Skip to content

Releases: pdfcpu/pdfcpu

v0.9.1

24 Oct 09:14
@hhrutter hhrutter
v0.9.1
1d4a5a6
This commit was signed with the committer’s verified signature. The key has expired.
hhrutter Horst Rutter
GPG key ID: 3535854A58720AFD
Expired
Learn about vigilant mode.
Compare
Choose a tag to compare
v0.9.1 Latest
Latest

Hello dear pdfcpu user!

👩🏽‍🔬 This release extends the image command so you can update individual images in a PDF.

It also extends the pdfcpu configuration with parameters for controlling outbound HTTP access and introduces the config version.

Moreover we introduce a config command that lets you reset the config.yml to the current major version whenever pdfcpu issues a corresponding warning or you just feel like it for other reasons.

And we have a nice extension for the booklet command and lots of fixes and parser improvements.

Let's dive right in.. 🤿

Update Images

pdfcpu images list    [-p(ages) selectedPages] -- inFile...
pdfcpu images extract [-p(ages) selectedPages] -- inFile outDir
pdfcpu images update inFile imageFile [outFile] [ objNr | (pageNr Id) ]

Using the new images command you can now update images in your PDF file.

Consider the following use case:

pdfcpu images list gallery.pdf
gallery.pdf:
1 images available (1.8 MB)
Page Obj# │ Id  │ Type  SoftMask ImgMask │ Width │ Height │ ColorSpace Comp bpc Interp │   Size │ Filters
━━━━━━━━━━┿━━━━━┿━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┿━━━━━━━┿━━━━━━━━┿━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┿━━━━━━━━┿━━━━━━━━━━━━
   1    3 │ Im0 │ image                  │  1268 │    720 │  DeviceRGB    3   8    *   │ 1.8 MB │ FlateDecode

Extract all images into the current dir:

pdfcpu images extract gallery.pdf .
extracting images from gallery.pdf into ./ ...
optimizing...
writing gallery_1_Im0.png

Let's update the image with Id=Im0 on page=1 with gallery_1_Im0.png:

pdfcpu images update gallery.pdf gallery_1_Im0.png

or update the image object (#3) with logo.png:

pdfcpu images update gallery.pdf logo.png 3

or why not updating the image with Id=Im0 on page=1 with logo.jpg:

pdfcpu images update gallery.pdf logo.jpg 1 Im0

You can also dry run the command ofcourse and write to some out.pdf:

pdfcpu images update gallery.pdf gallery_1_Im0.png out.pdf
pdfcpu images update gallery.pdf logo.png out.pdf 3
pdfcpu images update gallery.pdf logo.jpg out.pdf 1 Im0

The behavior of pdfcpu images extract is the same like pdfcpu extract -mode image.

See more here and don't forget there is always pdfcpu help images.

Reset Configuration and new config command

Sometimes it is necessary to extend the pdfcpu configuration.

In such a case if you upgraded to a new release in the past you had to manually remove your config.yml
and it would get upgraded on the execution of the next command on the CLI.

This is now history.

Starting with this release pdfcpu will issue a warning if your configuration needs to be upgraded:

**************************** WARNING ****************************
* Your configuration is not based on the current major version. *
*        Please backup and then reset your configuration:       *
*                     $ pdfcpu config reset                     *
*****************************************************************

The warning will only appear if the major version of the installed pdfcpu executable
does not match the major version of the new configuration version we are also introducing with this release:

# version (Do not edit!)
version: v0.9.1 dev

If you do not reset your configuration in this situation you are risking nasty side effects and in worst case a hard landing - Ouch.. 🚑

From now on all you have to do is execute the new config reset command:

$ pdfcpu config reset
Did you make a backup of /Users/horstrutter/Library/Application Support/pdfcpu/config.yml ?
(yes/no): yes
Are you ready to reset your config.yml to v0.9.1 dev ?
(yes/no): yes
resetting..
Ready - Don't forget to update config.yml with your modifications.

Using the occasion we extended what you know as pdfcpu config into:

$ pdfcpu help config
usage: pdfcpu config list
       pdfcpu config reset

Make sure you also read the docs.

Controlling Http Traffic

Right now there are two use cases involving outbound Http traffic:

  • validation check for broken links
  • loading images into image boxes

We are introducing 2 new configuration parameters with this release:

# internet availability.
offline: false

# http timeout in seconds.
timeout: 5

There is also a new offline common flag for operations which is probably most useful for testing scenarios and consistent benchmarking.

Extended Booklet command

Thanks to @adamgreenhall for once again making the booklet command even more powerful.

Please check out all the details here.

In addition feel free to consult pdfcpu help booklet.

🙏🏻 Thanks 🙏🏻

to all of you for reporting bugs and testing fixes.
Special shoutout also to @carlwilson and everybody else for putting time into submitting a PR.
✨ All of this ensures pdfcpu gets more robust and better and better by the minute ✨

Changelog

Contributors

carlwilson and adamgreenhall
Assets 12
Loading

v0.8.1

31 Aug 13:13
@hhrutter hhrutter
v0.8.1
66fee12
This commit was signed with the committer’s verified signature. The key has expired.
hhrutter Horst Rutter
GPG key ID: 3535854A58720AFD
Expired
Learn about vigilant mode.
Compare
Choose a tag to compare
v0.8.1

Yet Another Maintenance Release

This release has been overdue.
Lots of fixed bugs to report as well as major improvements of CJK support.
The API ships now with enhanced support for adding PDF annotations.
The corresponding tests are located in annotation_test.go and the generated artifacts here.
I recommend using Adobe Reader to view these because many other PDF Viewer lack the necessary PDF spec compliance.

Thanks

for all of you test driving pdfcpu and reporting 🐛 s along the way.
Special PR thanks 👍🏻 go to @toshi1127 and @xelan.

Changelog

Contributors

xelan and toshi1127
Assets 12
Loading

v0.8.0

24 Apr 22:27
@hhrutter hhrutter
v0.8.0
576f15e
This commit was signed with the committer’s verified signature. The key has expired.
hhrutter Horst Rutter
GPG key ID: 3535854A58720AFD
Expired
Learn about vigilant mode.
Compare
Choose a tag to compare
v0.8.0

Maintenance Release

PDF 2.0 Support

PDF 2.0 encryption is now supported and you are free to use the following commands with your PDF 2.0 input files:

  • encrypt
  • decrypt
  • changeopw
  • changeupw
  • permissions

Performance

We can report another 🚀 @fancycode parser improvement resulting in a significant performance boost and lower memory overhead especially for large files:

Before:

$ time go run test.go 
2024/03/21 09:03:55.874443 Parsing ...
2024/03/21 09:04:07.947987 Done, uses 4244 MiBytes heap memory, 6755 MiBytes system memory
2024/03/21 09:04:07.948013 Parsed 1133 pages

real	0m12,743s
user	0m21,830s
sys	0m2,589s

After:

$ time go run test.go 
2024/03/21 09:04:30.639673 Parsing ...
2024/03/21 09:04:30.899588 Done, uses 12 MiBytes heap memory, 11 MiBytes system memory
2024/03/21 09:04:30.899609 Parsed 1133 pages

real	0m0,568s
user	0m0,881s
sys	0m0,228s

Configuration Changes

We have added options to skip some optimization steps or disable internal optimization alltogether:

If you disable the following option there will be no internal optimization of the cross reference table once it is loaded into memory.
This will only affect commands that do not rely on optimization like e.g. optimize

# toggle optimization
optimize: true

The following will disable the parsing of page content streams in order to detect unused resources like images or fonts.

# optimize page resources via content stream analysis.
optimizeResourceDicts: true

The following option decides if pdfcpu will scan for and remove duplicate content streams.

# optimize duplicate content streams across pages.
optimizeDuplicateContentStreams: false

⚡ Caution is advised and you have to know what you are doing when using these options.
Tuning or turning optimization off can make sense in environments where you deal with large PDF files that usually look the same structure wise so there are no surprises.

Since the pdfcpu configuration has changed you are encouraged to recreate your config.yml:

  1. Locate your config.yml using pdfcpu conf
  2. Remove/backup your config.yml
  3. Create a new config.yml from scratch by executing any pdfcpu cmd on the CLI eg. execute one more time pdfcpu conf
  4. Edit your configuration

Thanks

for all of you test driving pdfcpu and reporting 🐛 s along the way.
Special PR thanks 👍🏻 also to @adamgreenhall for improving the booklet command and to @xelan as well.

Changelog

Contributors

fancycode, adamgreenhall, and xelan
Assets 12
Loading

v0.7.0

05 Mar 01:16
@hhrutter hhrutter
v0.7.0
dfaa588
This commit was signed with the committer’s verified signature. The key has expired.
hhrutter Horst Rutter
GPG key ID: 3535854A58720AFD
Expired
Learn about vigilant mode.
Compare
Choose a tag to compare
v0.7.0

Hello!

🧑‍🔬 We packed lots of goodies into this release for you..

Performance

You will like this ✨
Thanks to @fancycode we have improved PDF parsing significantly.
While this is not easily comparable running the pdfcpu testsuite is now 8 seconds faster under MacOS 14.2.1:

Before:

./coverage.sh  67.60s user 13.35s system 119% cpu 1:07.93 total

After:

./coverage.sh  59.64s user 12.55s system 107% cpu 1:07.01 total

PDF 2.0 Support

We now have basic support for writing back PDF 2.0 files.
This means you may start using all pdfcpu operations that update validated PDF 2.0 files.
Basic support means, your mileage may vary, especially when you try to process a file using one of the new 2.0 features.

Since it is hard to get a hand on PDF 2.0 files using a specific new 2.0 feature there is a disclaimer printed on the command line asking for your input and contribution. Please open an issue and share your file in case pdfcpu has a problem digesting your file.
The same applies if you just want to see some specific 2.0 feature supported.

In general, please 🙏🏻 report back any issues - there is no way to fix something that does not get reported!

New Zoom Command

pdfcpu zoom [-p(ages) selectedPages] -- description inFile [outFile]

Zoom in/out of selected pages either by magnification factor or corresponding margin.
When zooming out the unused page content space results into horizontal and vertical margins.
These are different from each other but correspond to a certain factor.

Examples:

Zoom into magnification of 200%

pdfcpu zoom -- "factor: 2"  in.pdf out.pdf

Zoom out to magnification of 50%

pdfcpu zoom -- "factor: .5" in.pdf out.pdf

Zoom out to a magnification equivalent to a horizontal margin of 1 cm

pdfcpu zoom -unit cm -- "hmargin: 1" in.pdf out.pdf

Zoom out to a magnification equivalent to a vertical margin of 30 points.
Draw a border around zoomed out page content and fill unused page space light gray

pdfcpu zoom -- "vmargin: 30, border:true, bgcolor:lightgray" in.pdf out.pdf ...

Please consult pdfcpu help zoom for more and also the official documentation

Enhanced Booklet command

Thanks to @adamgreenhall we have an even more powerful booklet command for producing zines:

We now have booklet styles 2, 4, 6 and 8 and you may choose one of the following booklet types, each representing a certain method for arranging pages into a booklet:

booklet, bookletadvanced, perfectbound

Examples:

Arrange pages of in.pdf 2 per sheet side (4 per sheet, back and front) onto out.pdf

pdfcpu booklet -- "formsize:Letter" out.pdf 2 in.pdf

Arrange pages of in.pdf 4 per sheet side (8 per sheet, back and front) onto out.pdf:

pdfcpu booklet -- "formsize:Ledger" out.pdf 4 in.pdf

Arrange pages of in.pdf 6 per sheet side (12 per sheet, back and front) onto out.pdf

pdfcpu booklet -- "formsize:Ledger" out.pdf 6 in.pdf

Arrange pages of in.pdf 8 per sheet side (16 per sheet, back and front) onto out.pdf

pdfcpu booklet -- "formsize:A3" out.pdf 8 in.pdf

Arrange pages of in.pdf 4 per sheet side, with short-edge binding onto out.pdf

pdfcpu booklet -- "formsize:A3, binding:short" out.pdf 4 in.pdf

Arrange pages of in.pdf 2 per sheetside as sequence of folios covering 4*foliosize pages each.

pdfcpu booklet -- "formsize:A4, multifolio:on" hardbackbook.pdf 2 in.pdf

Arrange pages of in.pdf 2 per sheet side, arranged for perfect binding, onto out.pdf

pdfcpu booklet -- "formsize:A4, btype:perfectbound" out.pdf 2 in.pdf

Arrange pages of in.pdf 4 per sheet side, arranged for advanced binding, onto out.pdf

pdfcpu booklet -- "formsize:A3, btype:bookletadvanced" out.pdf 4 in.pdf

Please consult pdfcpu help booklet for more and also the official documentation

Configuration Changes

There are two changes to the configuration:

  1. validationNone was eliminated
  2. postProcessValidate is new and enables safeguard validation

Validation mode ValidationNone has been eliminated for a couple of reasons.
First of all during validation there are a lot of things happening like internalizing and caching needed for command processing,
secondly PDF validation has become quite performant.

We are introducing the new config flag postProcessValidate.
This flag which is turned on by default enables the validation of your processed cross reference table right before writing.
This is considered a useful safeguard, since in cases when writing back a problematic cross reference table without problems,
only the next read/parse/validation attempt will take notice of a problem.
If you disable this you will get an additional performance boost overall but with the caveat described above.

As usual please renew your configuration!

Form filling now expects the user font Roboto-Regular when using eastern european scripts.
You can do this manually or just remove your pdfcpu configuration all together and recreate it like so:

  1. Locate the pdfcpu folder using pdfcpu conf
  2. Remove/backup the pdfcpu folder
  3. Recreate a brand new pdfcpu folder by executing any pdfcpu cmd on the CLI eg. execute one more time pdfcpu conf
  4. Edit your configuration

Samples And Tests

This all is complementing the official documentation

To get a better understanding of pdfcpu's operations please make sure you check out all tests and the corresponding PDF output and all json input where appropriate:

pdfcpu/pkg/samples/* comes loaded with 230 MB worth of PDFs produced by corresponding tests and json input located at:

  • pdfcpu/pkg/api/test
  • pdfcpu/pkg/testdata/json
Screenshot 2024-03-05 at 14 11 56

Thanks

🙏 to all bug reporters and feature requestors.
Special thanks for contributed PRs go to @adamgreenhall, @fancycode, @kalimit, @sivukhin and @afh

Little Commercial Break

pdfcpu is in need of more frequent financial supporters!
Please consider becoming a sponsor especially if you are a (small) business 🙏
If you are a developer within a business please go to your superior or team lead and have them compare the benefits/costs vs. commercial solutions. If you prefer to operate in stealth mode that's fine - you can always become a private sponsor.
What's important is to keep the project funded and on a clear, steady path 🚀

Meet The Maintainer

I will be in the San Francisco Bay Area this fall.
If you are a recurring sponsor or not but a business using pdfcpu I would like to get to know you and your pdfcpu use case. I'll be happy to meet also one-on-one possibly over 🍻 for a technical chat/discussion and to get feedback right from the trenches.
Just get in touch with me: [email protected]

Next Steps

Support for PDF 2.0 encryption will be tackled next, after that digital signatures.
A Beta version is within reach 👍🏻

ghstars0324

Have fun 💚 with pdfcpu!

Changelog

Contributors

afh, fancycode, and 3 other contributors
Assets 12
Loading

v0.6.0

10 Dec 09:33
@hhrutter hhrutter
v0.6.0
e3358c4
This commit was signed with the committer’s verified signature. The key has expired.
hhrutter Horst Rutter
GPG key ID: 3535854A58720AFD
Expired
Learn about vigilant mode.
Compare
Choose a tag to compare
v0.6.0

Hello! 💫

This release comes ready for you to play around with during the 🎄 holidays.
It is packed with new features and the first one 🔥 dealing with PDF 2.0 (ISO 32000:2) support.
Let's get right into it..

PDF 2.0 Support

We start with basic support for validation and you can play around with the validate and info commands.
The work around this is ongoing and will stretch over the next couple of releases.
Please 🙏🏻 report back any issues.

CLI

There are three new commands:

Manage the page layout which shall be used when the document is opened:

pdfcpu pagelayout list  inFile
pdfcpu pagelayout set   inFile value
pdfcpu pagelayout reset inFile

➡️ pdfcpu help pagelayout and pagelayout


Manage how the document shall be displayed when opened:

pdfcpu pagemode list  inFile
pdfcpu pagemode set   inFile value
pdfcpu pagemode reset inFile

➡️ pdfcpu help pagemode and pagemode


Manage the way the document shall be displayed on the screen and shall be printed:

pdfcpu viewerpref list [-a(ll)] [-j(son)] inFile
pdfcpu viewerpref set                     inFile (inFileJSON | JSONstring)
pdfcpu viewerpref reset                   inFile

➡️ pdfcpu help viewerpref and viewerpref

The split command now also allows for splitting along page boundaries:

pdfcpu split [-m(ode) span|bookmark|page] inFile outDir [span|pageNr...]

➡️ pdfcpu help split and split

The merge command allows for divider pages at file boundaries and zipping two files together:

pdfcpu merge [-m(ode) create|append|zip] [-s(ort) -b(ookmarks) -d(ivider)] outFile inFile...

➡️ pdfcpu help merge and merge


The permission command is now more useful:

pdfcpu permissions list [-upw userpw] [-opw ownerpw] inFile...
pdfcpu permissions set [-perm none|print|all|max4Hex|max12Bits] [-upw userpw] -opw ownerpw inFile

It now also allows for conveniently setting individual PDF access bits either via a binary or hexadecimal number.
➡️ pdfcpu help permissions and permissions

API

Thanks to @vsenko the stamp command in combination with PDF stamps has become more powerful.

  1. You can set the PDF attribute in your Watermark struct with a cached reader which should save you some memory.
  2. Multi stamping is the process where the pages of some input PDF file will be stamped one by one with the next page from a stamp PDF file, eg: pdfcpu stamp add -mode pdf -- "stamp.pdf" "" in.pdf out.pdf
    There is now a way to fine tune multi stamping eg: pdfcpu stamp add -mode pdf -- "stamp.pdf:2:3" "" in.pdf out.pdf
    will initiate multi stamping at page 2 of stamp.pdf and page 3 of in.pdf

Configuration

There are three changes to the configuration:

  1. headerBufSize was eliminated since PDF 2.0 comes with a flexible header location specification.
  2. permissions are now a 4 digit hex number instead of a negative integer.
  3. needAppearances is a flag you can set for form filling.

Since the pdfcpu configuration has changed you are encouraged to recreate your config.yml:

  1. Locate your config.yml using pdfcpu conf
  2. Remove/backup your config.yml
  3. Create a new config.yml from scratch by executing any pdfcpu cmd on the CLI eg. execute one more time pdfcpu conf
  4. Edit your configuration

If and only if you are having fun using pdfcpu...

pdfcpu is in need of financial supporters. There are membership fees, meetings and countless hours I am putting into this project.
Please 🙏 consider supporting me in any way you can by becoming a sponsor.
Go to your superior or team lead and have them compare the benefits/costs vs. commercial solutions.

Big Thanks

🙏 to all bug reporters and PRs.
Have fun 💚 with pdfcpu!

Changelog

Contributors

vsenko
Assets 13
Loading

v0.5.0

20 Aug 12:03
@hhrutter hhrutter
v0.5.0
1d309dc
This commit was signed with the committer’s verified signature. The key has expired.
hhrutter Horst Rutter
GPG key ID: 3535854A58720AFD
Expired
Learn about vigilant mode.
Compare
Choose a tag to compare
v0.5.0

🧑‍🔬 The Bookmark Release

Hello!

This release features the new bookmark command and there are substantial changes to the API including better support for scenarios with parallel execution.

CLI

Finally you are able to get rid of unwanted bookmarks, replace existing bookmarks or create even new ones.
There are four commands to list your bookmarks, import/export bookmarks via JSON or to remove all bookmarks:

pdfcpu bookmarks list   inFile
pdfcpu bookmarks import [-r(eplace)] inFile inFileJSON [outFile]
pdfcpu bookmarks export inFile [outFileJSON]
pdfcpu bookmarks remove inFile [outFile]

Please check out the documentation.

API

pdfcpu is ready for go 1.21 !
Many API calls now return structs for corresponding objects and thanks to @semvis123 and @yyoshiki41 we were able to remove two significant points of contention. These changes should result in a much better experience running pdfcpu within goroutines. Your feedback is highly appreciated 💚

Parser

As always there is steady improvement to the PDF parser and thanks goes to every single user reporting issues.
Remember, only because you are stuck parsing a specific file does not mean we can't do anything about it - but you are encouraged to take the time and file an issue.

pdfcpu is now a proud member of the PDF association

This is a long term commitment for using the optimal resources, going in the right direction in order to make pdfcpu a sound tool for both developers and CLI users for the time to come.
Member_PDFA_logo_100x75

If and only if you are having fun using pdfcpu...

There are membership fees, meetings and countless hours I am putting into this project.
Please 🙏 consider supporting me in any way you can by becoming a sponsor.
Go to your superior or team lead and have them compare the benefits/costs vs. commercial solutions.

Thanks!

As always 🙏 to all bug reporters and PRs.
Have fun 💚 processing your PDFs with pdfcpu!

Changelog

Contributors

yyoshiki41 and semvis123
Assets 13
Loading

v0.4.2

20 Jul 07:41
@hhrutter hhrutter
v0.4.2
4aef7f7
This commit was signed with the committer’s verified signature. The key has expired.
hhrutter Horst Rutter
GPG key ID: 3535854A58720AFD
Expired
Learn about vigilant mode.
Compare
Choose a tag to compare
v0.4.2

Maintenance Release

This release is a cut-off after fixing a couple of issues.

A notable feature of this release is bookmark support for merging PDFs.
Existing bookmarks will be preserved during merging and from now on the output file also has a bookmark hierarchy representing the input files.

Bookmarks during merging will be created per default.
You can skip bookmark creation on the CLI by supplying -bookmarks=false

If you want to skip bookmark creation when using the API you need to reset a new configuration parameter:

# merge creates bookmarks
createBookmarks: true

Since the pdfcpu configuration has changed you are encouraged to recreate your config.yml:

  1. Locate your config.yml using pdfcpu conf
  2. Remove/backup your config.yml
  3. Create a new config.yml from scratch by executing any pdfcpu cmd on the CLI eg. execute one more time pdfcpu conf
  4. Edit your configuration

Please 🙏

pdfcpu is in need of more supporters.
If you use it please consider the hard work put into this and consider sponsorship.
Go to your superior or team lead and have them compare the benefits/costs vs. commercial solutions.

Thanks!

As always 🙏 to all bug reporters and PRs.
Have fun 💚 processing your PDFs with pdfcpu!

Changelog

Assets 11
Loading

v0.4.1

06 May 21:04
@hhrutter hhrutter
v0.4.1
0342a83
This commit was signed with the committer’s verified signature. The key has expired.
hhrutter Horst Rutter
GPG key ID: 3535854A58720AFD
Expired
Learn about vigilant mode.
Compare
Choose a tag to compare
v0.4.1

A Release About Cutting PDF Pages

There are three new commands that will cut your PDF page in one way or another:

  1. Cut
pdfcpu cut [-p(ages) selectedPages] -- description inFile outDir [outFileName]

A low level command for fine grained custom page cutting.
Apply any number of horizontal or vertical page cuts:

cutshot

➡️ Documentation and examples

  1. N-down
pdfcpu ndown [-p(ages) selectedPages] -- [description] n inFile outDir [outFileName]

Cut selected page into n pages symmetrically.
Think the inverse operation of n-up:

ndownshot

➡️ Documentation and examples

  1. Poster
pdfcpu poster [-p(ages) selectedPages] -- description inFile outDir [outFileName]

Create a poster with full control over scaling and tile size and more:

postershot

➡️ Documentation and examples

API-Change

A notable API change is an additional parameter for AddBookmarks.
The replace flag enforces deleting any old bookmarks that may be present in the input file:
AddBookmarksFile(inFile, outFile string, bms []pdf.Bookmark, replace bool, conf *model.Configuration)

As always 🙏 to all bug reporters and PRs.
pdfcpu is getting better & better every day 💚
Have fun fiddling around with your PDFs!

.. Ohh, and before jumping right in please do me a favor and click here

Changelog

Assets 11
Loading

v0.4.0

01 Mar 00:15
@hhrutter hhrutter
v0.4.0
7ff654b
This commit was signed with the committer’s verified signature. The key has expired.
hhrutter Horst Rutter
GPG key ID: 3535854A58720AFD
Expired
Learn about vigilant mode.
Compare
Choose a tag to compare
v0.4.0

Hello, the main focus of this release is PDF form management!

This release has been a long time coming 😓 Thank you 🙏 for your patience!

API-Users, please proceed with caution!
The codebase has been refactored heavily and there may be some side effects.

E.g. usages of: api.Merge(rsc []io.ReadSeeker,...) need to be migrated to api.MergeRaw(rsc []io.ReadSeeker, ...)

pdfcpu v0.4.0 is now based on go1.20 and comes with two new commands:

  1. The new powerful formcommand solves all major form handling usecases:
pdfcpu form list   inFile...
pdfcpu form remove inFile [outFile] fieldID...
pdfcpu form lock   inFile [outFile] [fieldID...]
pdfcpu form unlock inFile [outFile] [fieldID...]
pdfcpu form reset  inFile [outFile] [fieldID...]
pdfcpu form export inFile [outFileJSON]
pdfcpu form fill inFile inFileJSON [outFile]
pdfcpu form multifill [-m(ode) single|merge] inFile inFileData outDir [outName]

DISCLAIMER 1
You are free to export and fill already existing PDF forms - this may or may not work!
Feel free to open an issue and we may be able to make it work.

DISCLAIMER 2
All forms generated with pdfcpu create are optimized for Adobe Reader.
Mac Preview is not suited well for form handling!

The following workflows are supported:

The Regular Workflow

  • Create your form with the already introduced create command.
  • Print a list of your form fields on the command line.
  • export your form to JSON,
  • Edit your JSON and enter your form data.
  • fill your form with this JSON payload.
  • Optionally write protect individual fields using lock.

The Fill & Merge Workflow

"Give me access to your contacts db and I will generate a single PDF containing a page sequence of contact sheets"

This usecase is implemented by extending the regular workflow by an additional integrated merge step.

As for automatically filling a form with your data pdfcpu gives you two options:

  • JSON - better suited for API providers, verbose but powerful JSON elements, allows full fledged imageBoxes for image fields
  • CSV - for on-premises bulk fill scenarios, one CSV line representing a form instance, has its limitations eg. need to fake image fields
  1. The new resize command comes to the rescue when you're stuck with some large pages in front of a regular small form printer:
pdfcpu resize [-p(ages) selectedPages] -- [description] inFile [outFile]

Scale your pages up or down or resize to one of the many supported standard form sizes (pdfcpu paper prints a list ) optionally enforcing portrait or landscape mode:

Examples:

         pdfcpu resize "scale:2" in.pdf out.pdf
            Enlarge pages by doubling the page dimensions, keep orientation.

         pdfcpu resize -pages 1-3 -- "sc:.5" in.pdf out.pdf
            Shrink first 3 pages by cutting in half the page dimensions, keep orientation.

         pdfcpu resize -u cm -- "dim:40 0" in.pdf out.pdf
            Resize pages to width of 40 cm, keep orientation.

         pdfcpu resize "form:A4" in.pdf out.pdf
            Resize pages to A4, keep orientation.

         pdfcpu resize "f:A4P, bgcol:#d0d0d0" in.pdf out.pdf
            Resize pages to A4 and enforce orientation(here: portrait mode), apply background color.

         pdfcpu resize "dim:400 200" in.pdf out.pdf
            Resize pages to 400 x 200 points, keep orientation.

         pdfcpu resize "dim:400 200, enforce:true" in.pdf out.pdf
            Resize pages to 400 x 200 points, enforce orientation.

Countless bugs have been rolling in and many of those have been fixed. Thank you 🙏 all also for your PRs 👍 💚
Unfortunately due to heavy refactoring of the code base some of them had to be merged in manually or still will be.

Changelog

Assets 11
Loading

v0.3.13

30 Nov 15:53
@hhrutter hhrutter
v0.3.13
e89570a
This commit was signed with the committer’s verified signature. The key has expired.
hhrutter Horst Rutter
GPG key ID: 3535854A58720AFD
Expired
Learn about vigilant mode.
Compare
Choose a tag to compare
v0.3.13

Hello, this release is all about PDF generation!

table  json

A new command interprets a JSON structure representing page declarations and renders PDF pages accordingly:

pdfcpu create in.json [in.pdf] out.pdf

in.json
contains a page sequence with content composed of text, images, colored boxes, tables and more.
Each content element follows a box model consisting of margin, border and padding and may define fonts and colors where appropriate. You may also set general page attributes like paper size, background color or your crop box and you may also define your page headers and footers.

in.pdf
if present, existing page content of in.pdf will be modified by appending to it.

out.pdf
is where rendered pages are written to.

textbox

How it works

The way this command is setup allows for repeatedly adding content to a PDF.
This fosters an incremental approach to PDF generation which may be during the design phase or in production.

simplebox   imagebox

Learning

The best documentation for this command is the combination of the content of:

If you are a Go developer you can play around with createFromJSON_test.go by modifying the JSON file and then executing the test which will give you immediate visual feedback by regenerating the corresponding result PDF.

The JSON is self explanatory and I highly recommend working through all the examples!

Many of the examples are multi page PDFs so make sure you don't miss anything!

You will learn about

  • setting up your layout coordinate system
  • absolute vs. anchored positioning
  • inheritance of fonts, margin, border, padding
  • setting up your custom colors
  • setting up your resource dirs for imageBoxes
  • setting up pools for reused boxes, images and text
  • using guides throughout the layout process
  • how to highlight your crop box and content boxes

Note

Although this command allows for the modification of any PDF it works best for PDFs generated by pdfcpu itself.

PDF Forms

Eventually and this release is really the preparation you will be able to create your PDF forms with this command.

To catch a glimpse of this effort have a look at:

and again the corresponding PDF files in pkg/samples/create/

You are welcome to experiment with form generation based on these form element samples but PDF form creation has NOT been released!

🙏 Thanks everybody for submitting issues and PRs 🙏

Thank you for using pdfcpu 💚

Changelog

e89570a Fix OS agnostic fileName resolving
dc0561f Bump version
72e4e71 Relax validation for FontDescriptor Lang
9616d4b Add create cmd
3c08a45 Add Stefan Huber as contributor
92bfd3e Extend relaxed validation for CIDToGIDMap
c3eb4c0 Fix #335, #358
ba9f089 Fix #349
281745f Fix #353
b80c13b Fix #354
64e3df6 Fix #356
5e1ae87 Fix #362
befba81 Fix #366
5a7da1d Fix #371
437ef37 Fix #380, #387
4adf70c Fix #381
0c4c829 Fix #386
af9e334 Fix #388
6509cea Fix #394
8837dd1 Fix io.Reader based encryption #372
ce70c15 Merge branch 'pr/signalwerk/360' into master
16f43aa stamping: Fix OCG reuse
7e1546b validate cmd: wildcard support

Assets 8
Loading