Poppler is a

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a Software license, license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term ...

software library In computing, a library is a collection of resources that can be leveraged during software development to implement a computer program. Commonly, a library consists of executable code such as compiled functions and classes, or a library can ...

for rendering

Portable Document Format Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating syste ...

(PDF) documents. Its development is supported by

freedesktop.org freedesktop.org (fd.o), formerly X Desktop Group (XDG), is a project to work on interoperability and shared base technology for free-software desktop environments for the X Window System (X11) and Wayland on Linux and other Unix-like operatin ...

. Commonly used on Linux systems, it powers the PDF viewers of the

GNOME A gnome () is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and widely adopted by authors, including those of modern fantasy literature. They are typically depict ...

and

KDE KDE is an international free software community that develops free and open-source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that enable collaborative work on its projects. Its products include the KDE Plasma gra ...

desktop environment In computing, a desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system that share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes described as a graphi ...

History

The project was started by Kristian Høgsberg with two goals: to provide PDF rendering functionality as a

shared library In computing, a library is a collection of System resource, resources that can be leveraged during software development to implement a computer program. Commonly, a library consists of executable code such as compiled function (computer scienc ...

, to centralize maintenance effort and to go beyond the goals of

Xpdf Xpdf is a free and open-source PDF viewer and toolkit based on the Qt framework. Versions prior to 4.00 were written for the X Window System and Motif. Functions Xpdf runs on nearly any Unix-like operating system. Binaries are also availabl ...

, and to integrate with functionality provided by modern

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

s. By the version 0.18 release in 2011, the poppler library represented a complete implementation of ISO 32000-1, the PDF format standard, and was the first major free PDF library to support its forms (only Acroforms but not full XFA forms) and annotations features. Poppler is a

fork In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from 'pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tines with which one can spear foods either to h ...

-3.0, a PDF file viewer developed by Derek Noonburg of Glyph and Cog, LLC. The name ''Poppler'' comes from " The Problem with Popplers," an episode of the animated series ''

Futurama ''Futurama'' is an American animated science fiction sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company and later revived by Comedy Central, and then Hulu. The series follows Philip J. Fry, who is cryogenically preserved for 1 ...

''.

Applications

Notable free software applications using Poppler to render PDF documents include:

Features

Poppler can use two back-ends for drawing PDF documents,

Cairo Cairo ( ; , ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Egypt and the Cairo Governorate, being home to more than 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, L ...

and Splash. Its features may depend on which back-end it employs. A third back-end based on Qt4's painting framework "Arthur", is available, but is incomplete and no longer under active development. Bindings exist for Glib and Qt5, that provide interfaces to the Poppler backends, although the Qt5 bindings support only the Splash and Arthur backends. There is a patchset available to add support for the Cairo backend to the Qt5 bindings, but the Poppler project does not currently wish to integrate the feature into the library proper. Some characteristics of the back-ends include: * Cairo:

Anti-aliasing Anti-aliasing may refer to any of a number of techniques to combat the problems of aliasing in a sampled signal such as a digital image or digital audio recording. Specific topics in anti-aliasing include: * Anti-aliasing filter, a filter used b ...

vector graphics Vector graphics are a form of computer graphics in which visual images are created directly from geometric shapes defined on a Cartesian plane, such as points, lines, curves and polygons. The associated mechanisms may include vector displ ...

, and transparent objects. ** Cairo does not smooth

bitmap In computing, a bitmap (also called raster) graphic is an image formed from rows of different colored pixels. A GIF is an example of a graphics image file that uses a bitmap. As a noun, the term "bitmap" is very often used to refer to a partic ...

images such as scanned documents. ** Cairo does not depend on the

X Window System The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X originated as part of Project Athena at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1984. The X protocol has been at ...

, so Poppler can run on other platforms like Wayland,

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macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

. * Splash: Supports minification filtering of

s. Poppler comes with a text-rendering back-end as well, which can be invoked from the

command line A command-line interface (CLI) is a means of interacting with software via command (computing), commands each formatted as a line of text. Command-line interfaces emerged in the mid-1960s, on computer terminals, as an interactive and more user ...

utility pdftotext. It is useful for searching for strings in

PDF Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...

s from the command line, using the utility

grep 


grep is a  command-line utility for searching plaintext datasets for lines that match a regular expression. Its name comes from the  ed command g/re/p (global regular expression search and print), which has the same effect. grep was originally de ...

, for instance. Example: pdftotext file.pdf - , grep string Poppler partially supports annotations and Acroforms. It does not support JavaScript nor the rendering of full XFA forms.

poppler-utils

poppler-utils is a collection of command-line utilities built on Poppler's library API, to manage PDF and extract contents: * pdfattach – add a new embedded file (attachment) to an existing PDF * pdfdetach – extract embedded documents from a PDF * pdffonts – lists the fonts used in a PDF * pdfimages – extract all embedded images at native resolution from a PDF * pdfinfo – list all information of a PDF * pdfseparate – extract single pages from a PDF * pdftocairo – convert single pages from a PDF to vector or bitmap formats using cairo * pdftohtml – convert PDF to HTML format retaining formatting * pdftoppm – convert a PDF page to a bitmap * pdftops – convert PDF to printable PS format * pdftotext – extract all text from PDF * pdfunite – merges several PDFs

Notes

References

* Albert Astals Cid (29 August 2005
The Poppler Library
presentation at the 2005 KDE conference

External links

*

Poppler Utils 0.68.0 compiled for x86 Windows
{{Freedesktop.org C++ libraries Free PDF readers Free software programmed in C++ Freedesktop.org Freedesktop.org libraries GNOME libraries Software that uses Cairo (graphics)