[HN Gopher] PDF Tool - Modify PDFs in the browser without uploading
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PDF Tool - Modify PDFs in the browser without uploading
Author : thunderbong
Score : 340 points
Date : 2023-08-13 15:01 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.pdftool.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.pdftool.org)
| croes wrote:
| Still not trustworthy.
|
| Works as advertised.
|
| Gains trust
|
| Changes app
|
| Steals data
|
| And I doubt that everybody always disables the internet
| connection while they use the app.
| yigitkonur35 wrote:
| If you know how to use Dev Tools, then you can be sure.
| croes wrote:
| Everytime you use the app?
|
| That's the point of gaining trust.
| [deleted]
| pdftoolorg wrote:
| valid point, but this is not our intention. hold us accountable
| - shame us directly and reference this comment. sincerly, simon
| YeBanKo wrote:
| Honest question: how are you monetizing? I don't see a single
| ad on the website, but I have not tried to use it to edit any
| document. Are they being injected at the time of edit?
| croes wrote:
| I don't question your intentions, it's more a general trust
| problem with every app with internet connection.
| ezfe wrote:
| For Mac users, most of these things can be done in the default
| Preview.app
| ramraj07 wrote:
| In the most unintuitive ways possible.
| SCUSKU wrote:
| Right, you'd think for a company that is all about intuitive
| UI/UX they would invest more in apps that come installed on
| all of their computers :/
| dmje wrote:
| Been using Preview for years and only the other day did I
| realise you can redact stuff. It's the gift that keeps on
| giving.
| commandersaki wrote:
| Really looking forward to the next OS update, we should see
| the AI/ML form detection features for filling out forms
| more precisely.
| matsemann wrote:
| Is it a true redaction, or just placing an object above? So
| many times things have been leaked because people think
| what you see is what's there.
| jkestner wrote:
| Actual redaction. I didn't know this existed until
| yesterday but apparently it's been there a few years.
|
| https://support.apple.com/guide/preview/annotate-a-pdf-
| prvw1...
| albert_e wrote:
| So most common online pdf tools like smallpdf.com and
| ilovepdf.com are blocked on office networks for obvious reasons.
|
| Can we save this page as .html file on a local folder and run it
| from browser -- never triggering the firewall / websense blockers
| etc?
| pdftoolorg wrote:
| i just created an account for you :-) save it as an PWA to your
| machine, if you have no internet it will cache the last version
| - so you will be able to go fully offline and not even need to
| fetch the dns queries
| albert_e wrote:
| Thanks
|
| I am not sure I understand this though:
|
| > i just created an account for you :-)
| pdftoolorg wrote:
| this was my first comment on hackernews, so i had to create
| a new account
| albert_e wrote:
| oh now I understand- thanks.
|
| ( I was wondering if you meant you created an account on
| your app for me :) )
| mandeepj wrote:
| I'd have read that just like you did.
|
| More context always helps. I guess another (lengthy) way
| to write that - can be - "I just created my HN account to
| post this comment".
| ehsankia wrote:
| The green username on hackernews + the username itself
| was decent context.
| Tomte wrote:
| > You do not believe us? We know that websites on the internet
| promise a lot of stuff. You can try our promise by yourself.
| Load the webpage, disable your internet connection and start
| editing PDFs. You are gonna be surprised.
| albert_e wrote:
| Technically the app can cache files and phone home the next
| time we connect to internet i guess? Not aware of how WASM
| works.
|
| Not paranoid but just want to know if this tool can be
| downloaded once and run from browser forever -- without
| having to disable internet.
|
| Does it not generate any network traffic at all - zero - even
| when there is internet connectivity available? Whether to the
| home domain or otherwise? Even telemetry?
| pdftoolorg wrote:
| we do not use any telemtry on the site, not event google
| analytics but i have to say that cloudflare reports us on
| page-hits, which is even included in the free version
|
| EDIT: we also use google ads since a few hours, to cover
| hosting expenses (1 ad on the page, should be enough for
| this small site)
| GavinMcG wrote:
| The question is about being able to load in the first place.
| Can it be loaded in one machine, _saved_ , and then opened in
| the browser of another machine?
| sebazzz wrote:
| Same machine or not, browsers often have special rules for
| file:// urls.
| yetanother-1 wrote:
| I find pdfsam to be the perfect offline tool for me on Windows.
|
| https://pdfsam.org
|
| And it's open source as well: https://github.com/torakiki/pdfsam
| newhotelowner wrote:
| I'm mostly use NAPS2 scanner app on Windows. It can scan optimize
| , split, join PDF.
| beAbU wrote:
| Semi related:
|
| I have been looking far and wide for a tool that replicates
| Acrobat's /fill and sign/ feature, allowing me to fill out NON-
| form-fillable PDFs.
|
| Something where I can fill it out, save, and then open up later
| to edit and add/remove previous additions.
|
| Adobe as a business, their pushiness about creating an account
| and the fact that they bundle McAfee's shitware with Acrobat
| never sat well with me, so I'd love an alternative.
|
| Surprisingly there's a few decent options on Android, but nothing
| worth while I could find for Windows or Linux.
|
| Maybe someone here can help a guy out with a pointer?
| gibspaulding wrote:
| I've used LibreOffice Draw for this with fairly good results
| just inserting text boxes on top of the necessary fields. It's
| not the fastest, and probably is a bit overkill for the job,
| but it does work!
| Osiris wrote:
| I use https://www.ilovepdf.com/ . They have a ton of tools.
| Their Sign PDF includes the ability to add text, dates, a
| signature from a PNG, etc. I am not affiliated with or have any
| relationship with them other than as a happy user.
| simonra wrote:
| I've found Inkscape to work very well for editing most PDFs in
| any way I've wanted to so far. If you just want to add or alter
| text the interface is reasonably simple while retaining the
| power to change mostly anything in the document, and in my
| experience it's well supported and easy to set up on Linux,
| Windows, and Mac.
| l0b0 wrote:
| Xournal++ does the job, with a recognizably 90s interface. It
| stores a separate file with the overlay you create, and can
| produce a new PDF which combines the original file with your
| overlay. I use it any time I need to do something official.
| blackqueeriroh wrote:
| _sigh_ the amount of bad mojo and discouragement that shows up on
| posts here is exhausting. Very cool tool, OP -- congrats!
| ahmgeek wrote:
| I prefer https://humantools.io/
| ahmgeek wrote:
| also from same devs: https://pdf-annotator.repeat.day/
| rvz wrote:
| > We modify your PDF files in your browser, no upload required.
|
| I can do all of this offline for free already with Acrobat or
| Preview.app on macOS.
|
| > We try to make up some of the cost that we pay for hosting this
| service by employing a small amount of ads on our website.
|
| Why?
| hellotomyrars wrote:
| The question of why they would use ads is answered literally in
| the statement about it. You can disagree with it, but it is
| already explained and isn't a surprising answer.
| skrebbel wrote:
| The free version of Acrobat is bloated, full of spam, and can't
| actually do all of this (eg splitting and merging)
| phatfish wrote:
| I've found that "PDF-XChange Editor" does everything i wanted
| for free. At least in the version I nabbed a few years ago,
| not sure if they have removed options from the free version
| since.
|
| Reordering pages, splitting, joining all worked in the free
| version, and it's not bloated. Windows only though. I think
| they might watermark the output when using the Save option
| directly, but you can get round that using Print to PDF.
|
| Their site looks a bit "scammy", but it's actually decent
| software.
| akmittal wrote:
| Big fan of offline tools. I have a small collection of tools at
| https://www.webutils.app/ and have been meaning to add pdf tools
| for a while.
| humanistbot wrote:
| Can you please explain why? I care about privacy and security,
| and this trend seems like we're going backwards. If something
| needs network access, web apps make sense. But I liked offline
| tools better when we called them "programs". Web apps to me
| seem like they turn the web browser into an operating system. I
| already have an OS.
| circuit10 wrote:
| There are some advantages to using the web as a platform:
| it's fully cross platform, completely sandboxed, easy to use,
| has good backwards compatibility so will likely work forever
| regardless of OS/browser updates, gives you good debugging
| tools, and means you can use it without saving it locally if
| you want
| akmittal wrote:
| There is no guarantee traditional program does not connect to
| internet, or run a bitcoin miner. So technically they are not
| better at privacy.
|
| Web applications are sandboxed, available on almost all the
| platform desktop and mobile and does not require
| installation.
| YeBanKo wrote:
| Depending on which OS system you use, your programs can
| connect to internet and leak your data. As far as I know,
| neither Windows nor macOS have any built in firewall for
| outgoing connections. For mac Little Snitch or Lulu are
| indispensable. A JS app running in the browser sometimes
| maybe even easier to monitor. You can at least, see the
| network traffic by the built in devtool.
| aurelius193 wrote:
| Love it! By briefly viewing, only thing I might be missing is
| adding a signature
| fareesh wrote:
| I use Xournal++ for this on linux - works pretty well for my use-
| cases, which is mostly annotation
| gabereiser wrote:
| "uses WebAssembly" - forgive me but what? How do I know my PDF
| isn't going to Russia? or China? I mean, I could wireshark it but
| I'd like to know more about what's in the webassembly. PDF's are
| sensitive to some organizations. As already stated, some orgs
| even block online pdf tools for obvious reasons.
|
| I'm interested in this but I would be even more so if there was
| source so I can audit. Since it's running locally in my browser
| anyway.
| raincole wrote:
| What does it even mean lol. I really like how you implied that
| it's a problem of WebAssembly.
|
| How is checking a web page's network connection, WebAssembly or
| not, harder than reading ALL the source code (if you don't read
| them all you can't be sure!) of a non-trivial app?
| gabereiser wrote:
| I was expecting something along the lines of pdf.js or
| something. WebAssembly was a shock, but I looked at the asm,
| saw golang, decompiled back to go and looked. all good.
| still... all it takes is an errant http.client call.
| akmittal wrote:
| Open website > disable internet/wifi > perform your task and
| close tab
| h4x0rr wrote:
| If the website is truly malicious it could store the data in
| localStorage and transfer it to their servers the next time
| you open the site
| artursapek wrote:
| Very odd reason to pick on WebAssembly
| remram wrote:
| Is WebAssembly less trustworthy than minified/obfuscated
| JavaScript?
|
| WebAssembly has no implicit access to browser APIs so I
| wouldn't think so.
| croes wrote:
| Less experience in reading and de-obfuscating it.
| askvictor wrote:
| Do you inspect the source of every webpage you visit, and every
| application you run?
| jchw wrote:
| You can check the network tab. WebAssembly doesn't have magic
| powers like ActiveX or something like that.
| gabereiser wrote:
| yeah, I checked the asm. using golang, imports some libs and
| is granted access to disk (sandbox). cool.
| 4RealFreedom wrote:
| It's interesting that they don't just supply the source code.
| Are they hoping if there's enough interest then they can turn
| this into a service? This type of functionality is great but I
| don't like the black box approach.
|
| Edit: After some consideration, maybe they're worried that
| someone else would create a service using their work.
| Vt71fcAqt7 wrote:
| You can disable network requests using tools like ublock and
| violentmonkey.
| taminka wrote:
| > going to Russia? or China?
|
| always ironic when ppl say this on websites hosted in the us, a
| country with the most documented cases of governmental
| organisation backdooring/spying :/
| irunexe wrote:
| You do have a point, but you probably should look into how
| many ATPs the Chinese government employs on MITRE. A LOT
| gabereiser wrote:
| touche... touche... but we invented the internetz... we know
| what's best. right? riiiight?
| jkestner wrote:
| True, though that's because the US has a fairly free press
| and the Freedom of Information Act.
| artursapek wrote:
| HA
| croes wrote:
| And the CloudAct and gagging orders
| csdreamer7 wrote:
| > always ironic when ppl say this on websites hosted in the
| us, a country with the most documented cases of governmental
| organisation backdooring/spying :/
|
| That is because other countries do not let you
| document/publish this information. :-)
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/04/world/europe/russia-
| censo...
|
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/08/uks-online-safety-
| bill...
|
| At least not as much as American courts will allow. The US
| has it's own censorship laws, but American
| resistance/choosing to ignore, is quite strong.
| taminka wrote:
| backdooring and censorship are two very different things
| csdreamer7 wrote:
| > backdooring and censorship are two very different
| things
|
| Parent poster talked about backdooring being documented
| in the US, not comparing the two in general. I posted
| links about non-US governments making it illegal to
| document the backdooring or other things the government
| may worry about an unpopular reaction to. The practice of
| the 1st amendment in the US offers very strong, but not
| absolute, protections against this.
| whats_a_quasar wrote:
| Buddy I've got news for you if you think that Russia and
| China are more virtuous on the internet than the U.S.
| pphysch wrote:
| China and Russia definitely do cybercrime, but:
|
| > In its release, WikiLeaks said "Marble" was used to
| insert foreign language text into the malware to mask
| viruses, trojans and hacking attacks, making it more
| difficult for them to be tracked to the CIA and to cause
| forensic investigators to falsely attribute code to the
| wrong nation. The source code revealed that Marble had
| examples in Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Persian.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vault_7
|
| The government and media pretends that attribution is a
| slam-dunk when it virtually never is. On the other hand,
| there are big career benefits to discovering the next
| "Chinese" malware vs. stumbling upon some US/EU script
| kiddy nonsense that included Chinese characters as a
| prank/red herring. There is incentive to misattribute &
| sensationalize.
|
| I would wager that ~100% of CIA/NSA malware (or any state
| actor, really) has a plausible red herring cover. It would
| be foolish not to.
| taminka wrote:
| i'm even less virtuous than russia or china, yet i can't
| spy on you
|
| (once again, it's a combination of current technical
| capability, concentration of current and early important
| technologies being developed in your jurisdiction,
| concentration of current and popular technologies being
| developed in your jurisdiction, etc)
| YeBanKo wrote:
| It's most documented in the US, because in China and in
| Russia you can go to prison for documenting their activities.
| Larrikin wrote:
| Isn't this true of basically every single program, in browser
| or not? If you're worried turn off network access
| Alifatisk wrote:
| Is there a free service which covers the same features as Adobe
| acrobat?
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| acrobat does a ton of stuff. there are lots of tools that do
| some of the things it can do, but I don't you're going to find
| something that's a complete replacement for free
| Alifatisk wrote:
| Do you know any good free tool that is able to censor
| documents like Acrobat?
| mikpanko wrote:
| Does it allow adding text and drawing signatures? This is a very
| common use case but I can't figure out how to do it with this
| tool.
| mildmotive wrote:
| If it's offline, bundle it with Electron, release the source code
| and make the build process public!
| pdftoolorg wrote:
| have you tried installing it as a PWA, much less work :-) but i
| will write it in our product backlog
| mildmotive wrote:
| I have not. I will look into it later.
|
| The issue that many people were raising is with regards to
| privacy (not saying your app infringes upon it in any way).
| If PWA deployment can ensure that the app truly stays
| offline, then that's a good thing.
|
| I personally like open source better, as it is easier to
| examine the inner workings of the app. It also helps tech-
| savvy users fix bugs and verify that it doesn't do anything
| they don't want it to do. Etc etc
|
| Also, Electron apps can be sandboxed using Flatpaks for
| instance. Flatpaks aren't perfect of course, but they do
| provide some guarantees. You can even use Flatpaks while
| keeping the source code closed.
| svfaQJDM wrote:
| Funny how "in a browser" almost is supposed to be a feature... Is
| it? Guess it makes it instantly cross-platform.
|
| And since some are complaining about lack of tools, surprised no
| one mentioned https://tools.pdf24.org/en/creator yet, it's
| excellent, for Windows at least.
|
| If anyone knows any good tool for Linux, esp from cli, I'm all
| ears.
| camel_Snake wrote:
| can also +1 pdf24. I use it near daily at my job to merge and
| embed fonts on pdf files at work. also supports OCR etc, which
| isn't fast but works just fine.
| tbarbe wrote:
| I created a similar offline tool during covid because I didn't
| want to upload sensitive data to random servers, it's open source
| if that can be useful to someone else :
| https://timothebarbe.github.io/pdfModer (Im not a front end dev,
| the UI is not very good)
| mr_o47 wrote:
| Nice Work,
|
| I was literally trying to create something like this
|
| Anyways good job
| rjoonas wrote:
| Machine translations for Finnish seem to be quite shoddy. The
| rotate tool is called "A PDF is spinning" etc. Even the language
| name is wrong in the language selector.
| pdftoolorg wrote:
| Thanks for your feedback! We just published a new version. I
| hope it is now fixed.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| The lack of a good PDF editor in Linux has always seemed strange
| to me, considering the relative frequency of "fiddle with a PDF"
| tasks like splicing pages and so on.
|
| Sure you can do it with Pdftk (or stapler these days), and a
| mish-mash of pdfinfo, Imagemagick and so on but the GUI programs
| mostly seem pretty bad offerings considering they're a fairly
| thin shell around library operations.
| nip wrote:
| Have a look at https://simplePDF.eu - online like PDFTool.org
| and with local processing as well.
|
| It's free and does not require an account (I don't like
| websites that force you to sign up to do anything)
|
| Disclosure: I'm the solo developer behind it
| [deleted]
| laydn wrote:
| It does say "edit PDF", but it doesn't really seem to allow
| editing any text on any PDF files.
| nip wrote:
| "Editor" is that people Google and look for.
|
| You can add ("merge"), remove, delete pages, which is
| technically editing.
|
| You can annotate the document by adding text, pictures,
| signatures, checkboxes as well as fill PDF form fields:
| unfortunately as you noticed you cannot "edit" existing
| text.
|
| (I initially used the term annotator but it confused people
| so much that I changed it for edit and editor)
| ghgr wrote:
| I've been using _pdfarranger_ for years without issue. It 's
| even available in the Debian (and probably Ubuntu) repositories
| (sudo apt-get install pdfarranger)
| camel-cdr wrote:
| These days inkscape has pretty good pdf editing support.
| scrollaway wrote:
| I use masterpdfeditor, but it's not free nor open source. It's
| still an amazing piece of software though.
| knallfrosch wrote:
| There's a lack of good PDF editing in general.
|
| Adobes OCR can't handle a simple black-white tax document. To
| say nothing of OCRing scans. God help you if one text field
| wasn't recognized, because you sure as hell can't add the
| missing field.
|
| And handy functions like "combine two PDF pages into one" (for
| example, combining front and back scan of something) are always
| easier to do by Googling than by using any software, even when
| you pay for it.
| totoglazer wrote:
| Preview.app is surprisingly good at a lot of this. Someone
| should clone it for Linux/Windows.
| yunohn wrote:
| That's odd, people keep saying this, but Preview doesn't
| work on a lot of PDFs for me. Do you have a good explainer
| of what it can do?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Curious if you have some sample PDFs that are
| problematic. I'm not doubting you, it's just that I would
| love to forward them on the the team at Apple that
| maintain Preview so they can determine what the issue is
| and address it.
|
| Since CoreGraphics on MacOS has fairly rich PDF support,
| Preview can do some degree of PDF manipulation: reorder
| pages, delete pages, insert pages, rotate, crop,
| annotate, etc.
| yunohn wrote:
| Clarified: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37113679
|
| > Ah I see what you mean, I was talking more about
| "editing" in the sense being able to fill all kinds of
| form entry and edit them and other text.
|
| > For example, I want to have a "check" in a form by
| clicking, not by dragging an "X" onto the box.
| wildrhythms wrote:
| What do you mean it 'doesn't work'? I use Preview to
| delete pages, convert to black and white, annotate
| (redact, add signature, circle, highlight) on PDFs
| weekly.
| yunohn wrote:
| Ah I see what you mean, I was talking more about
| "editing" in the sense being able to fill all kinds of
| form entry and edit them and other text.
|
| For example, I want to have a "check" in a form by
| clicking, not by dragging an "X" onto the box.
| nemoniac wrote:
| xournal++
|
| https://xournalpp.github.io/
| blfr wrote:
| I have been using LibreOffice Draw to fill out forms, not
| interactive ones but those they expect you to print and pen in.
| lighttower wrote:
| qoppa PDF studio. we're happy paying customers 7 years. biggest
| obstacle to using it widely is that people are used to Adobe
| Suite.
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| ms-edge is surprisingly good for quick pdf annotations and my
| preferred PDF reader on Linux.
|
| It's a crazy timeline we're on.
| nolok wrote:
| If you want to add page, remove page, split, merge, reorder,
| re-orient all or individual pages, ... May I recommend the
| glorious NAPS2 [1] ?
|
| It's meant as a scanning tool but works just fine without
| scanning just drag and drop a pdf on it.
|
| It doesn't do in-page editing or annotation, it's "one layer
| above" that.
|
| [1] https://www.naps2.com/
| slicktux wrote:
| Hmm, cute, but I'll stick with the command line for modifying
| PDFs..
| 7839284023 wrote:
| On Linux I like to use:
|
| https://github.com/pdfarranger/pdfarranger and
| https://gitlab.com/scarpetta/pdfmixtool for such tasks.
| __aru wrote:
| Just wanted to say thanks for this, I've been looking for good
| PDF editor apps on Linux, and these fit the bill so far.
|
| They also have flatpaks available on flathub, which makes it
| easy to install + keep updated.
| laurensr wrote:
| Does anyone know a decent open source tool to edit PDF form
| fields (create them, assign a name, ...)?
| duckmysick wrote:
| Or even fill the forms of the existing PDFs... I'm struggling
| with many PDF forms, usually from various government agencies.
| They all seem to require Adobe Reader and can't open them
| anywhere else. And the few that I can open and input the values
| have broken field calculation (for example they won't add
| values from field A and B into field C).
| therein wrote:
| There also seems to be two ways to fill a field. I notice
| this when I fill fields on a PDF in Chrome and save it. And
| then open it in Preview.
|
| Preview doesn't show the values I put into the fields in
| Chrome.
|
| Also kinda unrelated but also worth mentioning, if you have a
| PDF document with a version less than 1.7, opening and
| reexporting or even reprinting it in Preview.app as PDF will
| not actually manage to get you a document that's PDF1.7 or
| above.
|
| I had to use postscript to do it.
| chenster wrote:
| I use Wondershare PDFElement (free, Windows or Mac) and use its
| Pro feature to edit PDF, and finally Print to PDF to save. You
| are welcome.
| BaculumMeumEst wrote:
| > "Keep your sensitive data to yourself. Wether you are modifying
| banking statements, prescription or other critical documents, we
| have no access to it."
|
| > Source not available, no acknowledgement or explanation as to
| why
|
| > Hacker News upvotes it to the front page
| anamexis wrote:
| Making the source available wouldn't give you any guarantees
| about what is running at that site, so I don't see how that
| would help.
| amno wrote:
| > I don't see how that would help.
|
| Perhaps with the source you could setup an offline server on
| your own computer so you don't have to upload your data
| anywhere?
| anamexis wrote:
| Then why use a browser-based tool?
| amno wrote:
| Because they used web technologies to put together the
| program?
| [deleted]
| Rexxar wrote:
| Browsers need a "block all outgoing request from this page from
| now" button.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| Not just browsers. (Other) Native apps have the same problem.
| For some reason we have elaborate permissions for all sorts
| of things but nothing remotely user friendly for various
| kinds of network activity.
| least wrote:
| Little Snitch and Lulu on Mac are reasonably user friendly.
| I am pretty sure there are equivalents on Linux, though not
| entirely certain about Windows.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| Having to find and install separate firewall software is
| exactly what I mean by not remotely user friendly,
| regardless of how relatively user friendly any particular
| firewall may be.
|
| Why can I not simply disable network access in the app
| settings? Why am I not being asked to grant this
| permission just like I'm asked to grant access to my
| photos?
|
| Permissions systems on desktop platforms are mostly
| useless for regular users and only somewhat less useless
| on mobile.
| quaintdev wrote:
| We need this button!! Someone from Firefox team please make
| this happen.
| [deleted]
| the_pwner224 wrote:
| Alt - F - K
|
| (menubar File => Work offline)
|
| It applies to the whole browser, not the current tab. But
| good enough.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| Does this absolutely prevent a page from saving
| information, eg local stiarge, and later transmitting it
| when you either visit the site or a Web page where it is
| iframed?
| tiagod wrote:
| For that you may use containers, private mode, the menu
| to delete site data, and auto-delete.
| jancsika wrote:
| So even here on HN, we've got a thread which:
|
| 1. starts by suggesting devTools, which is simple,
| elegant, and wrong.
|
| 2. improves by suggesting the "Work Offline" menu option
| of the File menu, which is hidden by default on both
| Windows and Linux, and also wrong.
|
| 3. improves to a state of minimal functionality with
| implicitly ordered steps to use Private Browsing, Offline
| Mode, and confidential file "upload." And, I guess,
| always remembering to close all private browsing windows
| upon completion?
|
| I'll rankly speculate f this ever caught on, 25% of users
| will forget to check offline mode until _after_ they have
| finished editing their confidential document, 40% will
| leave a stray Private Browsing window open at all times,
| 10% will accidentally continue doing all their browsing
| in the same Private Browsing window, and 1% will somehow
| paste their private GPG keys in the query string of the
| URL.
| lytedev wrote:
| I doubt it, but I bet you can combine this with a private
| window and everything gets wiped from loca storage after
| it's closed.
| mikea1 wrote:
| You can quickly go offline via dev tools. In Chrome, it's
| very simple[0].
|
| [0] https://developer.chrome.com/docs/devtools/network/refere
| nce...
| pritambaral wrote:
| Workaround:
|
| 1. Install ServiceWorker.
|
| 2. Save data to LocalStorage/IndexedDB/ServiceWorker
| Cache/ServiceWorker Memory.
|
| 3. Wait for devtools to be closed, enabling internet
| access, send data from ServiceWorker.
| Zuiii wrote:
| I'd create a fresh browser profile just for this,
| download it, then point it to use a http/socks proxy that
| will never exist.
|
| Work around that.
| pritambaral wrote:
| > Work around that.
|
| Easy. I use HTTP/3.
|
| No, really, HTTP and SOCKS proxies cannot carry QUIC
| traffic, so browsers don't even try. They just send it
| right through.
|
| If you block UDP, I guess I can still try DNS for exfil.
| HTTP proxies don't support DNS, and browsers need to be
| explicitly configured to proxy DNS through SOCKS, if the
| SOCKS proxy even supports it. Chances are, DNS exfil will
| work.
|
| Now, if you were to do what _I_ do to disable network
| access, then I 'd have no chance: network namespace in a
| jail with zero network interfaces (not even loopback).
| wrong159247 wrote:
| Press F12.
| dharmab wrote:
| It runs an opaque WASM.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| svat wrote:
| Big fan of the idea of offline in-browser tools: works on any
| device, and "installing" the program is as simple as visiting a
| webpage or opening the saved HTML file. This one uses
| WebAssembly, but even that isn't necessary: I wrote a couple of
| PDF tools for my own use that simply use pdf-lib:
| https://shreevatsa.net/pdf-pages/ https://shreevatsa.net/pdf-
| unspread/
| [deleted]
| agumonkey wrote:
| super minimalist design, 100% function
| Timon3 wrote:
| Me too! I try to build my web-based tools as single files to
| make downloading them easy. Usually this Vite plugin does the
| trick: https://www.npmjs.com/package/vite-plugin-singlefile
| wesleychen wrote:
| Does anyone know of a good way to tile large PDFs (i.e. split a
| single PDF into smaller pages)? Adobe reader only allows you to
| do this when printing and you can't save the tiled PDF as its own
| file.
| kwstas wrote:
| I use pdftk on linux to do most of this type of stuff. For
| example if you want pages 1 -10 :
|
| ` pdftk {{input.pdf}} cat {{1-10}} output {{output.pdf}} `
|
| If you want to do multiple files you may want to burst them and
| recombine. If you are doing it for file size purposes there may
| be better options though, as I dont think there is any way to
| split in 500kB chunks for example.
|
| There supposedely is a windows version
| [here](https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/). I
| haven't used it though.
| foul wrote:
| mutool poster -x 2 -y 2 input.pdf out%d.pdf
| matsemann wrote:
| Can you print to pdf, perhaps?
|
| But I've done it with Illustrator previously, at least.
| dspillett wrote:
| Some time ago I had success with
| https://github.com/rrthomas/pdfjam for that purpose under
| Linux. It used to be included in the standard Debian
| repositories but that no longer seems to be the case which
| might mean it is an unmaintained project that has build issues.
| Worth trying though, if it builds on a modern system.
|
| It might also be worth trying if the PDF reader in a
| Chrome/Chromium can use its "pages per sheet" option when using
| a print-to-PDF driver (included by default with Windows these
| days IIRC, likely available as an option at least on other
| OSs). You may lose some fidelity on things like images this
| way, depending on the options selected in the print to PDF
| driver.
| benoliver999 wrote:
| on arch it comes with extra/texlive-binextra
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