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Stirling PDF Documentation

website·Indexed 34 days ago

https://docs.stirlingpdf.com

A comprehensive suite of PDF tools for converting, compressing, splitting, merging, and editing PDF documents. Features include AI-powered document assistance, pipeline automation, redaction tools, and support for self-hosted deployments via Docker.

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What's inside Stirling PDF

  1. Overview of Shared Signing in Stirling PDF

    Shared Signing allows a document owner to send a PDF to multiple registered users for signing. Participants review the document, apply digital or handwritten signatures, and submit it. The owner tracks progress and finalizes the document once all signatures are collected.

    Licensing & Storage Requirements:

    • Local Storage: No license required. Requires security.enableLogin, storage.enabled, and storage.signing.enabled to be active. Participants sign by uploading their own certificates (P12/PKCS12, JKS, or PEM) unless a Pro/Enterprise license is used for managed certificates.
    • Database/S3 Storage: Requires a Pro/Enterprise license.
    • Managed Certificates: Personal and Server certificates require a Pro/Enterprise license.

  2. Overview of OCR functionality in Stirling PDF

    Stirling PDF uses the Tesseract OCR engine to make scanned PDFs, photos of documents, or image-only PDFs searchable and selectable by recognizing text within images.

    Requirement: OCR requires a server-side backend with Tesseract installed. The desktop app cannot perform OCR in local-only mode; it must be connected to Stirling Cloud or a self-hosted server with OCR enabled.

  3. Overview of Stirling Processor document automation

    Stirling Processor is a tool for automating document workflows. It allows users to connect an input source, define a sequence of PDF operations, and specify a destination. Workflows can be triggered by schedules, folder changes, webhook deliveries, or file uploads/exports within the editor. Common use cases include bulk OCR, folder-wide compression, document library conversion, and enforcing organizational document policies.

  4. Overview of Stirling-PDF available tools

    Stirling-PDF provides a wide array of PDF manipulation tools categorized by their primary function:

    • Security: Password management (add/remove), permission changes, handwritten signatures, digital certificate signing, signature validation, watermarking, sanitization, and redaction.
    • Page Operations: Splitting, merging, rotating, extracting, reorganizing, adding page numbers, and removing pages or blank pages.
    • Conversion: Supports 50+ formats. Converts to PDF from Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Images, HTML, Markdown, and Email. Converts from PDF to Word, PowerPoint, Text, Images, CSV, HTML, XML, and PDF/A.
    • Content & Editing: Image addition/extraction, stamping, metadata editing, annotation removal, color replacement, and PDF info retrieval.
    • Advanced Tools: PDF overlay, booklet imposition, multi-page layout, page scaling, auto-renaming, JavaScript visibility, and scanner effects.
    • Specialized Tools: PDF Text Editor (Alpha) for browser-based text/image editing, Multi-Tool for chaining operations, and Read & Annotate for viewing and annotating.

  5. Overview of OCR functionality in Stirling PDF

    Stirling PDF uses Tesseract for text recognition. OCR is performed on the server-side backend; therefore, the desktop app cannot perform OCR in local-only mode and must be connected to Stirling Cloud or a self-hosted server. Note that OCR only recognizes text and does not support table-structure or formula recognition.

  6. Overview of Stirling PDF Sources

    A source is a saved location that pipelines read documents from (input) or deliver them to (destination). Some sources can serve both roles. Sources are managed via Processor → Sources. To connect a new source, select Connect source, choose a type, enter the name and settings, and select Create source.

  7. Overview of Stirling PDF Telegram Bot Integration

    Stirling PDF can run a Telegram bot that accepts PDF files from chats and returns processed results based on saved Automate/Pipeline configurations. The bot operates via outbound HTTPS requests to api.telegram.org, meaning no inbound ports or webhooks are required.

    Workflow:

    1. A user/channel/group sends a PDF to the bot.
    2. The bot saves the file into a watched pipeline inbox folder.
    3. Stirling PDF processes the file using a pipeline JSON found in that folder.
    4. The bot sends the resulting PDF back to the chat.

    Note: This is a community-built beta feature and is not recommended for Enterprise or production-critical deployments.

  8. Overview of Stirling PDF capabilities

    Stirling PDF is a self-hosted and desktop PDF utility suite featuring over 55 tools for signing, converting, merging, editing, OCR, and redaction. Key features include a stateful workspace with undo/redo history, a REST API, an MCP server for AI assistants, and enterprise-grade features like SAML SSO, user management, and audit logging. It supports multi-language operation in 40+ languages.

  9. Choose a Stirling PDF deployment mode

    Stirling PDF offers several operational modes depending on where documents are processed and which features are required:

    • Desktop — Local: Documents are processed on your device. No cloud connection is required.
    • Desktop + Stirling Cloud: Documents are processed either locally or in Stirling Cloud depending on the specific tool used. Cloud processing consumes your account's allowance.
    • Desktop + self-hosted server: Documents are processed on your connected server, utilizing the server's features, permissions, and allowance.
    • Web — Self-hosted: Documents are processed on your own server using the server's license and processing allowance.
    • Stirling Cloud: Documents are processed via Stirling's hosted service using your account and team allowance.

  10. Use the Multi-Tool Workbench for chained PDF operations

    The Multi-Tool Workbench is a dedicated workspace that allows users to chain unlimited operations on one or multiple files without re-uploading. It provides a visual history of operations per file, undo/redo version control, and a result preview to compare before/after states before downloading.

  11. Understand Stirling PDF AI capabilities

    Stirling PDF provides AI-powered document processing tools that are disabled by default. Available capabilities include:

    • Chat: Ask questions about attached PDFs or request edits and conversions.
    • Maths auditing: Verify arithmetic, table totals, and figures across pages.
    • Review comments: Generate PDF comments based on written instructions.
    • Document creation: Generate a new PDF from a text description.
    • Classification: Label documents for tagging and routing purposes.

    Administrators can enable or disable these specific capabilities under the AI Tools settings.

  12. Understand Stirling PDF's core technology stack

    Stirling PDF is built using a combination of server-side and client-side open-source technologies to handle PDF manipulation, document conversion, and OCR.

    Server-Side Engines:

    • PDFBox: Core PDF manipulation
    • JPDFium: PDFium-based engine for merging, splitting, and extracting text/tables
    • LibreOffice: Office document conversions
    • qpdf: Specialized PDF operations
    • Tesseract OCR: Text recognition from images
    • OpenCV: Image processing

    Frontend Stack:

    • Framework: React and TypeScript with Vite
    • PDF Viewing/Annotation: EmbedPDF and PDF.js
    • Client-side Manipulation: pdf-lib
    • UI Components: Mantine
    • Internationalization: i18next (supporting 40+ languages)

    Desktop Framework:

    • Tauri: Used for native application support on Windows, Mac, and Linux.