Dear Lemmings,

I deal with several PDF files on a daily basis. I’m still struggling to find a nice FOSS app to edit PDFs on my phone.

My common needs are :

  • OCR the content
  • merge pages
  • delete pages
  • reorder pages

A bonus would be:

  • edit content
  • fill form, print / send to email

Do you know one which is able to do this?

Many thanks

  • SorteKanin@feddit.dkEnglish
    352·
    9 months ago

    Speaking from experience, when it comes to file formats, PDFs are like an ancient eldritch horror monster. I’m not surprised this doesn’t exist, PDF are awful to work with.

    • nameisnotimportantOP
      6·
      9 months ago

      Thanks for your feedback, I do agree with you and I don’t do it for fun either. That said, I often get the need to do different tasks and I wanted to know if I could skip the need to use a computer for this.

  • Aniki 🌱🌿@lemm.eeEnglish
    151·
    9 months ago

    I wouldn’t bother trying to edit PDF anything on a handheld. That’s a computer task.

    • nameisnotimportantOP
      4·
      9 months ago

      Thanks for your feedback, I do agree with you and I don’t do it for fun either. That said, I often get the need to do different tasks and I wanted to know if I could skip the need to use a computer for this.

      • Aniki 🌱🌿@lemm.eeEnglish
        11·
        9 months ago

        What I’m saying is – the time spent editing on a phone will be far more than just sitting down and doing it with a nice app on a proper laptop. It’s not about the ease, it’s about the speed.

    • nameisnotimportantOP
      7·
      9 months ago

      Thanks that’s a super great idea!

      EDIT: Fired it up and it works brilliantly on a mobile, I’m impressed! I wish I had that idea before, thanks mate!

    • beerclue@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      9 months ago

      Thank you for this. I do have a homelab with various tools, and I sometimes need to convert and adjust PDF files, and I was using all kinds of shady websites. Not anymore :)

      Now, if it only had a translate option too…

    • Pantherina@feddit.deEnglish
      2·
      9 months ago

      Second this, brilliant suite. The solution was so obvious.

      Tbh you could strip out all the used tools and add a mobile/desktop interface too. Kotlin for example.

      Just someone has to do it.

    • nameisnotimportantOP
      2·
      9 months ago

      Why not? There’re a bunch of them for desktop users. Besides, what alternative file format would you suggest?

  • Audalin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    9 months ago

    I don’t usually edit PDFs on my phone. On the PC, I use pdftk+qpdf+img2pdf+ocrmypdf (all command-line apps). Some of those can be found in the default Termux repos once you install the terminal emulator; some, perhaps, could be compiled and used as well.

    • nameisnotimportantOPEnglish
      4·
      9 months ago

      Sorry if my post wasn’t clear, I meant my PDFs like my files which are stored on my computer, but that doesn’t mean I have all the source files (far from that), I’m talking about all the PDFs that you get from others, like from work, suppliers, etc

      • Pantherina@feddit.deEnglish
        15·
        9 months ago

        Yeah, the point is that all those people sending you PDFs suck. Or your workflow sucks.

        Example, presentation slides. There are people drawing on them, adding additional infos instead of condensing informations.

        PDFs are for presenting, people use them for editing which makes no sense. Example: linebreaks are placed where it makes sense for the printed text, with font size etc. If you copy text and change font size, they will be everywhere and the info is literally missing to fix that.

        So instead, you use a simplified format that doesnt have the needed info and add AI, OCR etc to add that info.

        Its horrible.

        TLDR: ask those people to send you the original files