Open Sourced PDF Reader

Question

I am currently working on a project that requires me to display PDF documents to the user amongst other things.

Is there a free and open sourced PDF Reader that I can customize and build my project on top off?

A Java code base would be perfect, though, C/C++ will do as well. The reader does not necessarily need to be very fancy, but it should be able to handle displaying PDF files completely by itself. Also, I would prefer if the software license allows code customization of a proprietary nature.

If no such PDF Readers exist, is there a PDF library that I can leverage, that will handle/help in displaying the PDF content besides parsing it?

Thanks!

Can't you just open the PDF file in an external program, i.e. use the one already in the system? — Some programmer dude, Jun 13 '12 at 06:55
@JoachimPileborg - Would I be able to grab the PDF text being displayed currently, from the external program? — IM42, Jun 13 '12 at 06:59
A firefox project (https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js) which might interest you — bobby, Jun 13 '12 at 07:01

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 13 '12 at 07:10

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I would also suggest investigating MuPDF. Its open source, but you need to be GPL-compliant to use it that way, however it can also be commercially licenced.

answered Jun 13 '12 at 07:10

KenS

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 13 '12 at 06:55

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As for a free library, have a look at poppler.

answered Jun 13 '12 at 06:55

Axel

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score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 13 '12 at 07:30

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Suns PDR-Renderer and Multivalent are both Open source and there are OS versions of JPedal and Icepdf.

answered Jun 13 '12 at 07:30

mark stephens

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PDF renderer looks good, though it does not offer PDF text extraction by default. I found this paper (http://www.iaeng.org/publication/IMECS2011/IMECS2011_pp283-286.pdf) and customized the library a little according to the Upgrade Study section. Thanks everyone for your inputs. – IM42 Jun 14 '12 at 05:48

Open Sourced PDF Reader

3 Answers3