this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

For example there is no proper pdf reader that can sign a pdf and add or remove a page.

Unfortunately, pdf signing is problematic still on Linux, I use it as a daily driver and found a compromise with existing functionality. You can try okular, which is able to sign PDFs without altering them, but has a huge signature block and doesn't permit adding a scan of a signature. My workaround: I created a stamp in the PDF reviewing tools with my signature, I can place that on the document and then sign it afterwards. Unfortunately, that doesn't work for pre-signed PDFs as it will alter the signed version.

Alternatively, LibreOffice Draw can sign PDFs, but also can't insert signature scans (yet, there's an open feature request) and is sometimes not understanding when PDFs change to landscape, in general it's not nice to render a many-pages document in LO Draw and hope that it won't mess up the document upon signing.

For adding / removing pages, I agree - it's a pity there's no GUI application, but I have gotten used to qpdf / pdftk and they are quite powerful and more efficient 90% of the time. Still doesn't excuse no GUI application, but it keeps me able to work.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Xournal++ is old, but it can directly write on PDFs with both pen tablet and scanned image insertion, and can probably add/remove/reorder pages too— Technically I think its file format links to/embeds the whole PDF file, and then probably exports a new one with stuff added on top, or something like that, but the end result is usually that you can directly edit the PDF.

Or do you mean some kind of cryptographic signing? Well, it looks like Adobe offers a webtool too?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I meant tamper-proof cryptographic signatures, yes. A webtool is absolutely out of the question if you consider that it means uploading your potentially confidential document to an enterprise like Adobe.