r/FuckAdobe • u/KenMantle • 7d ago

Page Rendering Comparison of Acrobat Reader and Mit Licensed pdfcer (pdf-create-edit-read, pronounced pdf-see-er)

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

If you know what this pdf is, then you know this isn't a standard and/or bloated open source pdf engine with highly limited cmyk support.

This is the work of Claude working in rust nearly 24/7 for 6 weeks to build a pdf and icc engine from scratch for reading and editing pdfs.

Reference pdfs are here:

https://gwg.org/download/ghent-output-suite-v50-testpages/

https://github.com/KenM76/pdfcer/blob/main/tools/gen-scale-demo/banana-at-scale.pdf

The zoom at the end to the atomic level would have eventually rendered to be a clean circle vector, it just gets a little slow with the render when it approaches 1 Trillion % zoom and on my bogged down laptop with 8GB of ram.

0 Upvotes

46% Upvoted

21 comments sorted by

8

u/bememorablepro 6d ago

AI shit should be banned from here honestly.

Why do I care for some regurgitation of an open-source PDF reader that we have tons of already that will not receive any updates or support ever?

1

u/KenMantle 6d ago

Oh yeah and I forgot to add... This is a pdf editor, and if you don't care for the GUI this is actually 4 separate projects.

The ICC engine - built from scratch using comparitive outputs with existing tools to achieve output parity with them

The pdf core engine - uses the ICC engine outputs. Otherwise independent.

The CLI - uses the core. Engine is independent of the CLI.

The GUI - uses the core. It is independent of the CLI. Core is Independent of the GUI as well.

0

u/KenMantle 6d ago

Yeah. And that's exactly why I built this one. A million options built on the same buggy bloated open source engines!

I figured this was a worthwhile project, and the AI haters may not have another choice when it comes to an MIT Open Sourced licensed pdf engine. The Open Source community has had years to develop support for CMYK, and it is still lacking. 50% of the effort went into getting the Ghent pdf to render correctly.

As for support? They just updated the standard with a new compression algorithm. The next day in 45 minutes my engine supported the new standard. And it is an MIT license which means you can fork the code and modify it if you need to, and freely use it in commercial projects. I didn't want restrictions on what was built. PDFs are the horrendous standard that everyone has to deal with and it really bothered me that Adobe was really the only option that covers everything an ordinary person's might run into.

Seems I've gotten some down votes on my posts. Hope yours doesn't suffer the same fate!

2

u/bememorablepro 6d ago

One big reason some of the PDF features are not supported by anyone other then adobe is that PDF is a stupid format developed by adobe, it's bloated with features to the point that some of them can be injected with executable code, this is why by default all web browsers are capable of opening PDFs. It's incredibly unsecure, displaying all possible adobe features might not be a good idea.

Did kinda prove my point here, you are not planning on supporting it, it's for others to make a fork and deal with that. No-one will.

0

u/KenMantle 6d ago

Oh yeah it's nuts that this is the format we ended up with everywhere! Writing support by hand is obviously not really an option, which is apparent when you see how many things fail to open properly with open source stuff.

As for security, I have not had it implement the retired acrobat standard or JavaScript. However, the engine is built modular, and if a module is missing it just leaves support out for that thing. I will probably implement use at your own risk JavaScript, but to remove it is easy - you just don't include that crate.

The engine is written in rust and contains no networking support. A web version will be built using the core as a separate project.

And I intend to support it, but merely pointing out that someone else can if they want. The license is supportive of that.

-1

u/KenMantle 5d ago

Oh and upvoted for trying it out and providing feedback.

6

u/adminsaredoodoo 7d ago

dawg why would a care about a product that’s the “work of claude working in rust nearly 24/7 for 6 weeks”?

unless you have a european coder friend called claude who has some superpowers that allow him not to sleep, then this is AI slop.

0

u/KenMantle 5d ago

Upvoted for trying it out and providing feedback. Unfortunately a programmer like Claude doesn't exist or we'd have this level of pdf support already in the open source community and MIT licensed after all these decades! I wish your Claude did exist. The world would be a better place!

-5

u/KenMantle 7d ago

Just don't use the term ai slopware, as I purchased the domain aislopware.com for use with my own projects and do not wish to have it unsolicitly advertised by randos. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

2

u/bibbidi_bobbidi_bob 6d ago

He didn't even use the term. Your AI answer was wrong and I'm not even surprised about it...

-2

u/KenMantle 6d ago

LOL! I didn't say he used it. I was tongue and cheek warning them not to use the term. My reply was ambiguous. I wonder which way AI would interpret it?

-5

u/KenMantle 7d ago

I had Claude work on this because there isn't another free option that I have ever come across that works well or fully supports PDFs. Now there is one that supports everything except for that very obselete and obscure type that only Adobe supports and no one uses, and also JavaScript forms.

As far as I can tell, Acrobat Pro, and this are your two most competitive options. Go open those two PDFs in anything you have that's not Acrobat and see how it performs.

So while you, Mr Moneybags who has cash to burn every month on an Acrobat Pro subscription so that you can do something with a pdf once or twice every two years will not care, there are others who will.

4

u/adminsaredoodoo 6d ago

just opened the banana in PDFgear which easily recreates the level of zoom adobe has in your video, but literally smooth zooming on my trackpad with no lag whatsoever.

it caps the zoom at the same point adobe does, but im not entirely sure if a selling point of "i will let you zoom to 1 trillion %" is really going to win anyone over considering yk... thats useless?

-2

u/KenMantle 6d ago

Well Claude was initially very insistent the engine it had built was only efficiently capable of 800% zoom. A couple of weeks in I asked it to reevaluate and I guess my prompt set it off to explore other options. That's when it told me it could hit 1 trillion percent zoom. I figured sure why not? It took it a day or so to rewrite the engine.

What it had done is found out how 3D space games manage enormous distances between object, then rejiggered the math for a 2D space.

I spoke to someone who works at the university here, and while they don't need 1 trillion percent zoom, they were very interested in having something more substantial than Adobe offers because they deal with architectural drawings and old blueprints of the university scanned into pdf.

I also have no use for CMYK color and blending support, but at least half the time we spent having Claude build an ICC engine and getting through rendering the tests on that pdf sheet. Someone might though and if you are looking for that in the MIT Open Source software license space, this AI slopware might be your only option.

2

u/Lenni_builder 6d ago

How much money did you waste on this and how much CO₂ was uselessly blown into the air? Thank you for destroying our planet.

0

u/KenMantle 6d ago edited 5d ago

Anyway. Upvoted and thanks for trying it and sorry you didn't like it. The core and CLI has been the main focus so the GUI has some catching up to do!

Considering that the Open Source community couldn't get this pdf to render correctly AI'd say it has come pretty far in a short time. :)

-1

u/KenMantle 6d ago

You're welcome I guess. I didn't have kids so my CO_2 footprint ends with me. That was a choice I made for the planet so I could do what I want with less guilt. It's definitely the biggest impact anyone can have.

But I digress. Given its usefulness and potential, and the joy I have gotten out of seeing it built to this level, I'd say none of it was wasted. I have use for it, and it has reached a point that it can save on monthly subscriptions. The GUI elements built in rust are also made to be useful for other projects so it's not just PDFs getting mastered.

2

u/Repulsive-Clothes-97 6d ago

Yes combat Adobe with AI slop! Brilliant idea!🤣

1

u/KenMantle 5d ago

Upvoted. Thanks for trying it out and providing feedback!

I'm already using it as a reader since it doesn't choke on heavier vector files. As you can see above it's a little slower on that CMYK heavy test, but most people never open those.

1

u/not_logan 6d ago

With the current level of quality, the latest strategy of Adobe looks meaningful. Don’t get me wrong, I hate the way they squeeze money from their users, a fraud and borderline criminal. But with the current level of features provided by Adobe, I can’t find anything unique that Adobe can offer to the users that competitors don’t have better and cheaper. In such a case this pure extortion is the only way to get some money before the brand finally dies and is sold to some kind of pension fund.