I just tried using the download attribute out. I am also using librewolf and even with the download attribute it will open a new tab when the default behaviour (applications -> pdf -> open in librewolf) is enabled.

Thank you for your feedback!

1. this is only for the demo mode. I don’t want to have user files on the demo instance. On the log in screen of the demo instance, there is also note regarding this.
2. this might be because of your browser. are you using a firefox based browser by any chance? I had the same issue and had to adjust this behavior in the settings.
3. you are right. I already made the changes, so this is fixed.

I’ll think about the other two suggestions.

Not really.

I started to develop PdfDing because I wanted to continue reading where I left of regardless of the device I am on. That’s not possible with a standalone app.

Without more information I am kind of guessing. But probably you need to set the HOST_NAME env variable to the address (e.g. pdfding.homelab) you try to access the app in the browser.

Did not see your reply, thanks :)

You can select Page Fit in the Zoom drop down menu and then use the left and right arrow keys to jump between pages. This should give you the wanted functionality. It’s not possible to do this with the mouse however.

Allow me to quote myself:

While Stirling PDF and PdfDing are both self-hosted web applications centered around PDF files, they still differ in their use case. Stirling PDF focuses on performing various operations like splitting, ropping and rotating on your PDFs. PdfDing however has a different focus, it is all about reading and organizing your PDFs. All features are added with the goal of improving the reading experience or making the management of your PDF collection simpler. PdfDing’s editing functionalities were added with the same idea in mind. You can add annotations, highlighting and drawings to PDFs, so that you can highlight or add information that will be beneficial to your reading experience.

No this is not possible right now.

There is not much I can do as this functionality is provided by mozilla’s pdf.js library (this also powers the pdf reader of firefox).

Currently, there is no ocr. I also don’t know if I’ll add at some point in the future. It kinda clashes with the philosophy of keeping it simple and minimal as it is quite resource hungry.

I just checked, I usually don’t use the app on a mobile device. If you want to highlight text on mobile:

• open the highlight menu
• select the text as if you were to copy it (long press, etc)
• then click on a color
• the text should now be highlighted

The project is using mozilla’s pdf.js library for displaying pdfs (this is also used for firefox’s build in pdf reader). As far as I am aware it should be able to work with (allmost) all pdf files.

t is all about reading and organizing your PDFs. I started this project because I wanted a web app where I can read longer PDFs seamlessly on my desktop and mobile devices.

Yes, you do. I do not know however you complex the management part needs to be for you. You could give it a try and if you are missing something just create an issue on github and I see what I can do :)

It is not planned right now as I never developed an android app before. But who knows, I am also not a frontend dev, yet here we are :D

I am planning on developing a Rest API, hopefully I can do this in such a way that someone from community is able to create a mobile application.

No this is not possible. However I think, that you can adjust the page size/scale with Stirling PDF.

It depends on you use case. Stirling PDF focuses on performing various operations like splitting, cropping and rotating on your PDFs. PdfDing has a different focus, it is all about reading and organizing your PDFs. I started this project because I wanted a web app where I can read longer PDFs seamlessly on my desktop and mobile devices.

The newly added editing features were implemented with the aim of improving the reading experience. If I find something important I can add an annotation or highlight something. When studying you can add free hand notes to your files.

I hope that helps in differentiating the two applications.

Yes, you could see it like that. I actually started developing PdfDing after I did not find any ebook reader that fulfilled all of my requirements.

PdfDing has a totally different use case than stirling-pdf. stirling-pdf is for manupilating PDF files, in contrast the PdfDing is for viewing and managing PdfFiles.

There are also self-hostable ebook readers, but they (at least the ones I have tried) don’t allow individual users to upload their own files. Usually there is an admin curating the content. Also sharing content with an external audience is difficult.

You are right, there are solutions to for this, that are using the inbuilt PDF viewer of the browser. This works fine on desktops and laptops but on smartphones it will simply download the PDF file and not display it in the browser (at least it is like this on my mobile devices). This solution also does not allow you to continue reading where you stopped on another device.

I needed wanted other features on top:

• every user can upload files
• can be self-hosted via Docker
• minimal and resource-friendly
• SSO support
• Share PDFs with an external audience via a link or a QR Code. There should also be some kind of access control mechanism for the shared PDFs