[deleted]
Launch HN: Onedoc (YC W24) – A better way to create PDFs
181–190 of 191 posts
Re: Launch HN: Onedoc (YC W24) – A better way to create PDFs
#182The main issue is conflating templating and pdf generation. Using html to pdf solutions allow to do the templating in html, where it is pretty much a solved issue. And as many said, headless chrome is a robust html to pdf solution, even though it feel like a hack. But, yeah, there seems to be a lack of awareness about these options within corporations. So, kudos to you for addressing a genuine problem!
There are also a few good options in a lot of languages for streamlining chromium use.
In C# I'd look to use the Playwright library or perhaps even embed chromium via CerSharp if I were trying to avoid extra processes.
Re: Launch HN: Onedoc (YC W24) – A better way to create PDFs
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
We felt the same, and that's precisely why we built this tool! The key, as you mentioned, is fidelity, especially for designing complex layouts. We hope to bring something new and valuable to the table. And yes, documents are central to many industries including government, legal, banking etc.
Can you directly answer whether your tool generates tagged PDFs? Of course, you can't guarantee that the resulting document is 100% compliant because you can't enforce that the input is valid, but are you at least outputting a complete tag tree with as much semantics as possible given the input?
pdfHTML from iText does it (you can create PDF/UA-1, PDF/UA-2, and PDF/A documents from it), without using any external engine. You can even add your custom processing.
Re: Launch HN: Onedoc (YC W24) – A better way to create PDFs
#184The main issue is conflating templating and pdf generation. Using html to pdf solutions allow to do the templating in html, where it is pretty much a solved issue. And as many said, headless chrome is a robust html to pdf solution, even though it feel like a hack. But, yeah, there seems to be a lack of awareness about these options within corporations. So, kudos to you for addressing a genuine problem!
There are also a few good options in a lot of languages for streamlining chromium use. In C# I'd look to use the Playwright library or perhaps even embed chromium via CerSharp if I were trying to avoid extra processes.
It seems there isn't a solution that satisfies everyone so far, indeed. With concerns about languages supported, functionalities, security, etc., there's certainly a lot of room for improvement in this space to offer a better solution!
Re: Launch HN: Onedoc (YC W24) – A better way to create PDFs
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the long term, ~$0.005 per page (as opposed to document, which I assume hatchedlake meant) say on a mortgage document (~300 pages per) it adds up. The other alternative, which is to build this in-house (say 3 months and custom build, edge cases, such goodies), is more desirable (for us).
Unrelated, out of curiosity. In a 300 page mortgage document, there’s probably >90% of boilerplate with a few pages of custom content. Hypothetically, you could generate those <10% and then stitch it together with the rest onsite.
Street smart! But yes, programmatic merging does get complex, especially with large document sizes. It's a balancing act between functionality and handling those technical challenges!
Re: Launch HN: Onedoc (YC W24) – A better way to create PDFs
#186This is definitely a somewhat painful process. I have done it with puppeteer / chromium on Debian, and it works very well after the headache of figuring it out. Having to pay 50 cents per PDF and deal with a 3rd party vendor would not provide value for our needs.
We've updated our pricing, and it can go as low as $0.005 per document. True, you'll still need to work with a third-party vendor, but isn't it worth considering if the features are competitive and the interface is user-friendly? It would be interesting to know what might convince you to switch from Puppeteer to another solution—or if you're completely satisfied and wouldn't switch regardless of the offerings, which…
For me, it's probably not going to make sense since I already did the work. I think you should pitch it at people that don't want to bother to figure it out (could be several days of engineering time).
Re: Launch HN: Onedoc (YC W24) – A better way to create PDFs
#187Useful service and a large problem space. Congrats and all the best. As someone who is a target customer, my 2 cents: a. If this is a strategic value for my pipeline (and it is), we are going to code it ourselves, only because we can host it inside our fences. Critical customer data and hence. b. The pricing is way off and is not reflective of the cost or value (for us). Even if it was 1/10th of the prices you charge…
certifications (SOC2 / ISO27001) and offer an on-premise solution! I see there's already a discussion about pricing, so I'll leave that be. However, would an unlimited volume at a fixed cost (and self-host) be an attractive solution? It could be interesting for very high volumes.
I can tell you that the world I operate in will want something like what you are proposing (fixed rate + OnPrem) and the pricing is going to have a ceiling because building this in-house is a real and viable alternative. Our problem is not so much lack of talent but other product-roadmap priorities. What is the ceiling? I do not know, but can hazard a guess. 1/4th of the yearly cost of a good developer.
Re: Launch HN: Onedoc (YC W24) – A better way to create PDFs
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
certifications (SOC2 / ISO27001) and offer an on-premise solution! I see there's already a discussion about pricing, so I'll leave that be. However, would an unlimited volume at a fixed cost (and self-host) be an attractive solution? It could be interesting for very high volumes.
I can tell you that the world I operate in will want something like what you are proposing (fixed rate + OnPrem) and the pricing is going to have a ceiling because building this in-house is a real and viable alternative. Our problem is not so much lack of talent but other product-roadmap priorities. What is the ceiling? I do not know, but can hazard a guess. 1/4th of the yearly cost of a good developer.
Thank you for taking the time. It really helps us define our value proposition and outline the next steps in product development. As you mentioned, the challenge isn't the inability to produce something in-house but rather other product-roadmap priorities. Our goal is to ensure that companies needing to produce many documents —where documents are necessary but not core to their business— can use our solution at a fair price and limiting the pain of creating such solution in house. OnPrem + fixed rate seems to be the best option for high volume. We'll explore this and see what future solutions we can offer to meet these needs!
Re: Launch HN: Onedoc (YC W24) – A better way to create PDFs
#189I had to deal a lot with PDF generation over the past few years and I was very unhappy with the eco-system that was available: 1. HTML-to-PDF: The web has a great layout system that works well for dynamic content. So using that seems like a good idea. BUT it is not very efficient as a lot of these libraries simply spin up a headless browser or deal with virtual doms. 2. PDF Libraries (like jsPDF): They mostly just ha…
Is there a reason you didn't consider something like Weasyprint? https://weasyprint.org Going all the way down to raw HTML is a bit verbose, but with almost anything I've thrown at it - CV's, business cards, you name it - it hasn't let me down yet.
I just considered weasyprint and couldn't figure out where to put my credit card or where to go to get started or to see some docs, so that was a very short-lived consideration.
Re: Launch HN: Onedoc (YC W24) – A better way to create PDFs
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there a reason you didn't consider something like Weasyprint? https://weasyprint.org Going all the way down to raw HTML is a bit verbose, but with almost anything I've thrown at it - CV's, business cards, you name it - it hasn't let me down yet.
I just considered weasyprint and couldn't figure out where to put my credit card or where to go to get started or to see some docs, so that was a very short-lived consideration.
At least for my uses, it's entirely free.
I think you can pay for more complicated services, but I didn't need to go that far. It was more about generating a PDF from HTML without manually invoking File > Save as PDF each time.
Tl;dr I'm lazy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Installed w/ Homebrew, it's really nothing more than running `weasyprint input.html output.pdf`
https://doc.courtbouillon.org/weasyprint/stable/first_steps....