PDF, PS and DjVu

This article covers software to view, edit and convert PDF, PostScript (PS), DjVu (déjà vu) and XPS files.

Engines

• Poppler — PDF rendering library based on Xpdf. For CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) support with Poppler, install poppler-data.

https://poppler.freedesktop.org/ || poppler

• libspectre — Small library for rendering Postscript documents.

https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/libspectre || libspectre

• Ghostscript — Interpreter for PostScript and PDF. Provides the gs(1) command-line interface, see also /usr/share/doc/ghostscript/*/Use.htm (online), along with many wrapper scripts like ps2pdf and pdf2ps.

https://ghostscript.com/ || ghostscript

• DjVuLibre — Suite to create, manipulate and view DjVu documents.

http://djvu.sourceforge.net/ || djvulibre

• libgxps — GObject based library for handling and rendering XPS documents.

https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/libgxps || libgxps

Viewers

Framebuffer

• fbgs — Poor man's PostScript/pdf viewer for the linux framebuffer console.

https://www.kraxel.org/blog/linux/fbida/ || fbida

• fbpdf — Small framebuffer PDF and DjVu viewer based off of MuPDF, with Vim keybindings and written in C

http://repo.or.cz/w/fbpdf.git || fbpdf-git^AUR

• JFBView — Framebuffer PDF and image viewer. Features include Vim-like controls, zoom-to-fit, a TOC (outline) view, fast multi-threaded rendering and asynchronous pre-caching. Originally a fork of fbpdf called jfbpdf, now completely rewritten.

https://seasonofcode.com/pages/jfbview.html || jfbview^AUR

Graphical

Note: Some web browsers can display PDF files, for example with PDF.js.

• Adobe Reader — Proprietary PDF file viewer offered by Adobe. Discontinued for Linux.

http://www.adobe.com/products/reader.html || acroread^AUR

• apvlv — Lightweight document viewer with Vim keybindings. Supports PDF, DjVu, UMD and TXT.

https://naihe2010.github.io/apvlv/ || apvlv^AUR

• Atril — Simple multi-page document viewer for MATE. Supports DjVu, DVI, EPS, EPUB, PDF, PostScript, TIFF, XPS and Comicbook.

https://github.com/mate-desktop/atril || atril

• DjView — Viewer for DjVu documents.

http://djvu.sourceforge.net/djview4.html || djview

• ePDFView — Lightweight PDF document viewer using the Poppler and GTK+ libraries. Development stopped.

http://freecode.com/projects/epdfview || epdfview

• Emacs — See also pdf-tools for improved pdf support and the djvu package for djvu support.

https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ || emacs

• Evince — Document viewer for GNOME. Supports DjVu, DVI, EPS, PDF, PostScript, TIFF, XPS and Comicbook.

https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Evince || evince

• Foxit Reader — Small, fast (compared to Acrobat) proprietary PDF viewer.

https://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf-reader/ || foxitreader^AUR

• gv — Graphical user interface for the Ghostscript interpreter that allows to view and navigate through PostScript and PDF documents.

https://www.gnu.org/software/gv/ || gv

• llpp — Very fast PDF reader based off of MuPDF, that supports continuous page scrolling, bookmarking, and text search through the whole document.

http://repo.or.cz/w/llpp.git || llpp

• MuPDF — Very fast EPUB, FictionBook, PDF, XPS and Comicbook viewer written in portable C. Features CJK font support.

https://mupdf.com/ || mupdf

• Okular — Universal document viewer for KDE. Supports CHM, Comicbook, DjVu, DVI, EPUB, FictionBook, Mobipocket, ODT, PDF, Plucker, PostScript, TIFF and XPS.

https://okular.kde.org/ || okular

• pdfpc — Presenter console with multi-monitor support for PDF files.

https://pdfpc.github.io/ || pdfpc

• qpdfview — Tabbed document viewer. It uses Poppler for PDF support, libspectre for PS support, DjVuLibre for DjVu support, CUPS for printing support and the Qt toolkit for its interface.

https://launchpad.net/qpdfview || qpdfview

• Xpdf — Viewer that can decode LZW and read encrypted PDFs.

http://www.xpdfreader.com/ || xpdf

• Xreader — Document viewer part of the X-Apps Project. Supports DjVu, DVI, EPUB, PDF, PostScript, TIFF, XPS, Comicbook.

https://github.com/linuxmint/xreader/ || xreader

• Zathura — Highly customizable and functional document viewer (plugin based). Supports PDF, DjVu, PostScript and Comicbook.

https://pwmt.org/projects/zathura/ || zathura

Comparison

Name	PDF	PostScript	DjVu	XPS	PDF forms	License
apvlv	Poppler	Template:Na	DjVuLibre	Template:Na	Template:Na	GPLv2
Atril	Poppler	libspectre	DjVuLibre	libgxps	Template:Ya	GPLv2
DjView	Template:Na	Template:Na	DjVuLibre	Template:Na	Template:Na	GPLv2
Emacs	Ghostscript*		DjVuLibre*	Template:Na	Template:Na	GPLv3
ePDFView	Poppler	Template:Na	Template:Na	Template:Na	Template:Na	GPLv2
Evince	Poppler	libspectre	DjVuLibre	libgxps	Template:Ya	GPLv2
Foxit Reader	custom	Template:Na	Template:Na	Template:Na	Template:Ya	proprietary
gv	Ghostscript		Template:Na	Template:Na	Template:Na	GPLv3
llpp	libmupdf	Template:Na	Template:Na	libmupdf	Template:Ya	GPLv3
MuPDF	custom	Template:Na	Template:Na	custom	Template:Ya	AGPLv3
Okular	Poppler	libspectre	DjVuLibre	custom	Template:Ya	GPL, LGPL
pdfpc	Poppler	Template:Na	Template:Na	Template:Na	Template:Na	GPLv2
qpdfview	Poppler	libspectre*	DjVuLibre*	Template:Na	Template:Ya	GPLv2
Xpdf	custom	Template:Na	Template:Na	Template:Na	Template:Na	GPLv3
Xreader	Poppler	libspectre*	DjVuLibre*	libgxps*	Template:Ya	GPLv2
Zathura	Poppler* / libmupdf*	libspectre*	DjVuLibre*	libmupdf*	Template:Ya	zlib

(* means optional)

PDF forms

The PDF forms column in the above table refers to AcroForms support. If you do not need your input to be directly extractable from the PDF, you can also use the applications in #Annotation or #Graphical PDF editing to put text on top of a PDF. PDF forms can be created with LibreOffice Writer (View > Toolbars > Form Controls) and the advanced PDF editors.

The proprietary and deprecated XFA format for forms, is not fully support by Poppler[1][2] and only supported by Adobe Reader and Master PDF Editor.

Annotation

• flpsed — A PostScript and PDF annotator, only supports text boxes.

http://flpsed.org/flpsed.html || flpsed^AUR

See also List of applications/Documents#Stylus note-taking.

Graphical PDF editing

• Scribus can import and export PDF; text is imported as polygons.[3]
• LibreOffice Draw can import and export PDF; text is imported as text; embedded fonts are substituted.[4][5]
• Inkscape can import a single page from a PDF and export to PDF; text is imported as cloned glyphs or text; with the latter embedded fonts are substituted.
• Graphics editors like GIMP and krita can also import and export PDFs at the cost of rasterization.

Simple editors

• pdfarranger — Helps merge or split pdf documents and rotate, crop and rearrange pages. It's a maintained fork of PDF-Shuffler.

https://github.com/jeromerobert/pdfarranger || pdfarranger

• PDF Chain — GTK front-end for PDFtk, written in C++, supporting concatenation, burst, watermarks, attaching files and more.

http://pdfchain.sourceforge.net/ || pdfchain^AUR

• PDF Mix Tool — Qt front-end for PoDoFo, written in C++, supports splitting, merging, rotating and mixing PDF files.

https://scarpetta.eu/pdfmixtool/ || pdfmixtool^AUR

• PDF Mod — Reorder, rotate, and remove pages, export images from a document, edit the title, subject, author, and keywords, and combine documents via drag and drop.

https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/PdfMod || pdfmod

• PDFsam — Open source application, written in Java, supports merging, splitting and rotating.

https://pdfsam.org/ || pdfsam

Cropping tools

• briss — Java GUI to crop pages of PDF documents to one or more regions selected.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/briss/ || briss^AUR

• krop — Simple graphical tool to crop the pages of PDF files.

http://arminstraub.com/software/krop || krop^AUR

• PdfHandoutCrop — Tool to crop pdf handout with multiple pages per sheet.

https://cges30901.github.io/pdfhandoutcrop/ || pdfhandoutcrop^AUR

Advanced editors

• Master PDF Editor — Functional proprietary PDF editor. Free for non-commercial use.

https://code-industry.net/free-pdf-editor/ || masterpdfeditor^AUR, masterpdfeditor-qt4^AUR for older version without restrictions

• PDF Studio — All-in-one proprietary PDF editor similar to Adobe Acrobat.

https://www.qoppa.com/pdfstudio/ || pdfstudio^AUR

PDF tools

• PDFtk — Simple tool for doing everyday things with PDF documents

http://www.pdfhacks.com/pdftk || pdftk^AUR, pdftk-bin^AUR

• Stapler — Light alternative to PDFtk using the PyPDF2 library.

https://github.com/hellerbarde/stapler || stapler^AUR, stapler-git^AUR

• QPDF — Content-preserving PDF transformation system.

https://github.com/qpdf/qpdf || qpdf

• pdfgrep — Commandline utility to search text in PDF files.

https://pdfgrep.org/ || pdfgrep

• pdf2svg — Convert PDF files to SVG files.

http://www.cityinthesky.co.uk/opensource/pdf2svg/ || pdf2svg

• mupdf-tools — Tools developed as part of MuPDF, contains mutool(1) and muraster.

https://mupdf.com || mupdf-tools

• pdfjam from texlive-core can be used to n-up, join, rotate and flip PDFs and arrange them into a format suitable for book binding.
• Ghostscript

Create a PDF from images

With GraphicsMagick:

$ gm convert one.jpg two.jpg three.jpg out.pdf

Concatenate PDFs

With PDFtk:

$ pdftk one.pdf two.pdf three.pdf cat output out.pdf

With Poppler:

$ pdfunite one.pdf two.pdf three.pdf out.pdf

With QPDF:

$ qpdf --empty --pages one.pdf two.pdf three.pdf -- out.pdf

Decrypt a PDF

This section lists commands to decrypt a PDF to an unencrypted file. Note that most PDF viewers also support encrypted PDFs.

With PDFtk:

$ pdftk in.pdf input_pw password output out.pdf

With QPDF:

$ qpdf --decrypt --password=password in.pdf out.pdf

With Poppler to PostScript:

$ pdftops -upw password in.pdf out.ps

Tip: Forgotten passwords might be recovered with pdfcrack, see pdfcrack(1).

Encrypt a PDF

The user password is used for encryption, the owner password to restrict operations once the document is decrypted, for more information, see Wikipedia:PDF#Security and signatures.

With PDFtk:

$ pdftk in.pdf output out.pdf user_pw password

With PoDoFo:

$ podofoencrypt -u user_password -o owner_password in.pdf out.pdf

With QPDF:

$ qpdf --encrypt user_password owner_password key_length -- in.pdf out.pdf

where key_length can be 40, 128 or 256.

Extract images from a PDF

With Poppler to JPEG:

$ pdfimages infile.pdf -j outfileroot

Extract page range from PDF

With PDFtk as a single file:

$ pdftk infile.pdf cat first-last output outfile.pdf

With Poppler as separate files:

$ pdfseparate -f first -l last infile.pdf outfileroot-%d.pdf

With QPDF as a single file:

$ qpdf --empty --pages infile.pdf first-last -- outfile.pdf

Imposing a PDF

PDF Imposition can be done with pdfjam, for example paper waste can be reduced with pdfnup and pdfbook can be used to arrange PDFs into a format suitable for book binding.

Inspecting metadata

With Poppler:

$ pdfinfo file.pdf

With ExifTool:

$ exiftool file.pdf

Optimize a PDF

With Ghostscript:

$ ps2pdf -dPDFSETTINGS=/screen in.pdf out.pdf

For different settings see the documentation.

There is also shrinkpdf^AUR, a third-party wrapper script.

Rasterize a PDF

With GraphicsMagick to convert a specific page:

$ gm convert -density dpi infile.pdf[page] outfile.jpg

With Poppler to convert all pages:

$ pdftoppm -jpeg -r dpi in.pdf infile.pdf outfileroot

With Poppler to convert a specific page:

$ pdftoppm -jpeg -r dpi in.pdf -f page -singlefile infile.pdf outfileroot

Splitting PDF pages

With mupdf-tools to split every page vertically into two pages:

mutool poster -y 2 in.pdf out.pdf

DjVu tools

• DjVuLibre provides many command-line tools, like ddjvu(1) for example.
• pdf2djvu — Creates DjVu files from PDF files.

https://jwilk.net/software/pdf2djvu || pdf2djvu

• img2djvu — Single-pass DjVu encoder based on DjVu Libre and ImageMagick

https://github.com/ashipunov/img2djvu || img2djvu-git^AUR

Convert DjVu to images

Break Djvu into separate pages:

djvmcvt -i input.djvu /path/to/out/dir output-index.djvu

Convert Djvu pages into images:

ddjvu --format=tiff page.djvu page.tiff

Convert Djvu pages into PDF:

ddjvu --format=pdf inputfile.djvu ouputfile.pdf

You can also use --page to export specific pages:

ddjvu --format=tiff --page=1-10 input.djvu output.tiff

this will convert pages from 1 to 10 into one tiff file.

Processing images

You can use scantailor to:

• fix orientation
• split pages
• deskew
• crop
• adjust margins

Make DjVu from images

There is a useful script img2djvu-git^AUR.

img2djvu -c1 -d600 -v1 ./out

it will create 600dpi out.djvu from all files in ./out directory.

Alternatively, you can try didjvu, which seems to create smaller files especially on images with well defined background.

PostScript tools

• pstotext — Converts PostScript files to text.

http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/doc/pstotext.htm || pstotext

• Ghostscript

ps2pdf

ps2pdf is a wrapper around ghostscript to convert PostScript to PDF:

$ ps2pdf -sPAPERSIZE=a4 -dOptimize=true -dEmbedAllFonts=true YourPSFile.ps

Explanation:

• with -sPAPERSIZE=something you define the paper size. For valid PAPERSIZE values, see [6].
• -dOptimize=true let's the created PDF be optimised for loading
• -dEmbedAllFonts=true makes the fonts look always nice

Note: You cannot choose the paper orientation in ps2pdf. If your input PS file is healthy, it already contains the orientation information. If you are trying to use an Encapsulated PS file, you will have problems, if it does not fit in the -sPAPERSIZE you specified, because EPS files usually do not contain paper orientation informaiton. a workaround is creating a new paper in ghostscript settings (call it e.g. "slide") and use it as -sPAPERSIZE=slide.

Libraries

• libharu — C library for generating PDF documents.

https://github.com/libharu/libharu || libharu, Lua binding: lua-hpdf^AUR

• PoDoFo — A C++ library to work with the PDF file format.

http://podofo.sourceforge.net || podofo

Python

• pdfrw — A pure Python library that reads and writes PDFs.

https://github.com/pmaupin/pdfrw || python-pdfrw, python2-pdfrw

• PyPDF2 — A pure-Python library built as a PDF toolkit.

https://mstamy2.github.com/PyPDF2 || python-pypdf2, python2-pypdf2^AUR

• PyX — Python library for the creation of PostScript and PDF files.

http://pyx.sourceforge.net || python-pyx, python2-pyx

• ReportLab — A proven industry-strength PDF generating solution

https://bitbucket.org/rptlab/reportlab || python-reportlab, python2-reportlab

See also

• List of applications/Documents#Readers and viewers
• List of applications/Documents#OCR software
• Wikipedia:List of PDF software