Font.exportData
from exporting internal/unused properties
A number of *internal* font properties, which only make sense on the worker-thread, were previously exported. Some of these properties could also contain potentially large Arrays/Objects, which thus unnecessarily increases memory usage since we're forced to copy these to the main-thread and also store them there. This patch stops exporting the following font properties: - "_shadowWidth": An internal property, which was never intended to be exported. - "charsCache": An internal cache, which was never intended to be exported and doesn't make any sense on the main-thread. Furthermore, by the time `Font.exportData` is called it's usually `undefined` or a mostly empty Object as well. - "cidEncoding": An internal property used with (some) composite fonts. As can be seen in the `PartialEvaluator.translateFont` method, `cidEncoding` will only be assigned a value when the font dictionary has an "Encoding" entry which is a `Name` (and not in the `Stream` case, since those obviously cannot be cloned). All-in-all this property doesn't really make sense on the main-thread and/or in the API, and note also that the resulting `cMap` property is (partially) available already. - "fallbackToUnicode": An internal map, part of the heuristics used to improve text-selection in (some) badly generated PDF documents with simple fonts. This was never intended to be exposed on the main-thread and/or in the API. - "glyphCache": An internal cache, which was never intended to be exported and which doesn't make any sense on the main-thread. Furthermore, by the time `Font.exportData` is called it's usually a mostly empty Object as well. - "isOpenType": An internal property, used only during font parsing on the worker-thread. In the *very* unlikely event that an API consumer actually needs that information, then `fontType` should be a (generally) much better property to use. Finally, in the (hopefully) unlikely event that any of these properties become necessary on the main-thread, re-adding them to the white-list is easy to do.
PDF.js 
PDF.js is a Portable Document Format (PDF) viewer that is built with HTML5.
PDF.js is community-driven and supported by Mozilla Labs. Our goal is to create a general-purpose, web standards-based platform for parsing and rendering PDFs.
Contributing
PDF.js is an open source project and always looking for more contributors. To get involved, visit:
- Issue Reporting Guide
- Code Contribution Guide
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Good Beginner Bugs
- Projects
Feel free to stop by our Matrix room for questions or guidance.
Getting Started
Online demo
Please note that the "Modern browsers" version assumes native support for
features such as e.g. async
/await
, Promise
, and ReadableStream
.
-
Modern browsers: https://mozilla.github.io/pdf.js/web/viewer.html
-
Older browsers: https://mozilla.github.io/pdf.js/es5/web/viewer.html
Browser Extensions
Firefox
PDF.js is built into version 19+ of Firefox.
Chrome
- The official extension for Chrome can be installed from the Chrome Web Store. This extension is maintained by @Rob--W.
- Build Your Own - Get the code as explained below and issue
gulp chromium
. Then open Chrome, go toTools > Extension
and load the (unpackaged) extension from the directorybuild/chromium
.
Getting the Code
To get a local copy of the current code, clone it using git:
$ git clone https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js.git
$ cd pdf.js
Next, install Node.js via the official package or via nvm. You need to install the gulp package globally (see also gulp's getting started):
$ npm install -g gulp-cli
If everything worked out, install all dependencies for PDF.js:
$ npm install
Finally, you need to start a local web server as some browsers do not allow opening
PDF files using a file://
URL. Run:
$ gulp server
and then you can open:
Please keep in mind that this requires an ES6 compatible browser; refer to Building PDF.js for usage with older browsers.
It is also possible to view all test PDF files on the right side by opening:
Online setup with a single click
It's highly recommended to follow the Getting the Code section above, which is the officially supported way to obtain the code. However, you may also use Gitpod (a free online IDE). With a single click it will launch a ready to use development environment, with all the necessary dependencies pre-installed and the web server running.
Building PDF.js
In order to bundle all src/
files into two production scripts and build the generic
viewer, run:
$ gulp generic
This will generate pdf.js
and pdf.worker.js
in the build/generic/build/
directory.
Both scripts are needed but only pdf.js
needs to be included since pdf.worker.js
will
be loaded by pdf.js
. The PDF.js files are large and should be minified for production.
Using PDF.js in a web application
To use PDF.js in a web application you can choose to use a pre-built version of the library
or to build it from source. We supply pre-built versions for usage with NPM and Bower under
the pdfjs-dist
name. For more information and examples please refer to the
wiki page on this subject.
Including via a CDN
PDF.js is hosted on several free CDNs:
- https://www.jsdelivr.com/package/npm/pdfjs-dist
- https://cdnjs.com/libraries/pdf.js
- https://unpkg.com/pdfjs-dist/
Learning
You can play with the PDF.js API directly from your browser using the live demos below:
More examples can be found in the examples folder. Some of them are using the pdfjs-dist package, which can be built and installed in this repo directory via gulp dist-install
command.
For an introduction to the PDF.js code, check out the presentation by our contributor Julian Viereck:
More learning resources can be found at:
The API documentation can be found at:
Questions
Check out our FAQs and get answers to common questions:
Talk to us on Matrix:
File an issue:
Follow us on twitter: @pdfjs