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can someone tell me ELI5 why so many .pdf editors are online services? Why is there no viable opensource alternative to adobe acrobat?
by busssard 3y ago
can someone tell me ELI5 why so many .pdf editors are online services?
Why is there no viable opensource alternative to adobe acrobat?
- 1over137 3y agoProbably the same reason so much of everything is an online service: to hoover your data and sell it.
- andylynch 3y agoFor a start, PDFs only /look/ simple. The PDF format is Byzantine and very few viewers implement all of it. Making a PDF editor is much, much worse and the market of people who need to modify, rather then generate or view, PDFs and who can pay for an alternative rather than have their company use Adobe seems to be quite small.
- ensignavenger 3y agoI'm not sure what you define as "viable". Firefox and Chromium both have built-in PDF readers, and I believe both now allow for a t least basic form filling in. Okular is another open source PDF reader that allows for filling and even annotations that can be used to sign a document.
- Muromec 3y agopdf.js notably doesn't show cryptographic signatures, as it's cant validate them, because it can't infer which trust list you believe in.