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Color me skeptical. PDF viewing is reasonable, but where are the decent PDF editing tools? I’ve looked, and it seems like nobody else but Adobe is allowed to do

by dahart 3y ago

Color me skeptical. PDF viewing is reasonable, but where are the decent PDF editing tools? I’ve looked, and it seems like nobody else but Adobe is allowed to do real PDF editing. Many many third part apps claim to, but only do superficial editing and don’t remotely match Acrobat tools. I don’t know how the API licensing works, but I imagine this makes sense because the real market for PDF is business documents that involve signatures, watermarks, password security, versioning, maybe some tracking, etc..

samus 3y ago
PDF manipulation is IMHO a niche application. If one really has to do that at scale, it would be probably better to fix the problem upstream to generate it correctly in the first place, or to layer the changes on top of the existing PDF and sign it.
- dahart 3y ago
  That’s like saying image, audio, or video editing is niche. The number of PDF editing apps online suggests you might have formed an opinion before doing any research? Apparently lots and lots of people want to edit PDF files, enough that there’s a ton of competition. Why do you assume editing a PDF means the file is somehow incorrect, or that there exists any viable upstream solution? It’s more likely the edits are intended to make a new version, and don’t even belong upstream, and that editors have no access to upstream anyway. In addition to editing, there’s a whole industry of scraping PDF publications for data.
  - samus 3y ago
    Yeah, I admit this was a risky statement :-) Editing the PDF just seems like the wrong place to place the edit since it is a format intended for interchange and archivation. Layering changes on top makes total sense. Changing existing objects seems fragile. But maybe I feel that way because the format is known for being so complicated and bespoke that only Adobe's tools can edit it reliably. Just about any document format which can be converted to PDF is easier to edit, therefore it would make more sense to apply changes before conversion to PDF, if at all possible. I agree that reading and scraping PDFs on scale is a very common operation.
    - dahart 3y ago
      It is easier & better to edit before baking to PDF, that is true.
jasomill 3y ago
I know you're talking about GUI editing, but I've found libqpdf[1] incredibly useful for making programmatic PDF edits with minimal (typically no) structural disturbance. [1] https://qpdf.sourceforge.io https://qpdf.sourceforge.io
- dahart 3y ago
  Thanks! I’m checking this out.

by dahart 3y ago

samus 3y ago

PDF manipulation is IMHO a niche application. If one really has to do that at scale, it would be probably better to fix the problem upstream to generate it correctly in the first place, or to layer the changes on top of the existing PDF and sign it.

dahart 3y ago
That’s like saying image, audio, or video editing is niche. The number of PDF editing apps online suggests you might have formed an opinion before doing any research? Apparently lots and lots of people want to edit PDF files, enough that there’s a ton of competition. Why do you assume editing a PDF means the file is somehow incorrect, or that there exists any viable upstream solution? It’s more likely the edits are intended to make a new version, and don’t even belong upstream, and that editors have no access to upstream anyway. In addition to editing, there’s a whole industry of scraping PDF publications for data.
- samus 3y ago
  Yeah, I admit this was a risky statement :-) Editing the PDF just seems like the wrong place to place the edit since it is a format intended for interchange and archivation. Layering changes on top makes total sense. Changing existing objects seems fragile. But maybe I feel that way because the format is known for being so complicated and bespoke that only Adobe's tools can edit it reliably. Just about any document format which can be converted to PDF is easier to edit, therefore it would make more sense to apply changes before conversion to PDF, if at all possible. I agree that reading and scraping PDFs on scale is a very common operation.
  - dahart 3y ago
    It is easier & better to edit before baking to PDF, that is true.

jasomill 3y ago

I know you're talking about GUI editing, but I've found libqpdf[1] incredibly useful for making programmatic PDF edits with minimal (typically no) structural disturbance. [1] https://qpdf.sourceforge.io https://qpdf.sourceforge.io

dahart 3y ago
Thanks! I’m checking this out.