pdfsyntax
Languages and libraries
pdf library
SHOW HN2022
279points
121comments
#156of 2,570 in 2022
Top 7%of 2022 by points
How HN took it
CuriousMostly questions and neutral comments
7 positive, 15 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 2 critical, out of 24 comments about the project. Thread score +0.22.
Idea: 2 for, 1 againstExecution: 0 for, 1 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Good to see focus on internal structure and browsing of PDF syntax
From 1 comment
This is really wonderful, thank you! It's great to see someone focusing on the internal structure of PDF files (the "Syntax" chapter of the spec), and doing things with a focus…
svat on HN
Objections
PDF is very ambiguous and malformed files are common; parsers disagree
From 3 comments
Be careful with PDF! There are many ambiguities in the specification that are implemented differently between parsers, as well as implicitly accepted malformations that almost…
ESultanik on HNAs others have already written, there are many slightly invalid PDF files out there in the wild that many readers can display mostly fine and which your library should also be…
gettalong on HN1. PDF is mostly designed as a write-only (or render-only) format. PDF’s original purpose was as a device-independent page output language for printers, because PostScript…
layer8 on HN
Requests
Better README explaining the project's value
From 1 comment
Hey, I took a look at your GitHub Page and I'm wondering can you provide more information in the readme so I can understand the value of the product better.
Silencerxyz on HN
Ability to fill form fields in existing PDFs
From 1 comment
Neat. Another use case for which you might want to think about a sample is extracting data from filled PDF forms. (That use case is why I once had to write a PDF parser.) Since…
neilv on HN
Questions
Can the text be edited directly?
From 1 comment
Is it possible to directly edit the text?
yupis on HN
Alternatives named
PyPDF2 and reportlab
From 1 comment
I’ve done a bit of PDF wrangling in Python, so figured I’d describe the lay of the land. PyPDF [1] is great for reading and writing PDF files, especially dealing with pages, but…
programmarchy on HN
MuPDF (fitz)
From 1 comment
You’re in for it! I highly recommend checking out mupdf, it was one of the more pleasant Python libraries I dealt with for this purpose.
cochne on HN
pdfplumber and Camelot for tables
From 2 comments
I’ve done a bit of PDF wrangling in Python, so figured I’d describe the lay of the land. PyPDF [1] is great for reading and writing PDF files, especially dealing with pages, but…
programmarchy on HNI had some luck with Camelot (https://camelot-py.readthedocs.io/en/master/). However, as many of the comments here say, PDF is a beast.
cafard on HN
PolyFile
From 1 comment
Be careful with PDF! There are many ambiguities in the specification that are implemented differently between parsers, as well as implicitly accepted malformations that almost…
ESultanik on HN