It seems that most GNU/Linux PDF readers use [poppler](https://poppler.freedesktop.org/) for rendering. For testing purposes I would like **not** to use poppler. Are there any (recent) alternatives ? xpdf doesn't count, since I expect both to share large pieces of code.

When I scan documents that are landscape-oriented, the output PDF files are portrait and so all the PDF viewers display the scanned documents in portrait. **From the command line, how do you rotate a PDF file 90 degrees?** I tried searching and found a bunch of solutions but I had trouble finding what looked like an authoritative solution that uses a stable and robust Linux/Unix tool. ---- footnote For example, here is a sampling of some of the haphazard solutions I found: - "just use Adobe Acrobat Pro to rotate the file and then save the file" - "use pdfjam" - "use PDFtk" - "use ${PROGRAM_NAME} from Poppler" - "use ImageMagick's convert" -- but then all the comments were very negative and stating "the image quality is ruined" - "open the file in a PDF viewer, then rotate, then print using a PDF printer like cutePDF or PDF printer or etc" - "use ${PROGRAM_NAME}", then I searched for "${PROGRAM_NAME}" and there is something about "Fedora removed ${PROGRAM_NAME} because of licensing issues"

Command pdftocairo is an utility from poppler-utils package. It's a PDF to PNG/JPEG/PDF/PS/EPS/SVG converter using Cairo . I use this command to update a very old PDF from version 1.2 to 1.5, for example:

$ pdftocairo -pdf input.pdf output.pdf

The PDF version of the output PDF in my system is always 1.5: - Linux Mint 21.1 - poppler-utils 22.02.0-2ubuntu0.1 - cairo 1.16.0 Now, in **2025-01-13**, i am using **Debian Testing/Trixie**, and the PDF version of the output PDF in my system is always 1.7: - Linux Debian Testing/Trixie - poppler-utils 24.08.0-4 - cairo 1.21 Also, looking at Cairo Graphics Manual , there's an enum cairo_pdf_version_t and maybe, pdftocairo is static and no one can change version. Maybe pdftcairo use one of those functions (CAIRO_PDF_VERSION_1_7) and it can not be changed. With cairo 1.16 i got PDF 1.5, and Cairo 1.18 got PDF 1.7. **My questions:** **1)** Is possible to choose the PDF version output? Like 1.4, 1.5, 1.6 or 1.7? **2)** There is ANY advantage in change PDF version? > **PS.:** I have opened an issue in Gitlab's Poppler , but it was closed with comment "This is not a support forum." So harsh.

Once you have inspected the screenshots below, you will see that Okular is significantly worse at rendering my two test files than many other well-known viewers. This is unfortunate, because in Kubuntu, Okular is the natural default viewer. My questions are as follows 1. Is there anything I can do—e.g. downloading and installing some patches or the like—to improve the rendering in Okular? (The 'Enable Graphics Antialias' and 'Enable Text Antialias' are both already enabled in my Okular.) 2. Why is Okular so much worse at rendering these test files than the other viewers?


**The tests** All the images in this post, for all pdf viewers, were captured using the same size of the capturing region. In order to see what I am talking about, you may have to click on the images and view them in full resolution. **The first test file** The one-page pdf test file in question can be downloaded [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QHnNzo8KnTshYtbulPfWyXH2N1XA-LJL/view?usp=sharing) . It was created using [xournalpp](https://github.com/xournalpp/xournalpp) . Below, I repeat the test with a pdf file created in [Inkscape](https://inkscape.org/) , with similar results. As I said, he 'Enable Graphics Antialias' and 'Enable Text Antialias' are both enabled in my Okular. At 75%, the rendering is mostly fine, although you can see that the left side of the gray square is thinner than the other three, which shouldn't be the case. But real problems start happening when we zoom in, below. As you can see, some of the blue horizontal lines are rendered as significantly thicker than the others. The problem (for this test file) does not affect any other viewers I've tried. Evince: Foxit: PDF-XChange Editor (through Wine): Adobe Acrobat Reader DC (through Wine):

**The second test file** I've tried a different test pdf file, produced in inkscape by copying and pasting the same horizontal line many times (the one-page pdf file in question can be downloaded [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LF4s4M3okuF4FXcp0XWlKsYQhMGegW0Y/view?usp=sharing).) While Okular is still the worst offender, most of the other ones are less than perfect, too: if one plays with different zoom levels, eventually one will hit upon a level where the rendring is off. For this particular file, only with the PDF-XChange Editor have I been unable to find a zoom level where the rendering is off. Okular: In order to see the imperfections in the rest of these, you really may need to click on the images and view them in full resolution (even if you didn't have to do that for the images above). You should be able to see that some of the lines are rendered thinner than the others. Evince: Foxit: Adobe Acrobat Reader DC: As I said, I was unable to find any imperfections in PDF-XChange Editor's rendering of this file at any zoom level. But it is possible I haven't tried enough zoom levels. For what it's worth, though it presumably shouldn't matter, here is my system configuration:
Laptop model: Dell Latitude 7490.
Operating System: Kubuntu 20.04
KDE Plasma Version: 5.18.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.68.0
Qt Version: 5.12.8
Kernel Version: 5.4.0-48-generic
OS Type: 64-bit
Processors: 8 × Intel® Core™ i7-8650U CPU @ 1.90GHz (Graphics: Intel UHD Graphics 620 integrated graphics processor)
Memory: 15.5 GiB of RAM Let me repeat my questions: 1. Is there anything I can do—e.g. downloading and installing some patches or the like—to improve the rendering in Okular? (The 'Enable Graphics Antialias' and 'Enable Text Antialias' are both already enabled in my Okular.) 2. Why is Okular so much worse at rendering these test files than the other viewers?

Is there a tool to fill PDF forms non-interactively from the shell? For my use case, just setting the text for each field (in whatever order the fields are defined) and saving the PDF file would be enough, but to keep the question more general, any form interaction via CLI is appreciated (tick boxes, select radio buttons, fill text, click buttons, etc.). I know that poppler has [some functions](https://poppler.freedesktop.org/api/glib/PopplerFormField.html) to access PDF forms, but I couldn't find a CLI utility that makes use of these, yet.

When installing the following I get an error. What does it exactly mean and how to solve it? :) # apt-get install libopenjp2-7-dev libfreetype6-dev libfontconfig1-dev libjpeg-dev libtiff5-dev libnss3-dev libgpgmepp-dev qtbase5-dev libcairo2-dev libboost-dev Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree... Done Reading state information... Done libopenjp2-7-dev is already the newest version (2.5.0-2). libfontconfig1-dev is already the newest version (2.14.2-6). libjpeg-dev is already the newest version (1:2.1.5-2). libtiff5-dev is already the newest version (4.5.1+git230720-1). libnss3-dev is already the newest version (2:3.94-1). libgpgmepp-dev is already the newest version (1.18.0-4). qtbase5-dev is already the newest version (5.15.10+dfsg-4). libcairo2-dev is already the newest version (1.18.0-1). libboost-dev is already the newest version (1.74.0.3). Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming. The following information may help to resolve the situation: The following packages have unmet dependencies: libfreetype6-dev : Depends: libfreetype-dev (= 2.13.0+dfsg-1) but 2.13.2+dfsg-1 is to be installed distro # lsb_release -a No LSB modules are available. Distributor ID: Debian Description: Debian GNU/Linux trixie/sid Release: n/a Codename: trixie

I have been trying to file my taxes by filling out the individual forms, which are fillable PDFs on the IRS's website, and concatenating them using the pdfunite command:

pdfunite f1040.pdf f1040s1.pdf f1040s3.pdf f1040sa.pdf Fed_2022_all.pdf

However, that results in the saved form values from each form being saved only on the first page. For instance, Form 1040 is two pages, and the form fields on page 2 are rendered uneditable. How can I prevent this?

Currently I am trying to use pdfinfo for extracting the content in the pdf files. I have installed poppler-utils in local using !sudo apt-get install -y poppler-utils and it worked, Now I am running the same code in Databricks jupyter notebook, for the this command have worked perfectly and when I check which pdfinfo it gave me a path. After that when I am running the command its not installing and giving an error. Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree... Done Reading state information... Done The following additional packages will be installed: libpoppler118 poppler-data Suggested packages: ghostscript fonts-japanese-mincho | fonts-ipafont-mincho fonts-japanese-gothic | fonts-ipafont-gothic fonts-arphic-ukai fonts-arphic-uming fonts-nanum The following NEW packages will be installed: libpoppler118 poppler-data poppler-utils 0 upgraded, 3 newly installed, 0 to remove and 40 not upgraded. Need to get 1,263 kB/3,434 kB of archives. After this operation, 17.7 MB of additional disk space will be used. Ign:1 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy-updates/main amd64 libpoppler118 amd64 22.02.0-2ubuntu0.1 Ign:2 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy-updates/main amd64 poppler-utils amd64 22.02.0-2ubuntu0.1 Err:1 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy-updates/main amd64 libpoppler118 amd64 22.02.0-2ubuntu0.1 404 Not Found [IP: 91.189.91.83 80] Err:2 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy-updates/main amd64 poppler-utils amd64 22.02.0-2ubuntu0.1 404 Not Found [IP: 91.189.91.83 80] debconf: delaying package configuration, since apt-utils is not installed Selecting previously unselected package poppler-data. (Reading database ... 98324 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to unpack .../poppler-data_0.4.11-1_all.deb ... Unpacking poppler-data (0.4.11-1) ... Setting up poppler-data (0.4.11-1) ... Processing triggers for fontconfig (2.13.1-4.2ubuntu5) ... E: Failed to fetch http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/p/poppler/libpoppler118_22.02.0-2ubuntu0.1_amd64.deb 404 Not Found [IP: 91.189.91.83 80] E: Failed to fetch http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/p/poppler/poppler-utils_22.02.0-2ubuntu0.1_amd64.deb 404 Not Found [IP: 91.189.91.83 80] I have tried multiple ways but same situation. !apt install poppler-utils -y !sudo apt-get install -y poppler-utils !sudo apt-get install -y poppler-utils --fix-missing Can anyone help me with this?!

For the purpose of processing pdf with Scan Tailor (in order to remove the background of photographed pdf pages , or to split pdf pages) given that this program needs input of images - it cannot input pdf as such - I have used a command like pdftoppm MY_PDF NAME_OF_IMAGE -png to process a low quality pdf, and the resulting images were worse than the original pdf. But with pdfimages tool from poppler-utils the results are as good as the original. This stays true if a different variable than -png is used (or if no variable is used and the output is ppm). I thought that from now on pdfimages is a better solution for my purpose, but then I have noticed that for many other pdf files that command is not good at all, as it gives fragments of image or text where pdftoppm gives normal text as expected. Bad images if extracted from pdf with pdfimages viewed in Dolphin: Correct images if extracted from the same pdf with pdftoppm viewed in Dolphin: Why these differences?

Poppler has the excellent tool pdftotext for converting a pdf file to a text file: pdftotext input.pdf output.txt Is there a way to re-convert this text file to pdf? By conversion, I mean to obtain a pdf file with a similar page content as the original pdf file. If possible, with the same page numbering as the original (but this is not mandatory). A pdf without page numbering would be also fine. Exact looking is not important. **Some potential use-case scenarios:** 1. You have accidentally deleted your pdf file but you have that text file from pdftotext. 2. You would like to edit the text file by a text editor and to produce an updated version of your pdf file. 3. To produce a pdf file with smaller size.

I have a pdf and I am in need to replace even and odd pages. If I want to be more specific, I must replace (2n-1) page numbers with (2n) ones (1-->2, 2-->1, 3-->4, 4-->3, and the like). How should I do that? Is there any free software that can do this job for me?

I have several pdf files (chapter1.pdf, chapter2.pdf, etc.), each one being a chapter of a book. I now how to merge them into a single pdf (I use the command pdfunite from poppler), but since the output file is big, it's difficult to find a chapter without having them indexed in a table of contents. So how to create an embedded table of contents in which each merged chapter is an entry? Note that I do not want to create a page in the output file which contains the list of chapters and their respective page numbers. I want the index/table of contents metadata of an pdf file, that can be browseable in any pdf reader's (or ebook device's) which supports such feature.

I have a pdf file created from an impress presentation. I want to convert the pdf to png images to add them to create a video using them. I am using pdftoppm to convert the pdf to png, but the exported images are getting a size of 1654x931 px. I need 1920x1080, as my video is going to be in that resolution. The command I am using is the following:

pdftoppm -png report.pdf report

In Impress I haven't found any setting the set the size of the exported pdf, and I haven't been able to find anything to set the size of the png conversion. Is there anyway to adjust the size of the generated pngs?

I am simply trying to install pdfunite which is inside of poppler-utils; however, I can't seem to figure out how to install poppler-utils. I've tried to install it with apt get install and it just says that it's referred to by another package:

[root:7e2d33988106:/]# apt install poppler-utils -y                                                                                                                                                                                                                      4:30AM/09.12
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Package poppler-utils is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

E: Package 'poppler-utils' has no installation candidate

According to another post, I could run apt-cache search xyz to find out what other package it's referred by, but this returns no results:

[root:7e2d33988106:/]# apt-cache search poppler-utils                                                                                                                                                                                                                    
[root:7e2d33988106:/]#

I'm not quite sure what else there is to do. I've tried to run apt get update and re-run apt install poppler-utils, but I get the same results.

[root:7e2d33988106:/]# apt update                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        4:35AM/09.12
Hit:1 https://deb.nodesource.com/node_6.x  bionic InRelease
Hit:3 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu  bionic InRelease                                                                            
Get:2 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu  bionic-security InRelease [88.7 kB]                                                        
Get:4 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu  bionic-updates InRelease [88.7 kB]
Reading package lists... Done                                       
E: Release file for http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/bionic-security/InRelease  is not valid yet (invalid for another 16h 57min 47s). Updates for this repository will not be applied.
E: Release file for http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/bionic-updates/InRelease  is not valid yet (invalid for another 16h 58min 26s). Updates for this repository will not be applied.

Here's an output of my /etc/apt/sources.list file (I commented out a few lines that had restricted in them:

[root:7e2d33988106:/]# cat /etc/apt/sources.list | grep -v "#" | sort -u                                                                                                                                                                                                 4:36AM/09.12

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/  bionic multiverse
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/  bionic universe
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/  bionic-updates multiverse
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/  bionic-updates universe
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/  bionic-security multiverse
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/  bionic-security universe

Here's my ubuntu version:

[root:7e2d33988106:/]# lsb_release -a                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    4:36AM/09.12
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS
Release:        18.04
Codename:       bionic

Are there any other ways I can get poppler-utils installed? I feel like I've run out quite of options here.

I would like to use pdfsig from poppler-utils in my ubuntu 16.04, at first I installed poppler utils from apt but pdfsig was not part of that package. When I looked man pages for 'pdfinfo' in the SEE ALSO section, according to http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/artful/man1/pdfinfo.1.html it should appear pdfsig(1), but in my ubuntu 16.04 there were just a few ones and pdfsig was missing. I looked for the sources to compile, from https://poppler.freedesktop.org/ I downloaded and compiled poppler-0.65.0.tar.xz. Now when I see the manpages for pdfinfo I can see pdfsig(1) in the SEE ALSO section. But when I try to run pdfsig in command line, nothing happens and a message saying pdfsig: command not found appears. Also if I try to look man pages for pdfsig like man pdfsig or man 1 pdfsig, a message saying No manual entry pdfsig or No manual entry for pdfsig in section 1 appears. Am I missing something? please if someone knows how to use pdfsig I would really appreciate help. Thanks in advance.

I have pdf ebooks with extensive (nested) bookmarks that are visible in all my other pdf readers (e.g. evince, foxitreader). However, when I open said files in Zathura, running blist gives: > No bookmarks available I get the same result with both the mupdf and the poppler plugins. I am running Zathura on Arch linux, and installed it (both versions, mupdf and poppler) from the Arch official repositories. Is there anyway to see these preexisting bookmarks, or does Zathura only recognize its own bookmarks?

I have a PDF created with Quark Xpress where some raster images are shown with thin white lines across them. Searching around I have found that the problem is due to the way PDFs readers apply partial transparencies, see . The suggested solution is to either 1) turning off the "Smooth images" setting in Acrobat Reader or 2) ignore the problem because it will print just fine. Solution 1 requires efforts from the readers and is thus not practicable. Solution 2 is also not applicable to my case because these PDFs will be mostly (or only) be seen on monitors and not printed. I tried to flatten the images using the answers given to question https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/162922/is-there-a-way-to-flatten-a-pdf-image-from-the-command-line but to no avail: * the convert method removes the white lines but converts all the text into a big raster image; * the pdf2ps | ps2pdf and gv methods do not remove the white lines (I suppose that poppler and gv have a switch equivalent to the "Smooth images" setting of Acrobat Reader, but I could not find it). How can I post-process the PDFs so that the parts with raster images are flattened and no white lines appear any more?

Code which works with a single document pdftotext *.pdf - | grep therapy You can use find as described in the thread How can I grep in PDF files? but I would like to understand why the above command is not working. Differential code where pdfgrep may add some benefit but still early in development pdftotext *.pdf - | pdfgrep therapy #Wrong syntax so error # Usage: pdfgrep [OPTION]... PATTERN FILE... # Syntax Warning: Invalid Font Weight # Syntax Warning: Invalid Font Weight I would like to get then a fast way to move to the specific pdf page if there is a good match. However, I have not found any evidence that such a feature exists. OS: Debian 8.5 Linux kernel: 4.6 backports Hardware: Asus Zenbook UX303UA Poppler-utils: pdftotext

On page change, redraw, or Reload command, xpdf will reload the file it is currently displaying. Is it possible to cause xpdf to reload the file by sending a signal? Which signal? (I am basically looking for the functionality offered by xpdf -remote ServerName -reload, except I want to apply it to an xpdf that was not launched with the -remote option.)

I have a directory with a very large number of PDFs that I am converting to *.txt documents with Poppler pdftotext. I have the following command that does the conversion of all the files. for f in *.pdf; do pdftotext $f; done The PDFs are on an external storage device without any additional space. How can I redirect the output to a different directory? That is, when each PDF is converted, it is written to another location rather than the same directory as the PDF.