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Improve PDF Handling

Yesterday I wanted to compress a PDF to a smaller size. So using substage I queried this (using chatgpt 4.1 model) and to my delight it worked and converted to indeed a smaller size. Then I had a second file I wanted to do this with. And to my surprise, it came back saying it didn’t know how to do it. Used the same prompt. Just wondering if the training built into the app can help handle PDF actions a bit better. Not sure why but even after trying it with several different prompts, it was never able to do it. But I know it was able to understand and do it the first time.

Status: Completed3 comments

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Comments3

  • joethephish

    Team•

    Aug 2, 2025

    Good news! Internally I’ve now got Ghostscript support (good for compression and re-rendering) and QPDF support (good for splitting, merging etc) working so for the next release will have much stronger PDF support 👍

  • joethephish

    Team•

    May 3, 2025

    Ah interesting! TBH I wasn’t aware that there were any built in Mac tools that could do this, so I’ll investigate. Either way, embedding a tool for this could be a good feature to add if it doesn’t already exist.

    • MPH Sound

      •

      May 7, 2025

      yah I don’t recall what program it used. I have imagemagick and a few other command line tools installed (ffmpeg, etc) it might have used for the terminal command. I think it probably used imagemagick, But weird it knew what to do only the first time.