Upgrade to Pro
— share decks privately, control downloads, hide ads and more …
Speaker Deck
Features
Speaker Deck
PRO
Sign in
Sign up for free
Search
Search
Building an online PDF editor from scratch
Search
Zbigniew Siciarz
January 21, 2013
Programming
3
1k
Building an online PDF editor from scratch
My talk at PyWaw #20.
http://www.pywaw.org/21-01-2013
Zbigniew Siciarz
January 21, 2013
Tweet
Share
More Decks by Zbigniew Siciarz
See All by Zbigniew Siciarz
What if Socrates was a dev?
zsiciarz
0
86
Calling Rust from other languages
zsiciarz
3
620
An introduction to the Rust ecosystem
zsiciarz
5
1.8k
Python3-only Django project - the benefits
zsiciarz
1
330
My God, it's full of stars! (and planets and Python)
zsiciarz
0
2.9k
PostgreSQL & Django - a tasty mix
zsiciarz
2
400
IPython: tips, tricks & magic
zsiciarz
8
3.5k
ShiningPanda: simple CI hosting for Python
zsiciarz
1
100
requests, czyli HTTP dla ludzi
zsiciarz
1
110
Other Decks in Programming
See All in Programming
全部見せます! クラシルリワードのSwiftTesting移行プロジェクト
uetyo
0
190
いつか使える ObjectSpace / Maybe useful ObjectSpace
euglena1215
2
130
GraphQLの魅力を引き出すAndroidクライアント実装
morux2
3
310
仮想ファイルシステムを導入して開発環境のストレージ課題を解消する
segadevtech
2
500
dotfiles について話したい #湘なんか
stefafafan
2
290
Jakarta EE meets AI
ivargrimstad
0
350
いまから追い上げる、Jetpack Compose トレーニング
nyafunta9858
0
240
Using Livebook to build and deploy internal tools @ ElixirConf 2024
hugobarauna
0
240
Swiftコードバトル必勝法
toshi0383
0
150
RAGの回答精度評価用のQAデータセットを生成AIに作らせた話
kurahara
0
240
Amazon BedrockでサーバレスなAIお料理ボットを作成する!!
tosuri13
0
200
【TID2024】模擬講義:プログラマと一緒にゲームをデザインしてみよう!
akatsukigames_tech
0
550
Featured
See All Featured
Agile that works and the tools we love
rasmusluckow
327
20k
Building Flexible Design Systems
yeseniaperezcruz
325
37k
Making Projects Easy
brettharned
113
5.8k
Learning to Love Humans: Emotional Interface Design
aarron
270
40k
Designing for Performance
lara
604
68k
Rails Girls Zürich Keynote
gr2m
93
13k
Bootstrapping a Software Product
garrettdimon
PRO
304
110k
Infographics Made Easy
chrislema
239
18k
Building Applications with DynamoDB
mza
89
6k
The Mythical Team-Month
searls
218
43k
Designing Experiences People Love
moore
138
23k
Exploring the Power of Turbo Streams & Action Cable | RailsConf2023
kevinliebholz
24
3.9k
Transcript
Building an online PDF editor from scratch PyWaw #20, 21.01.2013
Zbigniew Siciarz @zsiciarz http://siciarz.net
Why?
Disclaimer • still not a full-blown editor • proof of
concept • simple way to add rich media content to digital magazines
Current status
Links
Multimedia
Go to page
Everything is a link • website URLs (d’oh!) • multimedia
content (audio/video/galleries) • internal links („go to page”) • custom HTML5 widgets
Workflow 1. upload a PDF file 2. preprocessing on the
server 3. add widgets, links etc. in web editor 4. save and create package 5. publish to mobile devices 6. download package and display content Publisher
Preprocessing • run asynchronously as a queued task • extract
metadata from uploaded file • create page thumbnails (with ImageMagick) • find any existing links • mark as unpublished
Keep existing links! • extract links with PyPDF2 • store
in database as PdfLink objects • display in web editor
Dimensions and boxes • cartesian coordinate system • box is
a list of 4 floats: [x1, y1, x2, y2] • PDF units = 1/72”= pt x y (0, 0) (x1, y1) (x2, y2)
Dimensions and boxes • artBox
Dimensions and boxes • artBox • bleedBox
Dimensions and boxes • artBox • bleedBox • cropBox
Dimensions and boxes • artBox • bleedBox • cropBox •
mediaBox
Dimensions and boxes • artBox • bleedBox • cropBox •
mediaBox • trimBox
Dimensions and boxes • artBox • bleedBox • cropBox •
mediaBox • trimBox
PDF Encryption
Links • PDF annotations are messy • 4 (or more?)
different representations • indirect objects all the way down • reversed coordinates • peculiar edge cases still not covered
Watermarking • create blank PDF (watch out for page dimensions!)
• draw links with ReportLab • cross your fingers • merge with original file
Watermarking
Merging + =
Merging • PyPDF2 can’t properly merge PDFs with links :(
• ReportLab can’t extract links from PDFs* • several hours wasted on hacking PyPDF2 • pdftk…? • pdftk! *Open Source version
Merging • apply watermark page by page to original PDF
• does not work :( • works!
Final package • encrypted PDF + media assets • digitally
signed archive • publication = push notification to devices • mobile application downloads the package and displays content
Conclusion • sadly, 3 different toolkits are necessary to get
the job done PyPDF2 ReportLab pdftk Extract links Yes No* No Draw links No Yes No Merge and preserve links No No Yes *Open Source version
ReportLab PLUS? • „ Reuse your existing pdfs in new
and exciting ways” • might just work • pricey :(
Appendix
Appendix
Credits • Businessperson designed by Devochkina Oxana from The Noun
Project • Servers designed by Daniel Campos from The Noun Project • Maru - http://sisinmaru.blog17.fc2.com/
Questions?
Thank you!