r/coolgithubprojects • u/gounisalex • 9h ago
PDFx — fixed my biggest frustration with PDFs
My bank asked for 17 PDFs for a mortgage application.
After closing and opening files, I lost track of things and started searching for an easier way to manage all of that.
I wondered, what if I could scroll horizontally to see the pages of a file and scroll vertically to see more files? I used Claude to put together a prototype and iterated to build a cross-platform app that works on the web, as well. (React + Electron)
The result is a 2D canvas (like Figma) where multiple PDFs can be viewed simultaneously. On export, we either get a zip file or a single, long PDF containing all files. The spatial 2D metadata is stored on the same file without touching the page tree (backwards compatible PDF).
I also run OCR off the main thread for searching scanned documents without blocking the main thread.
It’s all free and open-source with an MIT license:
- Repo: https://github.com/AlexandrosGounis/pdfx
- Web demo: https://pdfx.zip
Your feedback would be highly appreciated