 »

webel0 wrote: post #80
bla3 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PDF had an open spec and oodles of programs supporting it. I don't understand where this comment is coming from.

Adobe acrobat (and maybe reader) is really the only app that fully supports the full PDF spec as understood by the authors of the spec. There are ridiculous parts of the spec that allow support for things like JS, etc.

I don’t think it’s ridiculous to want a scriptable document, especially for complicated forms. Likewise for the other much-dragged features for 3d scenes.

https://pdfa.org/resource/pdf-in-manufacturing/ is a great usecase.

Re: Stirling-PDF: local web application to perform various operations on PDFs

#83

Post by 101008 »

stavros wrote: post #58
101008 wrote: post #18

I still couldn't find a tool for a difficult problem to solve. I have some magazines in PDF, with layouts in two columns, etc. I want them to be transformed into Markdown. I know, it should identify automatically the two columns, different layouts, etc. I am not desiring something perfect - I can fix if ther are some errors, but so far nothing has come with a good result.

Depending on how much you're willing to pay, the OpenAI GPT-Vision API can definitely do this extremely well.

I am willing to pay for this, I only have around ~80 files, with 30 pages each (average). Is there a quick way to test this without wasting too much on the code part?

Re: Stirling-PDF: local web application to perform various operations on PDFs

#84

Post by stavros »

101008 wrote: post #83
stavros wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on how much you're willing to pay, the OpenAI GPT-Vision API can definitely do this extremely well.

I am willing to pay for this, I only have around ~80 files, with 30 pages each (average). Is there a quick way to test this without wasting too much on the code part?

Yes, ChatGPT will do it if you upload photos of the page.

Re: Stirling-PDF: local web application to perform various operations on PDFs

#85

Post by pklee »

101008 wrote: post #18

I still couldn't find a tool for a difficult problem to solve. I have some magazines in PDF, with layouts in two columns, etc. I want them to be transformed into Markdown. I know, it should identify automatically the two columns, different layouts, etc. I am not desiring something perfect - I can fix if ther are some errors, but so far nothing has come with a good result.

Have you considered marker. Does a very good job of turning PDF into markdown. - https://github.com/VikParuchuri/marker

Re: Stirling-PDF: local web application to perform various operations on PDFs

#86

Post by noAnswer »

asdfologist wrote: post #79
Alifatisk wrote: post #61

It's scary how such a widely used format (PDF) is almost in full control by Adobe. I have yet to see a true competitor to Adobe Acrobat. The only one that has come really close is the one that comes built-in for macOS. It's a hidden gem.

I find Chrome's built-in PDF viewer much snappier than Adobe Acrobat.

Sadly I had to install Adobe Reader on my father PC again after he had documents* with formulas. Chrome would calculate the numbers wrong. Everything was off by 10.

*To get reimburses from a union or something.

Re: Stirling-PDF: local web application to perform various operations on PDFs

#87

Post by asdfologist »

noAnswer wrote: post #86
asdfologist wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find Chrome's built-in PDF viewer much snappier than Adobe Acrobat.

Sadly I had to install Adobe Reader on my father PC again after he had documents* with formulas. Chrome would calculate the numbers wrong. Everything was off by 10. *To get reimburses from a union or something.

Whoa, I had no idea PDFs can have formulas.

Re: Stirling-PDF: local web application to perform various operations on PDFs

#88

Post by adamnemecek »

layer8 wrote: post #31
adamnemecek wrote: post #10

I have not looked into this yet but can someone recommend an application for repairing pdfs? For example, I have PDFs where selecting text highlights a line above or below.

That doesn’t sound like the PDF is broken, just that it uses unusual font metrics or line displacements. Tools that could amend this are unlikely to exist. More generally, the PDF format is too flexible to decide what is “broken” or really is as intended, in many cases. It’s l a bit like asking for a tool that repairs “broken” source code where it’s really just the business logic that is broken.

Some ocr no?

Re: Stirling-PDF: local web application to perform various operations on PDFs

#89

Post by KeplerBoy »

webel0 wrote: post #80
bla3 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PDF had an open spec and oodles of programs supporting it. I don't understand where this comment is coming from.

Adobe acrobat (and maybe reader) is really the only app that fully supports the full PDF spec as understood by the authors of the spec. There are ridiculous parts of the spec that allow support for things like JS, etc.

What's wrong with using a sane subset of the spec aka PDF/A?

Re: Stirling-PDF: local web application to perform various operations on PDFs

#90

Post by eyegor »

kleiba wrote: post #13
zikohh wrote: post #7

I like using https://www.pdftool.org/en

What about pdftk?

pdftk has an issue where it corrupts pdfs occasionally in modern windows server versions. Had a weird bug in a random helper service at work that we narrowed down to pdftk mangling documents sometimes. Never looked much into it since it was only a couple of hours to replace it with another tool, and haven't had issues since. I think all we used it for was merging and adding watermark text.
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