PDF Explained

At last, here's an approachable introduction to the widely used Portable Document Format. PDFs are everywhere, both online and in printed form, but few people take advantage of the useful features or grasp the nuances of this format. This concise book provides a hands-on tour of the world's leading page-description language for programmers, power users, and professionals in the search, electronic publishing, and printing industries. Illustrated with lots of examples, this book is the documentation you need to fully understand PDF. Build a simple PDF file from scratch in a te.;Table of Contents; Preface; Who Should Read This Book; Organization of Contents; Content Updates; May 22, 2012; Acknowledgments; Conventions Used in This Book; Obtaining Code Examples; Using Code Examples; Safari® Books Online; How to Contact Us; Chapter 1. Introduction; A Little History; Page Description Languages; Other page description languages; Development of PDF; Some Advantages of PDF; Random access and linearization; Stream creation and incremental update; Embedded fonts; Searchable text; ISO Standardization; Specialized Kinds of PDF; PDF/A; PDF/X; Version Summary; What's in a PDF? Table of Contents Preface Who Should Read This Book Organization of Contents Content Updates May 22, 2012 Acknowledgments Conventions Used in This Book Obtaining Code Examples Using Code Examples Safari® Books Online How to Contact Us Chapter 1. Introduction A Little History Page Description Languages Other page description languages Development of PDF Some Advantages of PDF Random access and linearization Stream creation and incremental update Embedded fonts Searchable text ISO Standardization Specialized Kinds of PDF PDF/A PDF/X Version Summary What's in a PDF? Text and FontsVector Images Raster Images Color Spaces Metadata Navigation Optional Content Multimedia Interactive Forms Logical Structure and Reflow Security Compression Who Uses PDF? The Printing Industry Ebooks and Publishing PDF Forms Document Archiving As a File Format Useful Free Software Chapter 2. Building a Simple PDF Basic PDF Syntax Document Content Page Content File Structure Document Structure Building the Elements File Header Main Objects Graphical Content Catalog, Cross-Reference Table, and Trailer Putting it Together Remarks Chapter 3. File StructureFile Layout Header Body Cross-Reference Table Trailer Lexical Conventions Objects Integers and Real Numbers Strings Hexadecimal strings Names Boolean Values Arrays Dictionaries Indirect References Streams and Filters Incremental Update Object and Cross-Reference Streams Linearized PDF How a PDF File is Read How a PDF File is Written Chapter 4. Document Structure Trailer Dictionary Document Information Dictionary Document Catalog Pages and Page Trees Text Strings Dates Putting it Together Chapter 5. Graphics Looking at Content Streams Operators and Graphics StateBuilding and Painting Paths Bézier Curves Drawing circles with Bézier curves Filled Shapes and Winding Rules Colors and Color Spaces Transformations Clipping Transparency Shadings and Patterns Form XObjects Image XObjects Chapter 6. Text and Fonts Text and Fonts in PDF Text State Printing Text Text Sections Text Space and Text Positioning Showing Text Character and word spacing Text transforms Text rise Kerning and glyph adjustment Text rendering modes Defining and Embedding Fonts Font Types in PDF Type 1 Fonts Font Encodings Embedding a FontExtracting Text from a Document Resources Chapter 7. Document Metadata and Navigation Bookmarks and Destinations Destinations The Document Outline (Bookmarks) Building an example XML Metadata Annotations and Hyperlinks File Attachments Chapter 8. Encrypted Documents Introduction The Encryption Dictionary Reading Encrypted Documents Writing Encrypted Documents Editing Encrypted Documents Chapter 9. Working with Pdftk Command Line Syntax Merging Documents What Happens when Files are Merged Splitting Documents What Happens when Files are Split At last, here{u2019}s an approachable introduction to the widely used Portable Document Format. PDFs are everywhere, both online and in printed form, but few people take advantage of the useful features or grasp the nuances of this format. This concise book provides a hands-on tour of the world{u2019}s leading page-description language for programmers, power users, and professionals in the search, electronic publishing, and printing industries. Illustrated with lots of examples, this book is the documentation you need to fully understand PDF. Build a simple PDF file from scratch in a text editor Learn the layout and content of a PDF file, as well as the syntax of its objects Examine the logical structure of PDF objects, and learn how pages and their resources are arranged into a document Create vector graphics and raster images in PDF, and deal with transparency, color spaces, and patterns Explore PDF operators for building and showing text strings Get up to speed on bookmarks, metadata, hyperlinks, annotations, and file attachments Learn how encryption and document permissions work in PDF Use the pdftk program to process PDF files from the command line At last, here's an approachable introduction to the widely used Portable Document Format. PDFs are everywhere, both online and in printed form, but few people take advantage of the useful features or grasp the nuances of this format. This concise book provides a hands-on tour of the world's leading page-description language for programmers, power users, and professionals in the search, electronic publishing, and printing industries. Illustrated with lots of examples, this book is the documentation you need to fully understand PDF. Build a simple PDF file from scratch in a text editor Learn the layout and content of a PDF file, as well as the syntax of its objects Examine the logical structure of PDF objects, and learn how pages and their resources are arranged into a document Create vector graphics and raster images in PDF, and deal with transparency, color spaces, and patterns Explore PDF operators for building and showing text strings Get up to speed... COMPUTERS / General An introduction to the PDF file format, threaded through with practical examples - deconstructing, creating and processing PDF files. After exploring how PDF is produced, and how it can be edited with tools from text editors to Ghostscript to PDFTK, readers will learn to deal with problems with PDF files and common error messages