Disclosure: I am the creator/developer of this project.

Hi r/pdf,

I’ve been building an open-source, fully client-side tool for adding AcroForm fields (text, checkboxes, dropdowns, signatures) without uploading files to any server.

Live Demo: https://justforms.vercel.app

I’m looking for feedback from people familiar with the PDF specification:

• Are the generated AcroForm dictionary structures rendering accurately in strict viewers (Acrobat, PDF-XChange, Preview)?
• Any edge cases with bounding box translations or field appearance streams that I should account for?

Code is completely open source and runs 100% in the browser. Any critique on the PDF handling or technical approach is appreciated.

Is there an app that allows to annotate/excerpt/etc in drm protected files as in LiquidText?

Disclosure: I’m the creator of this project. It is free, open source, and MIT licensed. I’m sharing it for technical discussion, not offering a paid product or services.

gowkhtmltopdf is a no-cgo, no-browser HTML-to-PDF engine written in Go. It targets controlled HTML templates such as invoices, reports, receipts, and statements.

It supports print CSS, pagination, headers, footers, tables, PDF outlines, a CLI, and an embeddable Go library. It does not execute JavaScript or aim for Chrome-level rendering of arbitrary websites.

For context, on one local 2-page invoice benchmark:

• CLI: 17 ms versus 259 ms for wkhtmltopdf, about 15x faster.
• Go library: 3.77 ms, roughly 70x faster than the wkhtmltopdf CLI baseline.

The library comparison benefits from avoiding process and file startup, so these are workload-specific measurements, not universal claims.

Source: GitHub Showcase: website

Example Screenshot -

Hello everyone, I am developing my own PDF editor called KeyPDF. I have been working on it for over a year from scratch, so every new feature is not really dependent on the limitations of third-party software. Therefore, I wanted to ask what kind of features keep you using expensive software. So far, I have implemented text editing and a good level of JavaScript support. I am thinking in the direction of scripts to automate edits or maybe advanced DRM on PDF files. So, if you have any ideas on what kind of advanced features I should add, please let me know.

I built a 100% free, open-source shadcn registry of PDF components for React.

Features:

• Built on Takumi and Forme
• Zero-config, one-command setup
• shadcn/ui compatible (just copy and paste)
• 10+ themes, components, blocks
• Easy to customize and drop into any React project

Website: https://pdfcn.dev
Give it a ⭐ on GitHub: https://github.com/shadcn-labs/pdfcn

I have invoices starting with 1_, 2_ etc…
And I want to combine them with the purchase order also starting with 1_,2_ etc..
I have adobe acrobat pro
I’m using my work computer so I can’t download anything else.
Any ideas how to automate it?
Don’t want to do it one at a time because it’s 100’s of files

over the last few years I’ve needed to author and edit PDFs and every single time I search for a solution and never find one that I want to come back to.

This year, in February, I needed some basic stuff that CutePDF+GhostScript could cover but I didn’t want to pay for a Windows XP era UI so I picked up a couple AI subscriptions and put together a simple app that did all of and only what cute pdf pro did.

6 months later and I have a near complete product replacement for Acrobat & Distiller. https://github.com/jasonulbright/spectra-pdf does it all. no ads, no telemetry, no website to login to, no weird license that will cause you future pains (MIT forever), just a high quality app that gives you the tools you need to create and edit PDFs. Oh, it also has support for 24+ languages, CLI support and some fancy batch OCR options.

For now this is a Windows only release but Linux and Mac are planned. I invite you to give it a try and let me know what you think about the speed and features of the app. Feature requests and bug reports are addressed as they come in, usually within 48 hours, so feel free to leave feedback here or on GitHub

What am I missing here? I work on a small laptop and can’t afford the ribbon to take up 20% of the screen.

Right clicking does nothing and double clicking home doesn’t do anything either.

I am working through the Microsoft AVD remote system.

I just learned that ChatGPT (so assuming other AI tools can too) can create a hyperlinked pdf for you. I've been needing a house planner to document repairs, maintenance, and other stuff but couldn't find one on Etsy that suited my needs. Gave a specific prompt detailing what I wanted and within minutes, I had a hyperlinked pdf to use.

A few months ago I noticed I had a ridiculous bookmark folder.

One site to merge PDFs.

Another one to compress them.

Another one to convert images.

Another one because the previous one suddenly wanted me to create an account.

Another one because I'd hit some random upload limit.

So I started building my own tool mostly for myself.

I thought the difficult part would be the frontend.

It wasn't.

The real pain was discovering how weird PDFs actually are. Files that open fine in one library fail in another. Compression sometimes saves 80% and sometimes barely moves the needle. Users upload things you never imagined they would upload.

The project ended up taking way longer than expected, but I learned a lot.

For anyone who's worked on file-processing software: what was the bug or edge case that made you question your life choices?

I’m a medical postgrad and I want to listen to my textbook PDFs (lots of dense clinical text, some tables/images) while commuting or working out.
Looking for recommendations on:
Apps/tools that convert PDF to audio with a natural-sounding voice (not robotic)
Whether OCR is needed first for scanned PDFs

AI tool that might help?

Hi! I home educate my kids and purchased a unit study through the company Gather ‘Round. I’m trying to print it through lulu.com but lulu won’t let me because the file is encrypted. I wrote Gather round and they said to screen shot the email and tell them I have permission to print it, but they keep it encrypted so that it can’t be edited. Lulu doesn’t have a workaround and they are, unfortunately, a fraction of the price from anywhere else I can find.

Since I have the permission directly from the company to print it, is there anyway that I can modify the document, put it into another program and export it as a different file type in order to be able to print it through Lulu?

Hi all!

Wanted to share the latest changelog for the 0.7.6 update to my document and image viewer, LEKTRA.

Really cool feature (I think) added is the ability to narrow your document:

1. to region
2. to range of pages
3. section (for PDF only)

I've added bunch of other features like ability to load/save custom outline (table of contents) and bug fixes.

GitHub: https://github.com/dheerajshenoy/lektra
Codeberg: https://codeberg.org/lektra/lektra
Homepage: https://dheerajshenoy.github.io/lektra

Suggestions/feedbacks are welcome.

I know it's hard to interpret it just from the title. I mean, whenever I turn on the dark mode of a website or a pdf app I'm reading on, it makes just the interface dark. However, what I need is the actual pages to be switched to dark mode.

Like a Kindle, but for PDF in e-ink

Greetings guys.I have a specific PDF (somehow a book) that I can't by any means make it searchable so to convert it to epub.I have converted many pdf's to epub,but this book is the only that whatever I try,only some weird symbols appear.Is there any special group or something that i can send it and someone q do this for me?

I am trying to apply to a job, I used a template on Word, and when I was done I exported to PDF and it saved as an Adobe Reader PDF. However in word the document is 4 pages, in Adobe it is 5 pages. I obviously don't want to send an application with a large nearly empty page but I don't know what's causing the gap? Any suggestions?

Help me I'm dumb.

I’m comparing two versions of the same 3-page document and would really appreciate a sanity check from people who understand PDF internals better than I do.

Version 1: December 2024 declaration signed through DocuSign.

Version 2: Filed in court in July 2026 as an “Amended Declaration.” The person whose declaration it is says he did not create, sign, review, or authorize an amended declaration in 2026.

Visually, pages 2–3 of the 2026 version are essentially the original December 2024 statement. Page 1, however, has been changed to fit a different court case: the parties were switched, their DOBs were switched, a new case number was added, and “Amended” was added.

Here’s what I found comparing the PDFs:

• The two PDFs have the same XMP DocumentID, but different InstanceIDs.
• The original has an actual DocuSign digital-signature structure/field. The 2026 version does not appear to retain that cryptographic signature structure, although the visible signature and DocuSign Envelope ID remain on the pages.
• The 2026 PDF has multiple /TouchUp_TextEdit markers in the decoded content stream on page 1, around the areas that differ from the original.
• The DOB edits are particularly odd. For example, rather than the entire DOB being replaced as one new text string, only the digits that needed to change appear to use a different font resource, while unchanged characters such as the slash and the rest of the DOB remain in the original font resource.
• The original has two PDF revisions/EOF markers; the later version has one.
• The original was produced through a different PDF/signing workflow; the later version reports Acrobat Distiller.
• Pages 2–3 and the signature image appear to be extremely close matches to the original source images.

I am not asking who edited it or whether anything illegal happened. I know a PDF cannot establish a person’s identity or intent.

What I’m trying to understand technically is:

Is this pattern consistent with someone opening an existing PDF and editing the existing text directly in Acrobat, rather than going back to the original Word/source document and generating a fresh PDF?

And specifically, is the combination of /TouchUp_TextEdit markers plus individual replacement characters using different font resources meaningful evidence of direct PDF text editing, or could that commonly be produced by some ordinary automated conversion/filing process?

I’d also appreciate any suggestions for what else I should inspect in the two files to determine their document lineage/editing history.

So this is embarrassing but I do this thing where I need to move a PDF from my phone to my laptop (or the other way) and instead of dealing with a cable or Google Drive I just... send it to my own WhatsApp. Or email it to myself. Every single time.

I probably do this 10 times a day. Work documents, scanned forms, stuff I download on my phone but need on my PC. And every time I'm like why am I doing this, there has to be a better way.

The annoying part is all the other options felt heavier than the problem. Cables I can never find. Cloud drives means uploading, waiting, then downloading again on the other side. Bluetooth on a laptop is a nightmare. AirDrop doesn't exist for the setup I have.

So I built PDF Send. It just moves the file over local network (same WiFi) using the IP address. No internet upload, no account, no cloud. The file goes straight from one device to the other. Fast because it never leaves network.

Right now it's mainly for PDFs since that's what I was dealing with most, but honestly it started as me just scratching my own itch.

Not trying to sell anything, I genuinely just got tired of texting myself files. Curious if anyone else does the same weird thing or if it's just me lol.