(c) Jakub Melka 2018-2023
This software is consisting of PDF rendering library, and several applications, such as advanced document viewer, command line tool, and document page manipulator application. Software is implementing PDF functionality based on PDF Reference 2.0. It is written and maintained by Jakub Melka.
Software works on Microsoft Windows / Linux.
Software is provided without any warranty of any kind.
Should you find this software beneficial, your support would be greatly appreciated ❤️ Sponsor!
This software is based in part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group.
Portions of this software are copyright © 2019 The FreeType Project (www.freetype.org). All rights reserved.
Both library and viewer uses more benevolent LGPL license, so it is more usable in commercial software, than GPL code only. Please see attached file - LICENSE.txt to see details. This software also uses several third party software, and user of this software must also respect licenses of third party libraries.
Software have following features (the list is not complete):
- multithreading support
- hardware accelerated rendering
- encryption
- color management
- optional content handling
- text layout analysis
- signature validation
- annotations
- form filling
- text to speech capability
- editation
- file attachments
- optimalization (compressing documents)
- command line tool
- audio book conversion
- internal structure inspector
- compare documents
- static XFA support (readonly, simple XFA only)
- electronically/digitally sign documents
- public key security encryption
- 3D PDF support (planned in year 2024)
- create fillable forms (planned in year 2024)
- watermarks / headers / footers (planned in year 2024)
- presentation application (planned in year 2024)
Several third-party libraries are used.
- libjpeg, see https://www.ijg.org/
- FreeType, see https://www.freetype.org/index.html, FTL license used
- OpenJPEG, implementing Jpeg2000, see https://www.openjpeg.org/, 2-clause MIT license
- Qt, https://www.qt.io/, LGPL license used
- OpenSSL, https://www.openssl.org/, Apache 2.0 license
- LittleCMS, http://www.littlecms.com/
- zlib, https://zlib.net/
If you want to contribute to this project, it is required, that you (contributor) fill and digitally sign document Contributor License Agreement, because I want to have a freedom to do whatever I want with my library, without obligation to someone else. But I would strongly prefer, if you want to contribute, to contribute in a form of testing, consultation, giving advices etc. I would like to write this library entirely by myself.
The Release page lists binaries for Windows, both with and without an installer.
A pdf4qt-git package is available in the AUR.
This software can be compiled on both Windows and Linux. A compiler supporting the C++20 standard is needed.
On Windows, you can use Visual Studio 2022 or MinGW.
On Linux, a GCC version >= 8 should work, altough we tested it with GCC 11.
-
Install vcpkg
git clone https://github.com/Microsoft/vcpkg.git ./vcpkg/bootstrap-vcpkg.sh -disableMetrics VCPKG_ROOT=$(pwd)/vcpkg
Check that vcpkg path is correct:
$VCPKG_ROOT/vcpkg --version
. -
Build PDF4QT
2.1 Clone repo
git clone https://github.com/JakubMelka/PDF4QT cd PDF4QT
2.2 Configure
cmake -B build -S . -DPDF4QT_INSTALL_QT_DEPENDENCIES=0 -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=$VCPKG_ROOT/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX='/' -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
For a debug build, append
-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug
.It is recommended to set the VCPKG_OVERLAY_PORTS variable to 'PDF4QT/vcpkg/overlays' to prevent crashes due to the incompatible LIBPNG library on some Linux systems.
2.3 Build
cmake --build build
Use the
-j
switch to build multiple files in parallel.2.4 Install
sudo cmake --install build
To uninstall, run
sudo xargs rm < ./build/install_manifest.txt
.
- Download Qt 6.6 or higher, and VCPKG package manager (https://vcpkg.io/en/index.html)
- Open Qt Creator and configure the project
- Build
Several important compilation options are available and should be set before building. On Windows, CMake can prepare a Wix project to create a *.msi installer package.
Option | Platform | Description |
---|---|---|
PDF4QT_INSTALL_MSVC_REDISTRIBUTABLE |
Windows | Includes MSVC redistributable in installation |
PDF4QT_INSTALL_PREPARE_WIX_INSTALLER |
Windows | Prepare .msi installator using Wix installer |
PDF4QT_INSTALL_DEPENDENCIES |
Any | Install dependent libraries into installation directory |
PDF4QT_INSTALL_QT_DEPENDENCIES |
Any | Install Qt dependent libraries into installation directory |
VCPKG_OVERLAY_PORTS |
Linux | Set it to prevent crashes with incompatible libpng library |
Following important variables should be set or checked before any attempt to compile this project:
Variable | Platform | Description |
---|---|---|
PDF4QT_QT_ROOT |
Any | Qt installation directory |
QT_CREATOR_SKIP_VCPKG_SETUP |
Any | Enable or disable automatic vcpkg setup |
CMAKE_PROJECT_INCLUDE_BEFORE |
Any | Should be set to package manager auto setup |
CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE |
Any | Should be set to toolchain |
CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE |
Any | Can be Release (default) or Debug |
Following set of variables gives sample setup for MS Windows. It is minimal initial configuration to be able to built Debug build on MS Windows.
Key | Value |
---|---|
CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE |
Debug |
CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER |
%{Compiler:Executable:Cxx} |
CMAKE_C_COMPILER |
%{Compiler:Executable:C} |
CMAKE_GENERATOR |
Ninja |
CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH |
%{Qt:QT_INSTALL_PREFIX} |
CMAKE_PROJECT_INCLUDE_BEFORE |
%{IDE:ResourcePath}/package-manager/auto-setup.cmake |
CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE |
%{Qt:QT_INSTALL_PREFIX}/lib/cmake/Qt6/qt.toolchain.cmake |
PDF4QT_QT_ROOT |
C:/Programming/Qt/6.4.0/msvc2019_64 |
QT_QMAKE_EXECUTABLE |
%{Qt:qmakeExecutable} |
- Visual Studio 2022 (Microsoft Visual C++ Compiler 17.1)
- MinGW 11.2.0
- GCC 13.1.1
I wrote this project in my free time. I hope you will find it useful!