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Installation

Python

pip install pdfboss

Prebuilt abi3 wheels for CPython 3.12 and later; no Rust toolchain required. The wheel compiles in the predefined CJK CMap set, so CJK-coded documents extract out of the box.

Rendering with fonts="full" substitutes replacement faces for fonts the PDF does not embed. Those faces ship as a separate package, pulled in by the full extra:

pip install "pdfboss[full]"

This installs pdfboss-fonts alongside the wheel. Without it, fonts="full" requires a font_dir argument pointing at faces of your own. See Rendering pages.

CLI

cargo install pdfboss-cli

This installs the pdfboss binary. Two features are on by default:

  • substitute-fonts: bundles the OFL Croscore substitute faces (about 4 MB) so render and tui can paint text for PDFs with non-embedded fonts out of the box.
  • predefined-cmaps: compiles in the predefined CJK CMap set of ISO 32000 Table 118 (about 830 KB) so text reads Shift-JIS/EUC/Big5/GBK/UHC-coded Type0 fonts.

Opt out of both for a leaner binary:

cargo install pdfboss-cli --no-default-features

Rust crates

The library crates are on crates.io:

cargo add pdfboss-core pdfboss-text pdfboss-output pdfboss-render pdfboss-write pdfboss-markdown pdfboss-aio
CrateResponsibility
pdfboss-coreParsing, object model, stream filters, document and page tree
pdfboss-textFonts, encodings, positional text spans
pdfboss-outputLayout analysis to plain text and Markdown
pdfboss-renderRasterization to RGBA pixmaps and PNG, embedded-image extraction
pdfboss-writePDF creation
pdfboss-markdownCommonMark+GFM composed into themed PDFs (pulls in pdfboss-style)
pdfboss-aioAsync, range-fetching document access

Add only what you use: pdfboss-core alone parses; the others build on it.

The library crates keep their optional features off by default:

  • pdfboss-render substitute-fonts: the bundled substitute faces.
  • pdfboss-core predefined-cmaps: the predefined CJK CMap set.
  • pdfboss-aio http: remote documents over HTTP range requests.
  • pdfboss-aio write: streaming created documents into tokio writers; ships TokioSink, which presents any tokio::io::AsyncWrite to Pdf::write_into_with (see Creating PDFs).

Enable a feature at add time, for example:

cargo add pdfboss-aio --features http

Building from source

git clone https://github.com/4thel00z/pdfboss
cd pdfboss
cargo build --release           # the CLI lands at target/release/pdfboss
cargo test --workspace          # Rust test suite

The Python extension builds with maturin into the active virtualenv:

maturin develop                 # build the extension into your venv
pytest                          # Python integration tests

Next: the Quickstart.