Hi everyone. Hope you are well. BentoPDF recently hit 10k stars on Github in just under 3 months of launch and I am very grateful to the community! ❤️
BentoPDF’s new version has been released. And I had implemented some of the requested feature here such as: Digital Signing of PDFs and Validation along with Email to PDF support and Deskewing of PDF. I have attached the release note link with the post. Moreover the OCR feature now performs on par with OCRMyPDF.
The reason I am making this post is gain feedback on the existing features of Bento, but most importantly Bento is going to have a Desktop version soon. Initially it will be launched for Mac users. Bento is inherently fast, but browsers and wasm have limitations, and this aims to solve it with the use of native libraries and leverage the CPU for faster processing and handling of large files efficiently.
I want to know what is the feature you use the most or is there any feature you’d like to be done that existing PDF softwares don’t do well. I am happy for any feedback! Thank you (:
I’m running it on my server but I haven’t actually used it yet, but it will be there when I need it so I don’t have to use some janky site found online
Thank you!
Going to spin this up on some extra resources at work and see if I can get people off our ancient Acrobat 9 software. Thanks for your hard work.
Thank you. Hope you like it (:
I switched from Stirling to this a few months ago and it’s one of those tools you use once in a while, but not all the time. It’s a good tool to have when you need it and I gladly keep it on my server for those just in case times!
Thank you
I’m running it and it screams vibe coded. The maintainer worked for an AI company before this as well, so it wouldn’t surprise me if it is mostly AI written. It’s buggy and clunky, despitr having a clean UI. The features are random and incomplete. The PDF Form creator is a joke. The signature portion doesn’t work. The “simple” mode really should be default. The website has big company bames in it saying “used by peoplr working at” which is just a bullshit and unimportant thing to say to put big companies logos on the site. Also those same logos aren’t currently removed from the simple mode probably because the AI didn’t consider that when it added the feature.
I know it’s a new project, so I am hoping it gets better. I have wanted a tool exactly like this for so long. Unfortunate that it’s a result of AI, but beggars can’t be choosers
A few clarifications first, because there are some incorrect assumptions here. BentoPDF is not AI written. BentoPDF was built manually over months of active development, with continuous refactoring, and iteration and community contributions. In my previous role, I worked on building AI systems to solve specific problems, and it doesn’t have any direct relation to Bento. Reducing the work of contributors to that is frankly unfair.
That said, it is a fast moving open source project, and not every feature is finished or polished to the same degree. You see, the bad part about building a software is that bugs are inevitable, even billion dollar companies have it, and I am but a solo dev. But the good part is that they can always be fixed.
So Bugs and rough edges are expected at this stage, and actionable bug reports are genuinely useful there. So, If you’ve run into specific breakages, opening issues with details, or just telling what’s wrong and what can be improved, is the most effective way to improve things. Broad label like AI written don’t really help move the project forward, especially given the amount of real work behind it.
But I do appreciate that you want a tool like this to exist and improve. Also, as regards to the Used By People Section, it was already fixed, along with a FOUC issue in simple mode, but it’s in our
edgerelease, which I have mentioned in the very top of our release note. Thanks
Maybe I don’t understand the use case for bentopdf, and considering how popular it is, that is likely true. However, I don’t get what this does…
- it’s self-hosted, but the processing happens on the client? Is this just a local application?
- it only works with PDF documents?
- What advantage does bentopdf have over something like paperless ng?
Again, if this is obvious to most ppl, forgive me.
BentoPDF is for editing PDFs, Paperless is for organizing PDFs. Think GIMP vs Immich.
Hello!
- Yes, its a local app
- Yes, it only concerns itself with PDF documents and conversions to and from PDF
- I have never used paperless so I am not really the best person to answer this, but I believe paperless is a document management system, and is designed for document ingestion and organization?
Bento on the other hand, is a full PDF Toolkit, that allows you to edit, compress, annotate, sign, redact, convert pdf to other formats and convert to pdf from other formats, converting pdf for ai ingestion etc. Basically everything related to PDFs. Hope that helps.
With respect, help me out here…
I process PDFs all the time, both assembling text and images into PDFs and extracting images, text, layouts, etc. My uses are mostly cleaning up metadata and unwanted elements so they render correctly in more environments. I use pdftk and imagemagick for this, generally.
Is bentopdf just a nice GUI for tools like these?
I’m struggling to understand what part of bentopdf is “self-hosted”.
Hello. BentoPDF does provide a GUI for operations like the ones you mentioned. However, the main goal of Bento was to bring capabilities that traditionally only exist in backend or native tools, such as Ghostscript, qpdf, LibreOffice, PyMuPDF, and similar stacks onto the web.
Beyond that, there are many workflows that don’t translate well to a CLI at all such as drag and drop merging and organization, visual page manipulation, form creation, cropping, annotations, and text editing. These are hard to do reliably or efficiently in a terminal, and not everyone uses or is comfortable working with CLI tools.
So all the processing happens in the browser and you get a local hostable, OS agnostic tool without needing native dependencies installed on the system. Hope that somewhat clears your doubt
Fair enough, thanks for taking the time.
it works great!
Thank you !
Maybe I don’t understand the use case for bentopdf, and considering how popular it is, that is likely true
Especially in this day and age, be careful with believing something is right (or even popular) just becuse it looks popular. Talking about generalities of gameable metrics and the cognitive pattern, not to dunk on the project apart from their communications doing the same mistake.
You are not alone, I am also not sure about its benefits.
I would love to see the OS share. I bet us Linux users are all over it, since right now it is the only tool we can use to do all of that in the same place and easily.
Most of our users are on Linux and Windows (:
GW. But I am a StirlingPDF guy. Just because its older. Why should I switch. Yours looks like the same, or not?
I don’t think there’s any reason to switch if its fits your workflow/needs
Can we get some screenshots uploaded to the README.md?
Its exactly same as the live website: bentopdf.com
Grats on the 10k stars!
Unfortunately I’m also in the camp of “when would I need this” but maybe I’ll try to set it up anyways/just in case. I never need to do anything to pdfs that Firefox can’t do…
I thought it was neat and installed it, but I had no specific use cases.
It came in handy when I was trying to combine a bunch of PDFs a few weeks later. Then I used it again to remove some pages from another PDF. I like having it around
Thank you. Hope it helps
Try to ignore the GH stars and other engagement numbers. Or at least try not to put focus on them in your communications. It’s a distraction for you and you are making it a distraction for your audience. GH stars are not a useful signal as they are easily gamed and bought. Maybe yours are all organic, legitimate, and a legitimate cause for personal celebration. But you are just giving false credence to them (and thereby those illegitimately gaming the system) and removing focus from your own app. I don’t think it belongs in release notes or a great way to lead your pitch here.
Most of the first half of the release notes rubs me a bit the wrong way and feels like it’s not the place for those messages. Your “Very Important Note” feels less relevant than the “Dad Joke” section (which does have potential entertainment value) and probably has the exact opposite effect than the one you intend.
My release notes are intentionally personal and opinionated. As the maintainer, I like sharing milestones, thoughts, and context with the community as part of showing how far the project has grown. I understand that style won’t appeal to everyone, but it’s a choice I’m comfortable with and I plan to keep it that way
It’s not as much the general style as the particular contents of this release. Your previous release notes did not give the bad impression this one does. Since you did ask for any feedback I let you know why I am now less likely to use or recommend the tool compared to before. The amount of text and emojis spent begging for TrustPilot reviews also contributes.
I would have been happy if you provided anything constructive. Calling it begging for reviews is certainly surprising for someone who claims the communication put them off. It’s interesting how much emphasis you place on tone and emojis for someone who says they’re less likely to engage because of them. Moreover I asked for feedback, not a character assessment. Your personal preference doesn’t change anything here, there’s nothing actionable in it, and I’m comfortable with how I communicate with the community
It was certainly not intended as a character assessment and it’s unfortunate you took it that way. I’m talking about how the release notes (and in passing your post) were written and not about you as a person or maintainer, or even the project itself.
I do hold release notes of a public project with thousands of users to a different standard than anon lemmy.world comments in a feedback thread. Is that interesting or surprising?
I believe there was actionable feedback given. You are of course free to dismiss it.
