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Pdftk has been been around for many years, and does exactly the same things. Why reinvent the wheel? https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/ https
by SpacemannSpiff 11mo ago
Pdftk has been been around for many years, and does exactly the same things. Why reinvent the wheel?
https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/ https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/
- QuantumNomad_ 11mo agoIt makes sense to me. They made a PDF library for Python first. Having a PDF library for your preferred language is a good thing. And it’s natural to then build a cli tool on top of the library they already made.
- alanbernstein 11mo agoThis was my first thought, but after reading the comments here, I see I had no idea how many other alternatives already existed, so why not add another one.
- moopie 11mo agoIt’s not open-source, so practically the question is equivalent to “why reinvent the wheel by creating libreoffice when there’s a perfectly good Microsoft office suite out there”
- mkesper 11mo agoThe server component is under GNU GPL: https://www.pdflabs.com/docs/pdftk-license/ https://www.pdflabs.com/docs/pdftk-license/
- forgotpwd16 11mo agoIn case anyone gets confused, PDFTk Server is just the name for the CLI tool, which hasn't been updated in 10y+ (and annoying to compile due to newer GCC versions removing GCJ). The pdftk provided in various distros (incl. Debian, Fedora, Arch, NixOS) is pdftk-java, a 3rd-party pure Java port of the original tool.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- suhlig 11mo ago> Every time someone reinvents the wheel, it becomes a little rounder. Not sure if this particular library is an improvement, but even if it serves nothing but the author’s enjoyment, or education, it’s a win.