Free PDF Viewers, Utilities and Libraries

Info-Seite von Ralph König

Free PDF Viewers, Utilities and Libraries

Attention: Please note, that the definition of "free" differs from company to company. Most of the following software is open-source software (you get the source code as well), some of it isn't. Most is released under GPL with severe limits of re-distribution (you can use the software, as long as any derivative work is also release under GPL). In general, using the software in your own projects is typically bound to accepting some license agreement. Please refer to the license agreement instead of making assumptions.

Other resources

http://phaseit.net/claird/comp.text.pdf/PDF_converters.html

PDF specification and some literature

Recommended reading!!
Free at Adobe site: http://partners.adobe.com/asn/tech/pdf/specifications.jsp
nice quick start: "PDF: a Package by James C. King, A Principal Scientist, Advanced Technology Group, Adobe Systems Incorporated"
- http://www.planetpdf.com/planetpdf/pdfs/seyboldseminars/ny02/king_jim_PDFAsPackageAnnot.pdf
my own presentation
- (in German): http://archiv.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/2004/0144/data/pdfvortrag-ralfkoenig-20040928.pdf
- (in English, with heavy LaTeX flavour): http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/urz/anwendungen/tex/stammtisch/chronik/pdf_interna.pdf
PDF und Postscript Bibel (German): Recommended reading!!
- http://www.pdflib.com/de/produkte/mehr/bibel/PostScript-PDF-Bibel.zip

Free PDF Viewers

Adobe Reader - you probably were not looking for this one, were you?
- There is version 7 for Linux, MacOS and Windows.
Ghostscript http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/ with
frontends for Ghostscript
- gv (motif)
- ggv (gnome)
- kghostview (kde)
- gsview (win and linux)
xpdf - very usable, old-fashioned MOTIF gui, http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/
other frontends based on the same xpdf-renderer
- gpdf, http://freshmeat.net/projects/gpdf/
- kpdf, http://developer.kde.org/~danimo/kpdf/
  - screenshots http://robotics.dei.unipd.it/~koral/KDE/screenshots/
  - comments http://www.pro-linux.de/news/2005/7679.html
  - http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/view/795
- pdfkit, http://mac.wms-network.de/gnustep/imageapps/imagekits/imagekits.html
Multivalent - beta quality Java based viewer with PDF 1.5 support - http://multivalent.sourceforge.net/
jPedal - beta quality, simple Java based viewer - http://www.jpedal.org/ (one version is GPL licensed)
PDF Reader 2.2 - free, non open source, Windows only, http://www.cadkas.de/downengpdf5.php

Free PDF Tools and Converters

Multivalent Tools - http://multivalent.sourceforge.net/
pdftk - http://www.accesspdf.com/pdftk/
- guipdftk, GUI for pdftk - Win32 and Linux - http://de.geocities.com/dpaehl2004/guipdftk/
- pdftk Builder, GUI for pdftk, Win only, http://www.users.on.net/johnson/pdftkb/
pstill - free Linux version for non-profit use - http://www.pstill.com/
pdfjam http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/statistics/staff/academic/firth/software/pdfjam/
- includes Droplets for Mac OS X
mbtpdfasm http://thierry.schmit.free.fr/dev/mbtPdfAsm/enMbtPdfAsm2.html
- Insert, extract and change bookmarks (outlines) in existing PDF document.
- Extract and reorder pages.
- Add page numbers.
BeCyPDFAsm, simple GUI for mbtpdfasm, http://www.becyhome.de/becypdfasm/description_ger.htm
pdftops - generate a PostScript file - http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/
pdftotext - extract plain text - http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/
pdffonts - lists the fonts used in a PDF file along with various information for each font - http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/
pdfimages - extracts the images from a PDF file - http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/
pdftoppm - converts a PDF file to a series of PPM/PGM/PBM-format bitmaps, IOW: renders the pages to raster images - http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/
pdfinfo -- dumps a PDF file's Info dictionary (plus some other useful information) - http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/
pdftohtml http://pdftohtml.sourceforge.net/
pdftohtml, simple GUI: http://guiguy.wminds.com/downloads/pdf2htmlgui/
GhostWord - VBA macros to embed links in PDFs generated from Word documents
pdfEdit995, Adware - http://www.pdf995.com
signature995, Adware - http://www.pdf995.com
HTMLdoc - html to PostScript or PDF converter - http://www.htmldoc.org/
- sources are free, everyone can compile and distribute them
- pre-made binaries cost licensing fee
html2ps - HTML to PostScript converter written in Perl, use in conjunction with Ghostscript's ps2pdf - http://user.it.uu.se/~jan/html2ps.html
FreeSVG - web service to convert from PDF to SVG, first 25 pages only - http://freesvg.texterity.com/
WEB Service to convert from multiple formats (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Text, JPEG, PNG, TXT) to PDF: k2pdf.com
pstoedit - PDF to other vector formats - http://www.pstoedit.net/pstoedit
Text2PDF: Gymnast http://www.oakworth.demon.co.uk/gymnast.htm
OttoPDF - convert AutoCAD drawings to PDF
wvware - convert Word to PDF, bad results according to Stephan Melchior - http://wvware.sourceforge.net/
sam2p, convert raster images (JPEG, TIFF, GIF, BMP, PNG, ...) to PDF or PS, very fast and very small output files, http://www.inf.bme.hu/~pts/sam2p/
Imagemagick - (JPEG, TIFF, GIF, BMP, PNG, ...) to PDF or PS - http://www.imagemagick.org/
tiff2pdf, convert all kinds of TIFF to PDF format, http://www.remotesensing.org/libtiff/
- man page: http://www.remotesensing.org/libtiff/man/tiff2pdf.1.html
PDF gs Converter - PDF to BMP, JPG, PNG, TIFF and TEXT. GUI for Ghostscript. http://www.bodingh.se/other.htm
FreeDist - GUI for PS to PDF conversion, wraps Ghostscript - http://home.hccnet.nl/s.vd.palen/

Free PDF printers

based on Ghostscript
- FreePDF and FreePDF XP - http://freepdfxp.de/
- PDFCreator - https://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
- CutePDF Writer - http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp
- PrimoPDF - http://www.primopdf.com/
not based on Ghostscript
- pdf995 - Adware - http://www.pdf995.com
- PDFmailer free - includes promo line into PDF - http://www.pdfmailer.de
- go2pdf - Freeware - http://www.go2pdf.com/product.html
- pdf4free - adds little logo and ad to PDF - http://www.pdfpdf.com/pdf4free.html
- pdfmachine white - adds watermark when using advanced features - http://www.pdfmachine.com/et/download.html

Free Tools with native PDF export

Scribus - GPL Desktop Publishing for Linux and more - http://www.scribus.net
OpenOffice - complete Office suite - http://www.openoffice.org/
pdfTeX - typesetter - http://www.tug.org/applications/pdftex/
to use pdfTeX, you typically install a TeX distribution such as Miktex (Windows), tetex (UNIX), texlive (both)
vTeX/free - http://www.micropress-inc.com/linux/
only PS output, but can be converted easily via ps2pdf
- lout - document formatter - http://www.ptc.spbu.ru/~uwe/lout/lout.html
- troff - type setter http://www.troff.org

Free PDF libraries (for developers)

Name	Link	C	C++	C#	Java	J#	Perl	PHP	Python	Tcl
PDFlib lite (simple version of the commercial one)	http://www.pdflib.com/products/pdflib/download-source.html	X	X	-	X	-	X	X	X	X
ClibPDF	http://www.fastio.com/	X	-	-	-	-	-		-	-
~~libpdf~~ (very alpha!)	http://www.cs.nmsu.edu/~pfeiffer/index_old.html#linux	X	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
xpdf (quite advanced, good viewer, nice tools)	http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/	-	X	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
panda lib	http://www.stillhq.com/	-	X	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
DirectPDF - COM component (free, but not open source)	http://directpdf.free.fr	-	X	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
~~libpdf++~~ (very alpha)	http://libpdfxx.sourceforge.net/	-	X	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
iTextSharp (.NET) (based on old version of iText)	http://itextsharp.sourceforge.net/	-	-	X	-	-	-	-	-	-
iText.NET (newer, try this before iTextSharp)	http://itextdotnet.sourceforge.net	-	-	X	-	X	-	-	-	-
iText (very good, many features)	http://www.lowagie.com/iText/	-	-	-	X	-	-	-	-	-
pj and pjx	http://pjx.sourceforge.net/ http://www.etymon.com/epub.html	-	-	-	X	-	-	-	-	-
pdfbox	http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfbox/ http://www.pdfbox.org/	-	-	-	X	-	-	-	-	-
Multivalent (tools are not OS, lib is)	http://multivalent.sourceforge.net/	-	-	-	X	-	-	-	-	-
jPedal (good parsing and importing)	http://www.jpedal.org/	-	-	-	X	-	-	-	-	-
PDF::API2 and PDF::MAKI (Perl)	http://pdfapi2.sourceforge.net/	-	-	-	-	-	X	-	-	-
CPAN search for pdf	http://search.cpan.org/search?query=pdf&mode=all	-	--	-	-	-	X	-	-	-
ClibPDF PHP binding	http://www.php.net/manual/ref.cpdf.php3	-	-	-	-	-	-	X	-	-
fpdf	http://www.fpdf.org/	-	-	-	-	-	-	X	-	-
R&OS pdf class	http://www.ros.co.nz/pdf/	-	-	-	-	-	-	X	-	-
pdf4php (PHP) -	http://www.gnuvox.com/pdf4php/	-	-	-	-	-	-	X	-	-
phppdflib	http://www.potentialtech.com/ppl.php	-	-	-	-	-	-	X	-	-
ReportLab Toolkit	http://www.reportlab.org/rl_toolkit.html	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	X	-
pdf4tcl (alpha)	http://truckle.in-chemnitz.de/pdf4tcl/pdf4tcl.html	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	X

related tools:

pdfTeX - http://www.tug.org/applications/pdftex/
pslib (C, language bindings for PHP, Perl, Tcl, Python), to write PostScript code with pdfmark, http://pslib.sourceforge.net/index.php

OT: Python parser generators (useful to parse PDF content)

Yapps, http://theory.stanford.edu/~amitp/Yapps/
D-Parser, http://staff.washington.edu/sabbey/py_dparser/
simpleparse, http://simpleparse.sourceforge.net/
FPG, http://christophe.delord.free.fr/en/fpg/index.html

-- Main.RalfKoenig - 07 Sep 2004