Creators Frustrated by PDF Tool Limitations
Creators and users are consistently frustrated by PDF tools that require uploads, subscriptions, or impose limitations on functionality. They seek simple, privacy-respecting solutions that allow them to manipulate PDFs locally without compromising data security or incurring unnecessary costs. This pain point has driven many to build their own alternatives.
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“Word's mail merge hands you one long document, and then you split it by hand and rename the pieces. that's the part i wanted to stop doing. boolkpdf takes the spreadsheet and gives you one pdf per row in a zip, each named from a…”
“In the Copilot harness, the Read ( view ) tool handles images but does not parse PDFs. PDFs only work through the separate attachment path, when supported by the selected model/provider. | Input path | Images | PDFs | | | :| :| | Read tool ( view ) | ✅ Special handling for vision capable models | ❌ No PDF parsing or text extraction | | Chat attachment | ✅ Sent as an image attachment | ✅ Sent as a native document when supported by the model/provider | Please support reading local PDFs through a d”
“sorry if i wasn't clear. in a given note: a little text, then an image, then a PDF below that, some more text and occasionally an audio recording.”
“I think I've finally come to this conclusion as well Calibre for epubs Komaga or Kavita for Comics Might try Grimoire for for RPG PDF's”
“Hello ! The 1.1.6 release announcement states: "New Space Files tab: a space has its own document drive members can browse, search, preview and download, with a built in reader for PDFs and inline previews for other file types." Looking at the code, that feature relies on MediaVerse Pro v.2.4.0+, thus it won't work. Is there any planned solution, or is this not part of the free version ?”
“Before Submitting [x] I searched open and closed issues and discussions for an existing request. [x] I checked whether this already exists on the dev branch or latest source. [x] I understand that maintainers want a well written issue or discussion before any code pull request. [x] This request is not a security vulnerability. Problem Built in display file function for PDF is graet and the inline option even better. But every window seems to be a separate entity and always waiting per window to”
“You can try pdf redaction plugin for obsidian: https://pdf-redaction.com/docs/integrations/obsidian/ It supports auto and manual redaction, text and image based pdf files.”
“HI, i try to use Obsidian for study and have a problem with .pdfs. Do you have a good workflow to highlight directly in pdfs without flickering? I used pdf++ and wanted to first highlight something and put it automatically in a seperate note, but it always switch to that note after selecting something and is not creating an return for the next line. I know i could change this behavior but at the moment i cannot see all propertyes i dont know why. I made a screenshot below. Than i tried to highli”
“Browser-side processing is the way to go for this stuff, uploading tax returns or contracts to some random server never sat right with me.”
I kept getting burned by uploading files that looked fine on my screen but printed blurry or soft. Some images took hours to get right. So out of personal necessity, I built…
“LaTeX names the command on the line right after, something like l.42 \tightlist . Which one is yours? If it is tightlist, that's the \providecommand line from the template - easy to lose while editing.”
“Turning PDF invoices into ZUGFeRD/XRechnung — a 22-node workflow, and the 7 mistakes I made”
“Whats new: Added an option to enable editing and viewing long-code / wide-code Added option to to change fonts (Only local font for now) Headings & Note Title Body Text Quotes & Callouts Code Blocks Interface & Properties Phone and Tablet tweaks Window / UI polish And many small changes Link: https://community.obsidian.md/themes/ink-paper Watch : https://youtu.be/6OU-fjy-m-c?si=xGyRevNFfDWbsETh submitted by /u/dsvictor [link] [comments]”
“atm it has to be handed to the agent — you can hand one PDF, a folder of PDFs, or just give it a path. There’s no watched-folder auto-scan yet. The agent is the one that actually runs the convert: OCR/text extract → markdown → clean up structure (reading order, headings / TOC) → suggest and set a category (with a quick confirm). Scripts do the mechanical parts (PaddleOCR, merge, HTML build), but messy PDFs still need judgment — fixing broken sentence order from sidebars, deciding heading levels,”
“That's exactly what happened--I did it with PowerShell! Thanks. I think I'll have to change my field names to correspond with pandoc variable requirements. Not sure about the "! Undefined control sequence." error though.”
“The library extracts per page text content for the overlay but never exposes it. A host cannot search, cannot build a table of contents, cannot extract a citation, and cannot render its own text only accessible view. Adding viewer.getPageText(n) is nearly free — the plumbing exists in src/loading/pdfLoader.js — and it unlocks both search and a genuinely accessible fallback mode. Fix Expose getPageText(pageNumber) and getOutline() . Add findText(query) on top (see 8). Together with 5, 6 and 13 th”
“That's an encoding problem, not a template problem. PowerShell's > writes UTF-16, which puts a null byte after every character, and pandoc's parser hits one and gives up. If you built the file with that pandoc -D latex > command I mentioned earlier, that'll be it - my fault for handing you that on Windows. Check with Format-Hex card.tex | Select-Object -First 2 . A 00 between every letter confirms it. Fix: Set-Content card.tex -Value (Get-Content card.tex) -Encoding utf8 .”
“It captures both—it strips the page down to a clean readable text format for quick reading, but also retains the archived snapshot data so you don't lose access if the original source goes offline or gets paywalled later.”
“It's also struggling with the fact that some of the metadata fields from my notes have spaces, slashes, and parentheticals in them. I don't know if there's any way around this.”
“Add the ![[image1.png]]![[image2.png]] side to side and they will show side to side”
“Actually, it seems like the file card.tex was corrupt in some way. Made a new template file from scratch and that error message went away. Now getting: Error producing PDF. ! Undefined control sequence. l.14 \href Troubleshooting now. There is an href in the body of the markdown file in question.”
“Thanks so much, this is super helpful. I tested it out in the terminal and ran into this error message: PS C:\Users\cefst> pandoc test.md -o test.pdf --template=C:\Users\cefst\AppData\Local\Pandoc\templates\card.tex Error compiling template "C:\Users\cefst\AppData\Local\Pandoc\templates\card.tex" (line 8, column 11): unexpected "\NUL" expecting "$", "{", "if", "for", "~", "^", letter, "it" or letter or d”
CV in Obsidian — Markdown in, ATS-safe PDF out
Yes I thought about adding it but forgot to. Thanks for the reminder
“Hello, I am trying to make an automation to edit the text of some pdfs, just small pieces of text like a date and price. And I would like to keep the overall look of the file with images and fonts, etc. I have seen older…”
“It's not the primary use case of the plugin, but it can do it and do it well: LaTeX Suite”
“Submission checklist [x] This is a bug, not a usage question. [x] I added a clear and descriptive title that summarizes this issue. [x] I used the GitHub search to find a similar question and didn't find it. [x] I am sure that this is a bug in LangChain rather than my code. [x] The bug is not resolved by updating to the latest stable version of LangChain (or the specific integration package). [x] This is not related to the langchain community package. [x] I posted a self contained, minimal, repr”
“I tested Merge PDF with two synthetic 2-page A4 files, for a 4-page output. The multi-file picker and reordering controls were clear, and the downloaded PDF preserved the expected order exactly. I checked all four downloaded pages individually; they rendered correctly with no missing or reordered pages. One usability gap: before downloading, I could see the file list and an output summary (`2 grouped documents / 4 pages`), but not page thumbnails or a visual page preview. After the download, `Co”
“an interesting side effect of this is that LLMs use 15% less tokens using the markdown export from @Boxpdf/reader vs processing PDF files directly I ran about 20 experiments on this it gets better results and lower token use and is generally faster. why? because a deterministic structural extract saves it time. otherwise it's going to default to dumping the text and figuring out the structure later. anybody who processes PDF files with Claude or openAI should immediately pivot”
“Ok got it, thanks! There's a lot of custom keys, so option two it is. Where would I put the card.tex template file in that case?”
“Pandoc reads your frontmatter as metadata but the default template only prints a handful of keys - title, author, date, subtitle, abstract. Anything custom gets parsed and then silently dropped, which is probably what you're hitting. Two ways out. If your properties map onto those standard names, just rename them and you're done, no config at all. Otherwise you need your own template: pandoc -D latex > card.tex to dump the default one, then drop $yourproperty$ wherever you want it, an”
Thank you If you find any problem can you tell me about it so I can improve it? thank you
Those contain sensitive data. I try to find some examples i can share.
“I gave it a go on a shelf with a mess of old mass market paperbacks and it tripped hard on anything where the text was faded or curved along the spine, caught maybe 18 of 30”
“lol it's local (in-browser) but ad supported and detects adblockers. I'm pretty sure this does the same stuff as free image editors most folks already have installed. Affinity is free, no ads, runs locally (outside a browser though), and far more capable. There's always the open options like Gimp and Krita, far more capable. For browser-based options, there's stuff like MiniPaint (open source: https://github.com/viliusle/miniPaint ) and BitMappery ( https://www.igorski.nl/apps/bi”
“Signed up and put a two-page PDF into a new subject. The core works which matters because a lot of tools here fail at exactly this point. I uploaded a made-up lecture full of invented terms and the exam asked "What is the Vanterpool Window?" and what happens above 171 degrees. Those facts exist nowhere but in my file, so it read the material instead of writing generic cooking questions. I asked for 25 questions from a short document and got a pink error over question two saying it coul”
“I had a batch of photos to strip GPS out of and got stuck on the fact that every online tool asks you to take "nothing is uploaded" on faith. There's no way to check from the outside. Neither is there for the desktop ones, really. What I landed on: the code that touches the file runs in a sandboxed iframe served with connect-src 'none' . It's a CSP directive that makes the browser refuse every outbound request from that frame — fetch, XHR, beacons, websockets — regardle”
“Hi, I have been slowly working on a pdf processing website that runs everything locally on the users device. it uses python with Ghostscript encased inside a web assembly binary, meaning pdf files are not uploaded into a server bucket or sent anywhere. the website also uses a service worker to cache the full site after the first load. meaning you should be able to load it once with internet, wait until it says ready for offline use, then turn wifi off or switch on airplane mode and carry on usin”
“You get a full press-ready PDF proof to inspect and approve before paying, and automated preflight checks validate bleed, margins, and layout before anything goes to print. Authors retain 100% ownership and copyright of their work - you are the publisher of record, and if you want to distribute across bookstores, you can export full IngramSpark packs with your own ISBN and barcode.”
“The scary part isn't Claude writing a weak chapter, it's that becoming a physical book. I'd want a PDF proof you have to explicitly approve before anything hits the printer, plus a refund path when hyphenation or bleed is wrong on the paper copy. Also: who is the publisher of record on the copyright page, and who owns the ISBN if the print partner assigns one.”
“Thanks for actually giving it a proper try 🙌 This is really useful feedback. And yeah, SayDo has OCR, so it can read text from images too. I hadn't specifically tested it enough with scanned PDFs, so I'm definitely going to try that properly. The chained commands idea is really interesting too, especially that “open notes and start a list” kind of use case. And yeah, I know there are still some rough edges 😅 I'm working on polishing those. Really appreciate you taking the time to t”
“Hey man! You're doing some amazing work. I can't tell you how great it would be if you get a way to test for or apply fixes for accessibility. With the federal gov making accessibility a requirement for anything posted online by government agencies, I can't tell you how much PDFs have been a PITA For the college I work for.”
“Any updates in regards to the modules loaded from CDN and selfhosting? Thanks again for your work and for making it open source!”
“Thank you! Have been running it for some time after switching from Stirling. Just donated a bit in appreciation!”
“mostly the multi tool with combining and adding/subtracting pages from pdf. also making pdf looked scanned is great”
“Since 0.8.0, page.structuredText yield different results. Here the code: I will send the test.pdf file to you by email/ Here the output with 0.7.0 (which is consistent with what I see in the PDF): Here the output with 0.8.0 (which is NOT consistent with what I see in the PDF):”
“You can batch resize in canvas for it not to melt and its way more cost efficient to do it like this than pay for it on server, any 10 year laptop can batch atleat 10 images at a time we are talking about 200mb of ram per batch, user is uploading it, might as well resize too. Also if OP does not need originals he can skip them or atleast resize to something smaller, who needs 15mb image? At this rate he fill have r2 coats skyrocket.”
“Every one of the 23 tools transforms an existing document. There is no way to author one from nothing — you must already have an SVG to start from. This is a real gap for an agent facing tool: an agent asked to "draw a red circle" has nowhere to begin. Why it is not an action chain Inkscape has no action for creating primitives. action list offers file new and insert path data , but nothing that draws a rect or a circle. So this is an engine writing SVG directly, the same route object clone and”
“Spec: PROJECT.md §27, §8 internal/documents extracts text and images from PDF, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX and images, and the attach tool exposes it to the model. The WebUI accepts uploads. The CLI and TUI have no way to attach a file. So today a user can only get a document into a conversation by asking the model to call attach itself, which requires knowing the tool exists. What is missing A CLI flag: boop attach report.pdf "summarise this" , repeatable for several files. A TUI command: /attach <path ,”