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diff --git a/manual/overview.rst b/manual/overview.rst new file mode 100644 index 00000000..82c7057b --- /dev/null +++ b/manual/overview.rst @@ -0,0 +1,33 @@ +.. _ref.overview: + +What is QPDF? +============= + +QPDF is a program and C++ library for structural, content-preserving +transformations on PDF files. QPDF's website is located at +https://qpdf.sourceforge.io/. QPDF's source code is hosted on github +at https://github.com/qpdf/qpdf. + +QPDF provides many useful capabilities to developers of PDF-producing +software or for people who just want to look at the innards of a PDF +file to learn more about how they work. With QPDF, it is possible to +copy objects from one PDF file into another and to manipulate the list +of pages in a PDF file. This makes it possible to merge and split PDF +files. The QPDF library also makes it possible for you to create PDF +files from scratch. In this mode, you are responsible for supplying +all the contents of the file, while the QPDF library takes care of all +the syntactical representation of the objects, creation of cross +references tables and, if you use them, object streams, encryption, +linearization, and other syntactic details. You are still responsible +for generating PDF content on your own. + +QPDF has been designed with very few external dependencies, and it is +intentionally very lightweight. QPDF is *not* a PDF content creation +library, a PDF viewer, or a program capable of converting PDF into other +formats. In particular, QPDF knows nothing about the semantics of PDF +content streams. If you are looking for something that can do that, you +should look elsewhere. However, once you have a valid PDF file, QPDF can +be used to transform that file in ways that perhaps your original PDF +creation tool can't handle. For example, many programs generate simple PDF +files but can't password-protect them, web-optimize them, or perform +other transformations of that type. |