Hi /c/opensource,
I am developing PdfDing - a selfhosted PDF manager, viewer and editor. You can find the repo here.
Today I reached a big milestone as PdfDing reached over 600 stars on github. A good portion of these stars probably comes from being included in the favorite selfhosted apps launched in 2024 on selfh.st.
Here is a quick overview over the project’s features:
- Seamless browser based PDF viewing on multiple devices. Remembers current position - continue where you stopped reading
- Stay on top of your PDF collection with multi-level tagging, starring and archiving functionalities
- Edit PDFs by adding annotations, highlighting and drawings
- Clean, intuitive UI with dark mode, inverted color mode and custom theme colors
- SSO support via OIDC
- Share PDFs with an external audience via a link or a QR Code with optional access control
- Markdown Notes
- Progress bars show the reading progress of each PDF at a quick glance
As always I am happy if you star the repo or if someone wants to contribute.
It’s pretty interesting but there’s a few things that would make it a lot better:
- I have absolutely no idea how to upload a PDF. I can only make lorem ipsum ones. It should have a lot more support for dropping files onto the webpage. Maybe even a quick upload box in your sidebar on the homepage.
- The download button should not open a new tab or change the location or anything. Use the HTML5 ‘download’ attribute instead.
- Increase (top/bottom) margins between PDF entries, it’s too condensed
- The progress bar doesn’t automatically update when you close a PDF. When reading a PDF, I scroll to the bottom, click the little X in top right, and have to press F5 before seeing the progress bar update on the page.
- Make it tell the browser that it’s already a darkmode website (for stuff like DarkReader)
These are my suggestions. Good luck with your project. It looks pretty nice!
I tried the demo version and it’s looks great…
Why not stand alone app?
I started to develop PdfDing because I wanted to continue reading where I left of regardless of the device I am on. That’s not possible with a standalone app.
I’m very new to docker. (Debian server) Have a few simple things running locally. Using tailscale outside of lan. How do I deploy this using Dockge? I’ve tried the compose files in Dockge. I tried the ‘run’ in docker… Keep getting “bad request”. Something about adding my server address to the host file… I got paperless ngx, Stirling PDF, and mealie going pretty easily by copy/paste from their installation pages.
Without more information I am kind of guessing. But probably you need to set the
HOST_NAMEenv variable to the address (e.g.pdfding.homelab) you try to access the app in the browser.
What is the intended use case?
Synced reading across multiple devices is what I use it for
Happy to say I’m one of those starts :) glad to see you on the fediverse.
If this can compress PDF I’d use it. I don’t want to pay for subscription to Adobe just to reduce the file size.
Different use case. Look at this.
Tried the demo. Pretty spiffy.
I know that you get this question a lot, but why would one use this over sterlingPDF?
It talks about taht in the README :)
Let me paste it here for you :
While Stirling PDF and PdfDing are both self-hosted web applications centered around PDF files, they still differ in their use case. Stirling PDF focuses on performing various operations like splitting, cropping and rotating on your PDFs. PdfDing however has a different focus, it is all about reading and organizing your PDFs. All features are added with the goal of improving the reading experience or making the management of your PDF collection simpler. PdfDing’s editing functionalities were added with the same idea in mind. You can add annotations, highlighting and drawings to PDFs, so that you can highlight or add information that will be beneficial to your reading experience.
Did not see your reply, thanks :)
Allow me to quote myself:
While Stirling PDF and PdfDing are both self-hosted web applications centered around PDF files, they still differ in their use case. Stirling PDF focuses on performing various operations like splitting, ropping and rotating on your PDFs. PdfDing however has a different focus, it is all about reading and organizing your PDFs. All features are added with the goal of improving the reading experience or making the management of your PDF collection simpler. PdfDing’s editing functionalities were added with the same idea in mind. You can add annotations, highlighting and drawings to PDFs, so that you can highlight or add information that will be beneficial to your reading experience.
Can you edit the PDF to add links to other parts of the PDF?
No this is not possible right now.
Would there be any harm in using this in conjunction with something like Stirling to edit with one and read with the other?
Not really.
Damn, too bad. Looks really cool though!
I love the idea, is there a way to do tap/click to turn the page instead of continuous though? I’ve been looking for something similar to host sheet music for myself but continuous mode is non-workable for my admittedly niche use case.
You can select
Page Fitin the Zoom drop down menu and then use the left and right arrow keys to jump between pages. This should give you the wanted functionality. It’s not possible to do this with the mouse however.
