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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

#211

Post by wolverine876 »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #146
wolverine876 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

"Best" isn't necessarily the same as "has the most features". I think many people find that Preview.app does everything they ever wanted to do with PDFs. It really is surprisingly capable. It's also fast and far less convoluted than most PDF tools I have seen. And of course it comes free with every Mac, which often makes it "best" in terms of value for money. It doesn't help that many PDF editors (including the two y…

> many PDF editors (including the two you mentioned) are full of the most ridiculous pricing shenanigans.

What shenanigans? On one computer, we have a 15 year old version of Foxit running as good as new, no further licensing needed.

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

#212

Post by nip »

Alifatisk wrote: post #199
nip wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://simplePDF.eu will be the closest « Preview-like » experience on Linux (and any OS really). It’s local only (the document you load and data you fill in never leave the browser) and free Disclosure: I’m the developer behind it

Any plans on implementing redaction?

If the background is white, it’s already possible: https://simplepdf.eu/help/faq/how-to-add-background

For other colors, it’s in the backlog!

(I’d aiming to automatically provide the correct color by inspecting pixels within the area to redact, to make it as simple as possible)

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

#214

Post by OrangeMusic »

klysm wrote: post #203
mrfumier wrote: post #130

But... why? WHY?? Why would I run a docker container, a webserver, start a browser, navigate webpages... just to do some operations on a pdf locally? A few KiloBytes native program like PDFtk ( https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/ ) does the job perfectly. I don't understand what is the point of bloating softwares like this. Not even speaking of the very bad consequences for the planet.

The point of the bloat is that web is by far the easiest way to create a cross platform UI. It’s far from ideal but that’s the world we live in.

If it's a question of UI only, Electron would be less bloated than a webserver? Arguably?

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

#215

Post by pseingatl »

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.

There's this: https://www.cp.eng.chula.ac.th/~somchai/cut2col/ Free and it works pretty well.

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

#216

Post by throwaway2037 »

mrfumier wrote: post #130

But... why? WHY?? Why would I run a docker container, a webserver, start a browser, navigate webpages... just to do some operations on a pdf locally? A few KiloBytes native program like PDFtk ( https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/ ) does the job perfectly. I don't understand what is the point of bloating softwares like this. Not even speaking of the very bad consequences for the planet.

> A few KiloBytes native program like PDFtk

Is this binary statically linked? If not, I am sure the Tk libs are huge. Not as big as Chromium/Electron and friends, but large.

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

#217

Post by throwaway2037 »

jraph wrote: post #168
ornornor wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A web app makes it cross platform. If you have a homelab, deploy it only once for every client. And PDFtk doesn’t do annotations afaik which is a huge pain point on Linux (at least for me) because there are no applications that I know of to easily do things that are trivial on OSX like adding text or hand drawn signatures to PDFs. Masterpdf can do it but with a watermark and some limitations. Maybe it doesn’t suit yo…

Xournal++ was already mentionned, Okular also has annotations and I think adding hand drawn signatures. Though I welcome (new) work in this area.

Xournal++ is amazing for annotating PDFs. I use it to file taxes where fillable PDFs and e-filing don't work as expected.

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

#218

Post by throwaway2037 »

subtra3t wrote: post #192
ornornor wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edge the browser?

Yes, its pdf editor is very good.

Woah. Very cool. Is this something specific to Microsoft Edge, or also available in other Chromium variants, including Chrome?

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

#219

Post by throwaway2037 »

izacus wrote: post #172
simondotau wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PDF has been a free-as-in-beer standard since 1993 and a free-as-in-speech ISO standard since 2008. The reality is that PDF is open, reliable, useful, feature rich, and widely accepted. It has no serious competitors. There's a reason why, unlike raster image formats, there aren't any serious competitors. The thing to realise about printed page file formats is that even if you set aside all of the silly "multimedia" a…

Especially since there's a PDF/A standard subset for archival, which makes those documents readable decades after any other format would rot.

> PDF/A standard

Yes, the United States Library of Congress makes heavy use. I imagine their evaluation process to select a digital archive format is very tough!

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

#220

Post by fauigerzigerk »

wolverine876 wrote: post #211
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Best" isn't necessarily the same as "has the most features". I think many people find that Preview.app does everything they ever wanted to do with PDFs. It really is surprisingly capable. It's also fast and far less convoluted than most PDF tools I have seen. And of course it comes free with every Mac, which often makes it "best" in terms of value for money. It doesn't help that many PDF editors (including the two y…

> many PDF editors (including the two you mentioned) are full of the most ridiculous pricing shenanigans. What shenanigans? On one computer, we have a 15 year old version of Foxit running as good as new, no further licensing needed.

Pages and pages of dark patterns with the sole purpose of misleading people into buying some "plan" that nobody could possibly want at prices more expensive than the entire Microsoft Office suite.
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