Comment by p0w3n3d
4 hours ago
I wonder why everything now is written in web frameworks. Meanwhile I am currently using macos which has a magnificent PDF tool called... Preview. It allows annotate, merge, realign pages, insert one page from another document or even a JPEG-scan, etc.
However, before the courtesy of my company giving me a macos-enabled gear - I had to cope with PDFs using multiple apps on Windows and Linux. Recently I got there again and found out that PDF support is really weak in Linux, and the formerly award winning Acrobat Reader now looks slow and poor, trying to steal my data and occupy as much space as possible. Also Acrobat Reader reference browser for linux is killed now.
Hence, the question. If everyone is using PDF, why there are no good, fast native tools? and... why are we even staying with PDF?
There are many powerful native pdf tools but they are usually paid and you have to install them. Preview is ok but its only on mac. Preview also has only some of the features.
These online converters are immensely popular for a reason. They also used to do everything serverside and had ads all around which is obviously terrible security wise. So having WASM versions is much better.
Since these are link away they are easy to send and save. I help self-host a podcast and you need very particular settings for the export of the audio file. Instead of cooking up some automated solution, editors have bookmark of this https://ffmpeg-online.vercel.app/ with all the ffmpeg settings correctly selected and they can do the final file themselves for both their preview and production.
Compare that to having multiple people with multiple platforms having to install and learn to use some gui app.