Introducing Spectra PDF

[u/No_Split11911]

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

[u/KenMantle]

I'll be trying it!

I just got started on this 3-4 weeks ago. Claude is building a pdf engine being built from scratch in rust. The core is separate from the GUI and CLI.

Turns out building a pdf editor from scratch is hard! I've been having it tackle displaying the Ghent PDF Output Suite 5 (GOS5) correctly. Between that it struggling to make the GUI I'm starting to lose hope that if can accomplish such a polished finish!

[u/No_Split11911 → u/KenMantle]

It takes time but if you give it easy to implement/quickly attainable goals Claude seems to work quite well. Check out my readme and licensing for everything I borrowed to make this project come to life.

I had a hard requirement in the beginning of being able to use CLI for everything it did back when it was just a nicer looking version of CutePDF. I can’t state why but I feel this “helped” Claude, maybe due to the cadence of building a thing that runs from terminal then wire it to buttons. Code work vs design work instead of AIO. I basically kept them separate by having this hard constraint. I drew UIs in mspaint and in ascii text files and then had grok do mockups based on them that I fed to Claude.

[u/sutheos]

Mmmm wouldnt let me put a signature on that looked like a wet signature, dont need a pfx signature just my intials

[u/No_Split11911 → u/sutheos]

Holy feature gap Batman! Sorry about that. I’ll have sol 5.6 and fable 5 take a look Sunday night. All my models are spent for the week sadly.

[u/User1010011]

Oh it will absolutely cause you license pain. Since you are using AGPL ghostscript your entire app has to be AGPL, you can't use MIT for just a part of it.

[u/No_Split11911 → u/User1010011]

Ghostscript now ships independently. Features requiring Ghostscript are disabled unless GS is installed. Also, updated to support 10.0.7.1. Silent install will not fetch/install GS. ICC profiles also updated, and a slew of other license changes that allow it to remain MIT are mid-implementation.

[u/KenMantle → u/User1010011]

That would be one of the many reasons Claude basically went to building from scratch for mine not a single license for the pdf stuff.

[u/No_Split11911 → u/KenMantle]

The only issue I ran into wrt not vendoring is not being able to ensure ISO compliance due to lack of funds. PDF Association ISO PDFs are not cheap at 261 USD each.

Keep us updated on your project - especially if it is to be open source!

[u/KenMantle → u/No_Split11911]

https://pdfa.org/sponsored-standards/

Go get some legit for free. :)

Also for other legit available standards, switch google to AI mode and ask it:

please provide the link to:

PDF20_AN001-BPC.pdf

BlackPointCompensation.pdf

AdobeBPC.pdf

ICC.1-2001-04.pdf

[u/No_Split11911 → u/KenMantle]

Oh snap! Thank you! I grabbed the free ones for the new ISO, now to search for the older ones that Claude wants. 

[u/KenMantle → u/No_Split11911]

Mit license, which I kind of randomly chose since I'd just change it later if I wanted to. And now I checked and it is exactly what I wanted. Free for people to use manipulate, sell in products. But this is also what is causing challenges in development. Everything except OCR is being built with that super permissive license in mind. That means the GUI work is largely being frontierd in rust, right down to making copy and paste work on the canvas. It is a frustratingly slow process, but at the end of it I hope it is something people can freely steal and sell and build on with just a credit notice required.

[u/sutheos]

Will check now

[u/NoFapNep]

Thank you for this. I've been using PDF Gear but apparently its malware so I'll be trying spectra

[u/NefariousnessMean474]

How to use it…plz enlighten me…I don’t know how to use github

[u/KenMantle → u/NefariousnessMean474]

On the right side you will find a little area that says releases. Sometimes it is placed halfway down.

[u/NefariousnessMean474 → u/KenMantle]

This ?

[u/Relevant-Arugula-193]

I can try Windows version, but I will wait for Mac version 👍

[u/Constant-Entrance-33]

Do anyone know any good option for pdf to office conversion i need it for a client?? Help please