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Not really answering your question but you could consider generating postscript output and then using ghostscript to convert it to pdf. That would let you create and write arbitrary stuff. I think pandoc uses pdflatex to generate a pdf via latex from the internal pandoc representation. Imagemagick also writes to pdf I believe, but it may only convert raster images. With postscript you can generate a vector pdf
There’s also this book which provides a good introduction and overview and is useful for understanding how the format works (although the PDF reference itself is pretty decent too, as far as specs go): https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/developing-with-pdf/978... (You can find a PDF copy if you look around.) EDIT: There’s also https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/pdf-explained/978144932... which might be even better.
However, be warned that the PDF format can be quite complex and is not exactly for the faint of heart. It’s best to use an established library to generate PDF output, like PDFBox, iText, PDFSharp, PDFKit, etc. Those tend to have their own tutorials.
For emphasis: Do not generate PDFs “by hand”! You risk inadvertently generating PDFs that do not fully conform to the spec, and not noticing it because PDF readers are quite lenient in what they accept. A lot of PDFs in the wild are not standard-conforming in some way or other, because their generators were not carefully written against the spec, but against “whatever Acrobat Reader accepts”. This is the bane of every software on the receiving end that needs to process PDFs.
https://github.com/foliojs/pdfkit
As to why it’s so inaccessible…because Adobe created this monstrosity to do just about everything. Text, fonts, vector graphics, raster graphics, forms, color spaces, JavaScript, encryption, signatures, 3D artwork, video, audio, Flash, and probably more. It’s bonkers as to what it can possibly include, and it was developed during a way different time.
Cause it belongs to Adobe and they clearly don’t want to make it easy for developers to work with it.
The PDF specification, hosted by Adobe, free for you to download… (pay attention, this is a big PDF) https://opensource.adobe.com/dc-acrobat-sdk-docs/standards/p... Adobe specifically negotiated to make this freely available. From the document: This document you are now reading is a copy of the ISO 32000-1 standard. By agreement with ISO, Adobe Systems is allowed to offer this version of the ISO standard as a free PD…
Cause it belongs to Adobe and they clearly don’t want to make it easy for developers to work with it.
The PDF specification, hosted by Adobe, free for you to download… (pay attention, this is a big PDF) https://opensource.adobe.com/dc-acrobat-sdk-docs/standards/p... Adobe specifically negotiated to make this freely available. From the document: This document you are now reading is a copy of the ISO 32000-1 standard. By agreement with ISO, Adobe Systems is allowed to offer this version of the ISO standard as a free PD…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The PDF specification, hosted by Adobe, free for you to download… (pay attention, this is a big PDF) https://opensource.adobe.com/dc-acrobat-sdk-docs/standards/p... Adobe specifically negotiated to make this freely available. From the document: This document you are now reading is a copy of the ISO 32000-1 standard. By agreement with ISO, Adobe Systems is allowed to offer this version of the ISO standard as a free PD…
Thank you. I'll take a look at the older specs. I assumed that the 2.0 version would be the one with the best print quality and I should target that.
· If you're embedding ICC color profiles, you need to be using at least PDF version 1.3, which came out in 01999.
· If you're embedding lossily-compressed raster graphics like JPEGs, while you can always improve the print quality further by switching to losslessly-compressed graphics like PNGs, you may be able to get better quality at a given filesize by using better lossy compression algorithms like JPEG-2000 or (for bilevel images) JBIG2. JPEG-2000 support was added in PDF 1.5 and is excluded from, I think, PDF/A. JBIG2 support was added in PDF 1.4, and also includes a lossless format.
I don't know of any features in 2.0 that would improve print quality over 1.5 in any way.
The PDF spec is officially available here: http://www.adobe.com/go/pdfreference There’s also this book which provides a good introduction and overview and is useful for understanding how the format works (although the PDF reference itself is pretty decent too, as far as specs go): https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/developing-with-pdf/978... (You can find a PDF copy if you look around.) EDIT: There’s also https://w…
That said, if you're only writing and not reading existing ones, it's as straightforward or as complex as you want to make it. I wrote a little program many years ago to convert plaintext to PDF in <1kLoC of C --- and its output was actually often many times smaller than what the commercial PDF-generators do, because I just used the defaults and bare-minimum necessary. I wrote it after being confronted with a requirement to use PDF, and the output of contemporary generators seemed rather bloated in comparison. The spec has an example of a bare-minimum; it's quite easy to programmatically generate.