QPDF

What is QPDF?

QPDF is a command-line tool and C++ library that performs content-preserving transformations on PDF files. It supports linearization, encryption, and numerous other features. It can also be used for splitting and merging files, creating PDF files (but you have to supply all the content yourself), and inspecting files for study or analysis. QPDF does not render PDFs or perform text extraction, and it does not contain higher-level interfaces for working with page contents. It is a low-level tool for working with the structure of PDF files and can be a valuable tool for anyone who wants to do programmatic or command-line-based manipulation of PDF files.

Resources

QPDF is included in most Linux distributions and many other software distributions. Check your operating system's package manager.

In addition to the documentation link above, each qpdf release includes documentation in the “doc” directory.

Mailing List

Subscribe to the qpdf-announce list: 

License

QPDF is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.

SourceForge

QPDF is primarily hosted on GitHub, but the current release and all previous releases are also available on SourceForge: