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Show HN: Free, in-browser PDF editor

breezepdf.com

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Re: Show HN: Free, in-browser PDF editor

#91

Post by cbracketdash »

philjohnson wrote: post #29
cbracketdash wrote: post #10

Scrolling is broken. Also for modals, it'd be nice to be able to click anywhere on the screen to close it (or pressing Esc) rather than just pressing "cancel". Also for text, different fonts is a necessary requirement (and bolding, italics, underline, etc). Also, it seems like I can't edit text boxes after creating them... I can't even tell if I've selected the text box (an outline would be nice). Also the confirm mo…

Scrolling is now fixed! And just updated so that if you click outside modal it closes. Working on update now so you can edit text you've already added. Agree with you regarding fonts, bolding underlining etc. and having instant page deletion with undo/redo. Will definitely be adding soon. Fixed the arrow closing the preview pane so that the page stays centered. I plan on adding a lot more features so that it's on par…

You're very welcome! Thanks for building this out! I look forward to using it :)

Re: Show HN: Free, in-browser PDF editor

#92

Post by denfromufa »

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #88
denfromufa wrote: post #87

My wife hit a wall trying to upload a hefty PDF - every “shrink” tool we tried barely compressed the size, and some even made it larger! Frustrated by the state of PDF compressors (looking at you, Adobe), I turned to LLMs - Claude, Deepseek, and Gemini came up short, but OpenAI’s o4-mini saved the day with a perfect solution. That inspired me to build pdfmini: a tiny, open‑source, client‑side HTML app that crushes PD…

This gave me an idea. You seem to be the right person to talk to. Here is my workflow. Have a bunch of PDFs and images I need to combine. I go to tools.PDF24.org, Merge pdfs, then compress them, then more compress them because of size limits, then add or remove pages. Then add page numbers. These are multiple steps. Could we have a way of defining these terms at start, either textual or no-code-like or something wher…

If you can define this as a feature request to pdfmini, please submit it on github, e.g. drag-and-drop flow builder

Re: Show HN: Free, in-browser PDF editor

#93

Post by philjohnson »

Beijinger wrote: post #90
2Gkashmiri wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This gave me an idea. You seem to be the right person to talk to. Here is my workflow. Have a bunch of PDFs and images I need to combine. I go to tools.PDF24.org, Merge pdfs, then compress them, then more compress them because of size limits, then add or remove pages. Then add page numbers. These are multiple steps. Could we have a way of defining these terms at start, either textual or no-code-like or something wher…

#!/bin/bash # Convert images to PDF img2pdf *.jpg -o images.pdf # Merge PDFs pdfunite file1.pdf file2.pdf images.pdf merged.pdf # Compress gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dPDFSETTINGS=/ebook \ -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dBATCH -sOutputFile=compressed.pdf merged.pdf # Remove unwanted pages (e.g., page 3) pdftk compressed.pdf cat 1-2 4-end output final.pdf # Add page numbers pdfjam final.pdf --outfile final_numb…

I'll be adding compression support for BreezePDF, so this can be done in a click

Re: Show HN: Free, in-browser PDF editor

#94

Post by denfromufa »

Beijinger wrote: post #90
2Gkashmiri wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This gave me an idea. You seem to be the right person to talk to. Here is my workflow. Have a bunch of PDFs and images I need to combine. I go to tools.PDF24.org, Merge pdfs, then compress them, then more compress them because of size limits, then add or remove pages. Then add page numbers. These are multiple steps. Could we have a way of defining these terms at start, either textual or no-code-like or something wher…

#!/bin/bash # Convert images to PDF img2pdf *.jpg -o images.pdf # Merge PDFs pdfunite file1.pdf file2.pdf images.pdf merged.pdf # Compress gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dPDFSETTINGS=/ebook \ -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dBATCH -sOutputFile=compressed.pdf merged.pdf # Remove unwanted pages (e.g., page 3) pdftk compressed.pdf cat 1-2 4-end output final.pdf # Add page numbers pdfjam final.pdf --outfile final_numb…

This is very cool, are all these command-line tools open-source?

Re: Show HN: Free, in-browser PDF editor

#95

Post by 2Gkashmiri »

Beijinger wrote: post #90
2Gkashmiri wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This gave me an idea. You seem to be the right person to talk to. Here is my workflow. Have a bunch of PDFs and images I need to combine. I go to tools.PDF24.org, Merge pdfs, then compress them, then more compress them because of size limits, then add or remove pages. Then add page numbers. These are multiple steps. Could we have a way of defining these terms at start, either textual or no-code-like or something wher…

#!/bin/bash # Convert images to PDF img2pdf *.jpg -o images.pdf # Merge PDFs pdfunite file1.pdf file2.pdf images.pdf merged.pdf # Compress gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dPDFSETTINGS=/ebook \ -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dBATCH -sOutputFile=compressed.pdf merged.pdf # Remove unwanted pages (e.g., page 3) pdftk compressed.pdf cat 1-2 4-end output final.pdf # Add page numbers pdfjam final.pdf --outfile final_numb…

You know what. I will share my script in the morning.

I used scantailor go scan a book. That gave out tif files.

So I built a script to convert them to jpg, then merge into PDF. Then OCR and add the text layer on PDF. Then compress.

I know this for a niche automation..... web OTOH where normies reside and are scared by terminal, it wont work.

Been using pdftk for years now but im only person who can use it in my office.

Re: Show HN: Free, in-browser PDF editor

#96

Post by cbracketdash »

VisualByte wrote: post #40

I do not trust the privacy here...

All the requests made through DevTools seem to only load PDF scripts. I didn't detect any POST requests.

Of course, there is no guarantee that this will remain... regularly checking network activity before uploading a private document isn't too hard

Re: Show HN: Free, in-browser PDF editor

#97

Post by philjohnson »

ugh123 wrote: post #89

Is this open source? I think the world could use a good free and open 'utility' app for PDFs. Its hard to do digital business these days without even moderate features needed in PDF editing without paying Adobe or non-free online services - JUST TO EDIT A DOCUMENT.

It's not open source at the moment, but I would consider it. Just have to think through it as once you go open-source it doesn't go over too well to go back. So, if I want to open source it, I want to be sure.

I'm sure some might like to modify it, though I think probably most people aren't developers and wouldn't want to.

There's no VCs or anything behind this, just me, and my costs are just a VPS to render the page, and all processing happens on the local device. So I have no reason to change any currently free features to ever not be free.

Re: Show HN: Free, in-browser PDF editor

#98

Post by cbracketdash »

fortran77 wrote: post #33
Labo333 wrote: post #27

Nice! Recently I had the need for pdf censoring, aka not adding black rectangles but actually removing the content underneath and I still haven't found a suitable tool. Any recommendation? Or even python library to do it?

Do you want the black rectangle and the content removed? There are "redaction" tools. https://smallpdf.com/redact-pdf

This likely uploads your content to their servers

Re: Show HN: Free, in-browser PDF editor

#99

Post by tanepiper »

Are you planning to open source or make a product? We're working with headless content solutions, and despite our best efforts to digitise everything - people on the floor still need physical copies of things.

Hooking up a good PDF editor for output is hard, but this is a nice solution.

Re: Show HN: Free, in-browser PDF editor

#100

Post by philjohnson »

tanepiper wrote: post #99

Are you planning to open source or make a product? We're working with headless content solutions, and despite our best efforts to digitise everything - people on the floor still need physical copies of things. Hooking up a good PDF editor for output is hard, but this is a nice solution.

No plans to open source at the moment, but I might consider it. I just added a Subscribe button to support further development of the software and get access to premium features.

Which features (if any) that if added would you be willing to pay for?

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