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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

#101
post #78

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.

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

Agreed. Also, possibly the most commonly used reader is pdf.js, the FOSS component used by at least some major web browsers.

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

#102

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.

It’s incredible to me that not only has Preview.app been the best non-Adobe way to use PDF’s for decades now and only on macOS (perhaps because NextStep, its roots, used PostScript natively?) but that Linux actually also seems to have better tooling in this space than Windows (where you’re pretty much stuck with Adobe Reader if you want a free solution)

> Preview.app been the best non-Adobe way to use PDF’s for decades now

Where is all this stuff coming from? Why would you say Preview is the best? Foxit? Nitro? Their are endless PDF applications much more powerful and capable, some designed for professionals.

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

#104

I'm looking for a tool other than adobe pdf reader that lets me upload an image file of my signature to sign a pdf. Most of the tools I found let me draw a signature and I can't draw my signature on a track pad or with the mouse

Xournal++ does what you are looking for.

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

#105

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.

What about Okular?

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

#106
post #9
post #2

Nice. I've been looking for something like this to self-host, to avoid my partner uploading sensitive documents to random PDF manipulation websites. Any better alternatives I should be considering?

If you happen to be on macOS, the Preview app does an absurd number of things to PDFs, and it does it well. To be honest I'm always surprised it isn't highlighted more by Apple, it's a great tool that pretty much always just works. You can split files, join them, rotate, add signatures, drawings, annotations, redact sections, etc. The feature list is long, especially considering that by the name of the application yo…

> to be honest I'm always surprised it isn't highlighted more by Apple

Probably because its not so intuitive, I have to google how to use some of the advanced features of Preview.

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

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can embed Javascript in PDFs

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

#108

I'm looking for a tool other than adobe pdf reader that lets me upload an image file of my signature to sign a pdf. Most of the tools I found let me draw a signature and I can't draw my signature on a track pad or with the mouse

PDF Expert is the best I’ve found that also does this, and while expensive, is a really robust and well done program. PDFpen also has this ability.

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

#109
Bluebeam PDF has an amazing Stapler tool. I can have a job that combines various pages of various PDF files and does a few other operations on them. When time for print comes, I run the job and output a PDF. For a kind of work that has to frequently put together various pages of various PDFs repeatedly to send as draft for review, this is a tool that makes life easy. https://support.bluebeam.com/articles/revu-21-revu-configure...

However, I have yet to find an equivalent tool from any other PDF application. And that includes this one.

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

#110

I'm looking for a tool other than adobe pdf reader that lets me upload an image file of my signature to sign a pdf. Most of the tools I found let me draw a signature and I can't draw my signature on a track pad or with the mouse

I use GIMP for that, and if I need it to look like printed-signed-scanned some ImageMagick incantation [0] or https://lookscanned.io/

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30024658

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