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I built an online PDF management platform using open-source software

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Re: I built an online PDF management platform using open-source software

#41
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like if there's more details on the open source software used.

i used open source solutions to built it, like libreoffice, ghostscript, google's tesseract and a bunch of other tools, Google's Tesseract: https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tesseract

I’m surprised everyone is using Tesseract. It was the only game in town 10 years ago, and it’s Ok on cleaned aligned data, but there are a few newer ones like EasyOCR [0] that can deal with much less organized text (albeit more slowly)

[0] https://github.com/JaidedAI/EasyOCR

Re: I built an online PDF management platform using open-source software

#42
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. No (F)OSS licenses to be found on the page itself. Sus. Perhaps it is simply injecting remote root vulnerabilities into the PDF's.

the web app i.e the front end part is next.js and typescript mostly, the landing page is built using astro.js, and the back end is heavily python, flask and some javascript for web-to-pdf and markdown-to-pdf, the rest is mostly python

just curious: what do you use to convert web pages to pdf?

Re: I built an online PDF management platform using open-source software

#43
post #36
post #23

Unfortunately, most of the PDF work I do involves things I’m not uploading to a service - ever. I don’t care if they’re “deleted immediately after processing” - they left my control. This sort of software would be great if it were 100% offline. This isn’t just a niche issue either: this is a very real consideration for any corporate user. More companies are taking data loss and security issues seriously, which often…

In that case, you can use https://www.pdftool.org/ , which runs in the browser but offline and never uploads your files to any server.

How can I really know that as a random user

Re: I built an online PDF management platform using open-source software

#45
I am always surprised there is absolutely nothing like the Adobe Acrobat Pro on the open source space.

There are a collection of open source tools, everyone which is its own interface that does a subset of things.

The alternative, which is an online service, it is not great...

Re: I built an online PDF management platform using open-source software

#46
post #43
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that case, you can use https://www.pdftool.org/ , which runs in the browser but offline and never uploads your files to any server.

How can I really know that as a random user

Unplug your network cable when you use it.

Re: I built an online PDF management platform using open-source software

#47

I am always surprised there is absolutely nothing like the Adobe Acrobat Pro on the open source space. There are a collection of open source tools, everyone which is its own interface that does a subset of things. The alternative, which is an online service, it is not great...

PDF is harder than most people think due to its variety. While there might be a tool for every job, "one for all" is hard to do.

Re: I built an online PDF management platform using open-source software

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the web app i.e the front end part is next.js and typescript mostly, the landing page is built using astro.js, and the back end is heavily python, flask and some javascript for web-to-pdf and markdown-to-pdf, the rest is mostly python

just curious: what do you use to convert web pages to pdf?

Not op, but I've had good experience with WeasyPrint. I use it for generating PDF invoices: I create a HTML invoice from a template, WeasyPrint turns it into a PDF document. It handles CSS, images, custom fonts, etc.

A neat trick to convert HTML to PDF in a browser environment is to open a new browser window, load the HTML in it, and call print() on it, like here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/33890644/5821. May be OK for an internal tool.

Re: I built an online PDF management platform using open-source software

#49
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can I really know that as a random user

Unplug your network cable when you use it.

And it stores it in local storage and uploads it using a service worker later when I'm online?

Re: I built an online PDF management platform using open-source software

#50
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unplug your network cable when you use it.

And it stores it in local storage and uploads it using a service worker later when I'm online?

Use incognito mode then close that window before reconnecting online?
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