
Ask HN: How is there not a full-featured open-source PDF editor/viewer? - escaper
For almost anything you can think of there is a pretty awesome open source version of that software but for the life of me I can&#x27;t find a truly full featured PDF editor that&#x27;s 100% free. As PDF technology has been the preferred document of business for the last 15+ years I&#x27;m really surprised there isn&#x27;t at least one open source project that&#x27;s been a mainstay in this niche?!? What am I missing?
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wizzerking
FRom [https://opensource.com/alternatives/adobe-
acrobat](https://opensource.com/alternatives/adobe-acrobat)

Ah, this is where things start to get tricky. Or at least where they used to.
The world has changed a bit and it turns out that recent versions of
LibreOffice Draw do a fantastic job of editing PDF files, and not just adding
and deleting pages as you might expect, but for editing text and images as
well (so long as your PDF was created directly from a source document and not
from a scan). It's not perfect, and I've had it choke up on a few more complex
documents, but I'm still impressed with what a good job it does on many of the
documents I've had to work with.

Inkscape, too, does a good job with opening documents created elsewhere, and
may be a more intuitive choice if your document is heavy on graphics. There
are standalone tools as well, like the GPLv2 licensed PDFedit, but I've had
such good luck with Inkscape and LibreOffice that I haven't had to use a
separate editor in recent years. So there are FOSS PDF editors, and
LibreOffice certainly allows you to export to PDF virtually everything

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escaper
Yeah that's sort of the article that lead me to post here- like I tried to say
in my title, there's not really a true "full featured" PDF editor/viewer that
does everything.

There doesn't seem to be a GIMP to Photoshop type of product for PDF as far as
I've seen.

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newnewpdro
The last few times I've had to edit a PDF I used xournal.

I haven't used any proprietary tools on other systems to compare, but maybe
it's satisfactory. It's worked fine for what I've needed to do.

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kgwxd
What would you want it to do? Aren't PDFs usually created from non-PDF
sources? I imagine it would basically recreate Word.

~~~
escaper
I'm not even asking for that much really- split, merge, compress, convert from
various formats, rearrange pages, work decent with e-signatures, and have
options to create interactive fields. I've used quite a few of the "free
trial" software from the big names and it's astonishing to me that there isn't
an open source project that can accomplish all of this.

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new_guy
Because you've not written it yet? :p

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escaper
Ha, if only! Perhaps my post will inspire a few brilliant programmers here!

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SQL2219
I think there is some issue with licensing from Adobe on this. Someone who
knows more than me might educate us.

~~~
Someone
The standards related to PDF are open.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF):

 _”PDF was standardized as an open format, ISO 32000, in 2008, and no longer
requires any royalties for its implementation”_

Also,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF#Intellectual_property](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF#Intellectual_property):

 _”Anyone may create applications that can read and write PDF files without
having to pay royalties to Adobe Systems; Adobe holds patents to PDF, but
licenses them for royalty-free use in developing software complying with its
PDF specification.”_

It’s a huge spec, though. For example, fully supporting PDF requires a
JavaScript engine.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
and half a dozen image formats, font formats, bits of PostScript, I think
there is even some XML lurking in there.

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Loranubi
On Windows I use Sumatra PDF which is a great viewer. It uses the MuPDF
library.

