Earlier quoted context omitted.
How did you figure that out? Couldn't it be Poppler as well?
I read the output header, and see the Artifex (mutools / gs team) headers
Alrighty, that's a smoking gun.
A free, unlimited online PDF converter with Privacy focus
41–48 of 48 posts
Re: A free, unlimited online PDF converter with Privacy focus
#42This is a side project I started nearly 2 months ago: an online PDF converter at https://quicklypdf.com . Over time, I’ve made various improvements, but I’m still looking for feedback and new users. I’m aware there are many similar tools (e.g., smallpdf, ilovepdf) and competition is tough, but here’s what makes https://quicklypdf.com stand out: 1. Simplicity: No email sign-up, no user account needed. Just upload and…
Has anyone tried compiling a pdf processing suite to wasm, so that we not have to upload anything to servers?
Or doing it in a native, offline app, even an Electron app if you're stuck with JavaScript for libraries?
PDFsam has been my go-to for years, it's a GPL v3 open-source offline (JavaFX) app to split, merge, extract, mix, and rotate pages from PDF files.
WASM apps can accomplish the same tasks without uploading, but fundamentally the user experience is indistinguishable: browse to a webpage, click some buttons, open/drag the file into the website, get converted file back. And even for the one or two highly-technical users that will audit the WASM and network requests to ensure no uploads happen, there's nothing preventing a page that serves the privacy-honoring suite today to swapping for one that surreptitiously uploads the documents tomorrow.
Yes, if you (foolishly/naively) trust OP, there's no leakage between uploading over SSL to his webserver, downloading, and letting his server delete it versus doing it entirely offline. But there's no way to audit that server, and again, even if there were, no way to trust that next week he doesn't get acquired by someone who wants to "unlock the value in his user data" or get a knock on the door from some persuasive men in suits.
Re: A free, unlimited online PDF converter with Privacy focus
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pandoc is awesome for converting text-based formats and markup files, but from my knowledge it doesn’t cover some of the more specialized PDF operations (like merging, splitting, rotating pages, etc.) or handling complex office formats with embedded elements. My tool aims to provide a quick, browser-based way to handle all those PDF tasks—no installation or command-line usage required.
I see, thank you! How do you handle complex office formats with embedded elements? Do you reimplement ODT and other standards?
Thanks for asking! I don’t reimplement those formats myself—LibreOffice does the heavy lifting for parsing and converting office documents with embedded elements. That way, I just leverage an existing engine instead of reinventing the wheel, and it helps preserve formatting as accurately as it can.
Re: A free, unlimited online PDF converter with Privacy focus
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see, thank you! How do you handle complex office formats with embedded elements? Do you reimplement ODT and other standards?
Thanks for asking! I don’t reimplement those formats myself—LibreOffice does the heavy lifting for parsing and converting office documents with embedded elements. That way, I just leverage an existing engine instead of reinventing the wheel, and it helps preserve formatting as accurately as it can.
So the web app actually loads LO components? How about MS Office? Other esoteric formats?
You mention elsewhere that all this can be done offline once the web app has loaded, all these components are pulled in?
Re: A free, unlimited online PDF converter with Privacy focus
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for asking! I don’t reimplement those formats myself—LibreOffice does the heavy lifting for parsing and converting office documents with embedded elements. That way, I just leverage an existing engine instead of reinventing the wheel, and it helps preserve formatting as accurately as it can.
So the web app actually loads LO components? How about MS Office? Other esoteric formats? You mention elsewhere that all this can be done offline once the web app has loaded, all these components are pulled in?
I’m not actually loading LO into the browser—those parts run on the server side, so you still need an internet connection for complex document conversions. The offline functionality mostly covers simpler features like merging PDFs or converting images to PDF with WebAssembly libraries in the browser. For MS Office files or other advanced formats, I rely on LO’s server-side engine to handle parsing and conversion
Re: A free, unlimited online PDF converter with Privacy focus
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
So the web app actually loads LO components? How about MS Office? Other esoteric formats? You mention elsewhere that all this can be done offline once the web app has loaded, all these components are pulled in?
I’m not actually loading LO into the browser—those parts run on the server side, so you still need an internet connection for complex document conversions. The offline functionality mostly covers simpler features like merging PDFs or converting images to PDF with WebAssembly libraries in the browser. For MS Office files or other advanced formats, I rely on LO’s server-side engine to handle parsing and conversion
I see, thank you for taking the time to explain.
Re: A free, unlimited online PDF converter with Privacy focus
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
This looks very good but I would like some more features. 1. Extract bitmaps from PDF (without conversion of any sort) 2. Extract typefaces from PDF 3. Convert to SVG 4. Extract and/or Remove Adobe Illustrator part from PDF 5. Convert all text to vector paths Also, embedded png's and even jpg's can many times be compressed using lossless techniques see what Imageoptim can do for example. Good work though. I have book…
Thanks for the great suggestions! I’ll keep those advanced extraction and vector features in mind, and I’m also looking into enhanced image compression. Really appreciate the support—stay tuned!
also check out jpegli.
https://opensource.googleblog.com/2024/04/introducing-jpegli...
Re: A free, unlimited online PDF converter with Privacy focus
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
This looks very good but I would like some more features. 1. Extract bitmaps from PDF (without conversion of any sort) 2. Extract typefaces from PDF 3. Convert to SVG 4. Extract and/or Remove Adobe Illustrator part from PDF 5. Convert all text to vector paths Also, embedded png's and even jpg's can many times be compressed using lossless techniques see what Imageoptim can do for example. Good work though. I have book…
Thanks for the great suggestions! I’ll keep those advanced extraction and vector features in mind, and I’m also looking into enhanced image compression. Really appreciate the support—stay tuned!
Also, html 2 pdf would be nice too. :-)