printpdf
A Rust library for creating, reading, writing, and rendering PDF documents with support for graphics, fonts, and experimental HTML layout.
What is printpdf?
Printpdf is a comprehensive Rust library for programmatically generating, reading, and manipulating PDF documents. It provides a robust set of tools for developers needing precise control over PDF creation, from basic pages to advanced typography and graphics.
Rust developers who need to generate or modify PDFs programmatically with fine-grained control over layout, graphics, fonts, and compliance, such as those building reporting tools, document generators, or PDF processing pipelines.
Developers choose printpdf for its comprehensive feature set that includes both reading and writing PDFs, advanced typography and graphics controls, and a focus on standards compliance, all within a Rust-native API that prioritizes correctness and developer control.
Overview
Rust / WASM library for reading, writing and rendering PDF
Use Cases
Best For
- Generating PDF reports with custom graphics and embedded fonts in Rust applications.
- Programmatically creating PDF documents that require advanced typography features like character spacing, superscript, or subscript.
- Embedding and auto-subsetting fonts in PDFs to minimize file size while supporting Unicode text.
- Drawing complex shapes, Bézier curves, or embedding SVG content into PDFs programmatically.
- Reading and extracting text from existing PDFs with Unicode decoding and position data.
- Building basic HTML-to-PDF conversion pipelines for simple page layouts with automatic page-breaking (experimental).
Not Ideal For
- Projects requiring reliable, production-ready HTML-to-PDF conversion with complex CSS and JavaScript support
- Applications that need advanced PDF features like gradients, patterns, or file attachments
- Teams seeking a high-level API with automatic layout management without manual positioning of elements
Pros & Cons
Pros
Supports reading and writing pages, bookmarks, layers, and link annotations, providing full control over PDF documents from creation to editing.
Embeds fonts with Unicode, auto-subsets to minimize file size, and offers fine-grained control over character spacing, word spacing, superscript, and subscript as shown in the font examples.
Allows drawing lines, shapes, Bézier curves, and embedding SVGs with support for advanced features like overprint and blending modes, as demonstrated in the graphics code snippets.
Aims to generate PDFs that adhere to standards like PDF/X-3:2002, prioritizing correctness and compatibility for professional use cases.
Cons
The HTML-to-PDF feature is explicitly marked as experimental and a stub API that won't produce usable output, requiring manual positioning for now, limiting high-level layout automation.
Lacks support for gradients, patterns, file attachments, and other features listed as not supported, which could be critical for graphic-intensive or interactive PDFs.
Requires manual specification of graphics operations and positioning through a series of Op codes, making it complex and time-consuming compared to higher-level abstractions.
Frequently Asked Questions
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