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bobsingor

157 karma · joined June 4, 2020

Dutch indie hacker building open-source tools like https://www.embedpdf.com
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bobsingor··on Show HN: I built a free alternative to Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer
That’s great to hear, contributions are very welcome! If you’re interested in working on outline editing, feel free to open a discussion or draft PR and we can figure out the best way to integrate it.
bobsingor··on Show HN: I built a free alternative to Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer
Thanks for sharing! It looks like the pdfreaders campaign has actually ended and the site is no longer updated, so I’m not sure it’s still being maintained as a resource.
bobsingor··on Show HN: I built a free alternative to Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer
It doesn’t support editing outlines yet, but it’s definitely possible and something I plan to look into. I don’t think it should be too hard to add.
bobsingor··on Show HN: I built a free alternative to Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer
Thanks! The redaction issue in Firefox should now be fixed.
bobsingor··on Show HN: I built a free alternative to Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer
Thanks! Glad to hear it’s working well on Firefox for Android.
bobsingor··on Show HN: I built a free alternative to Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer
Thanks for letting me know, that was related to a Firefox-specific issue I’ve just fixed. Annotations and redaction should now work in Linux + Firefox as well as Chromium.
bobsingor··on Show HN: I built a free alternative to Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer
Yep, that’s exactly the issue! I’ve fixed it so it no longer throws the TouchEvent error in Firefox. Thanks for flagging it.
bobsingor··on Show HN: I built a free alternative to Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer
Thanks for pointing that out! I’ve fixed the Firefox issue. And we actually already have Undo/Redo on the annotation toolbar.
bobsingor··on Show HN: I built a free alternative to Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer
Very easy, this already works! In the AnnotationLayer you can add your own `selectionMenu` and render any custom component there. If you want to dive deeper, join our Discord and shoot me a message. https://discord.gg/mHHABmmuVU
bobsingor··on Show HN: I built a free alternative to Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer
Yes, those commercial PDF SDKs charge crazy prices! Time to change that.
bobsingor··on Show HN: I built a free alternative to Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer
Haha fair, but PDFium's under Apache 2.0, so at least the “cartel” in this case is about as open-license as it gets.
bobsingor··on Show HN: I built a free alternative to Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer
Yes, all of the above. The client-side PDF viewer will remain free and MIT-licensed, but I’ll be focusing on offering PDF hosting with enterprise features like analytics, access controls etc, those will be part of the paid offering.
bobsingor··on Show HN: I built a free alternative to Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer
This is really valuable feedback, thank you! I agree, having a simple, ready-to-use `<EmbedPDF>` component that includes all the plugins by default would make it much easier to get started. I’ll definitely add that alongside the more advanced example.
bobsingor··on Show HN: I built a free alternative to Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer
Thanks! Glad to hear it’s running smoothly on mobile, the rendering on iOS in particular feels really fast.
bobsingor··on Show HN: I built a free alternative to Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer
That means a lot to me, thank you!
bobsingor··on Show HN: I built a free alternative to Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer
Thanks! For now we’re only building a web app, but depending on demand we’d love to build native apps for Android, iOS, and desktop OSs as well.
bobsingor··on Show HN: I built a free alternative to Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer
Thanks! Signing is a high priority for us, and PKCS#11 and PKCS#12 support are definitely on our radar.
bobsingor··on Show HN: I built a free alternative to Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer
The main goal was to make a PDF viewer that is easy for developers to integrate into their websites with minimal setup, while PDF.js can be harder to customize and extend for certain use cases
bobsingor··on Show HN: I built a free alternative to Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer
Not on the roadmap yet, but I’d definitely be open to adding it if more people are interested.
bobsingor··on Show HN: I built a free alternative to Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer
Thanks! I’ve been working on it for about 7 months now.
bobsingor··on Show HN: I built a free alternative to Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer
Good point, you’re right that PDFium is Apache 2.0. I’ve updated the project to comply with the redistribution requirements in this PR: https://github.com/embedpdf/embed-pdf-viewer/pull/80/files. Thanks for flagging it!
bobsingor··on Show HN: I built a free alternative to Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer
Thanks! I wanted to make it as easy as possible for people to use, tweak, and build on top of it, so MIT felt like the right choice.
bobsingor··on Show HN: I built a free alternative to Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer
I haven’t had the chance to test annotations in Firefox yet, so thanks for pointing that out. I’ll check what’s going on there, good to know they’re working fine in Chrome.
bobsingor··on Show HN: I built a free alternative to Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer
Good catch, I’ll fix that. On mobile, it’s intentional that scrolling is disabled while in redaction mode so you can make precise selections, but if you switch back to the view tab it should definitely exit redaction mode. Thanks for spotting it!
bobsingor··on Show HN: I built a free alternative to Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer
Absolutely, and I agree, credit is important. I have a whole section in the docs about PDFium and its origins with Foxit/Google: https://www.embedpdf.com/docs/pdfium/introduction.
bobsingor··on Show HN: I built a free alternative to Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer
We already support quite a few real PDF annotations: circle, square, polygon, polyline, highlight, underline, squiggly, strikeout,free text, stamps, and ink. Some types are still on our list, like links, form fields, sound annotations, file attachments, and 3D models. Do you happen to know what annotation type it is in your PDF? I’m curious.
bobsingor··on Show HN: I built a free alternative to Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer
Honestly, yours looks even snappier than what I had, the way it’s handling zoom feels super fluid. Really impressive work! Makes me want to dig back in and see if I can match that speed.
bobsingor··on Show HN: Open Source PDF Viewer Using Chrome’s PDF Engine (MIT, WebAssembly)
Quick update — we just added marquee zoom! You can now draw a rectangle to zoom into a specific area, which should make navigation even more intuitive (especially for large drawings).

You can try it here: https://snippet.embedpdf.com/

bobsingor··on Show HN: Open Source PDF Viewer Using Chrome’s PDF Engine (MIT, WebAssembly)
Yeah, that’s true. It is not doing vectorized rendering, so printing is bitmap-based like pdf.js. For most use cases it works fine, but I get that for more high-end printing it could be a limitation. It is not something I am focusing on right now, but definitely something to keep in mind if more people need it.
bobsingor··on Show HN: Open Source PDF Viewer Using Chrome’s PDF Engine (MIT, WebAssembly)
Thanks, really appreciate that. Definitely give it a try on your next project!

I tested it on Chrome, Safari, and Edge, and it’s been working great across all of them.

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