Files
pdfcraft/README.md
T
9f04acccef M10: OCR engines, confidence, preprocessing and a review workflow (#977)
* M10.20: plan Unicode text for OCR output in Type3 faces (fonts, edit)

OCR output used to flatten every character beyond WinAnsi to a silent `?`. This
adds the two pieces that let the OCR layers write the recognized words as they
are; the OCR code that uses them follows in M10.21.

pdfcraft-fonts
- `TextPlan::for_words` maps each word to the standard Helvetica when WinAnsi
  covers it, else to Type3 fonts drawn from the craft-fonts faces (the Japanese
  document face first, then the rest of the build input). Characters no face
  has a glyph for are counted (`missing`), never dropped silently. At most 240
  characters per font and 2400 per plan, so one hostile word cannot balloon.
- Which face has which character is asked once per (face, character) for a plan,
  not once per word.
- `face_has`, `craft_glyph`, `win_ansi_char`, `fits_win_ansi` are public for it.

pdfcraft-edit
- `add_type3_fonts` / `stamp_with_fonts` register a plan's fonts on a page under
  a free `PCOcr`, `PCOcr1`, ... name, build each font once and share the object
  with later pages. A shared face is registered under a free name on a later
  page that already has a font of the name it was given first, instead of
  replacing that page's own font.
- The fonts carry real advances and a ToUnicode CMap, so extraction reads the
  text back.

pdfcraft-redact
- A test shows a hand-built Type3 text layer (the shape the OCR output writes) is
  redacted like any other text and the verifier passes.

Tests: pdfcraft-fonts 62 passed, pdfcraft-edit 129 passed, pdfcraft-redact 33
passed; clippy -D warnings clean on the three crates. The name-reuse and the
redaction tests build their fonts by hand, so they run without the craft-fonts
build input; the tests that plan real faces skip without it and were not run in
this commit's own check.

* M12: give the hostile-XFA open test more room on a loaded machine

The test opens a form whose calculate script sets a value 50 000 times, against
the one-second budget of an unasked script and a five-second wall-clock bound
on the open. Both sit close to what a machine running several suites at once
can take, so the test can fail without anything being wrong.

It now runs 20 000 iterations (the total is 19999) and allows 30 seconds, which
still fails for a script that hangs or is not capped. Test-only; unrelated to
the OCR work in this series, so it is a commit of its own.

Tests: both hostile_xfa tests in pdfcraft-engine pass.

* M10.21: pluggable OCR engines, preprocessing, review sessions and the OCR tools (ocr, engine, create, automation)

Scan & OCR gets a second engine, optional raster clean-up, a review step before
anything is applied, editable output and a batch mode, headlessly first: the
interface for them follows in M10.22.

pdfcraft-ocr
- A `Recognizer` trait with two engines: the built-in ocrs (moved out of lib.rs)
  and the installed tesseract program, run as a fenced external process: fixed
  argv, allow-listed language codes, a private temp directory (mode 0700 on
  Unix), 120 s timeout, 64 MiB output cap, 50 000-word reading cap. A location
  from PDFCRAFT_TESSERACT is validated (absolute, existing, executable) and an
  invalid one fails closed instead of falling back to the PATH. `--list-langs`
  and `--version` are read from stdout or, for older versions, stderr.
- Strategies: PrimaryOnly, ConfidenceWeighted (the second engine joins when the
  first reading's mean is under 70 or unknown) and a ROVER merge (higher
  confidence wins per word; against an ocrs word of unknown confidence a
  tesseract word wins only at 70 or more; capped at 100 M comparisons; a failing
  partner degrades to the primary with a note).
- Preprocessing: opt-in auto-rotate, deskew, denoise and binarize on the RGBA
  raster, each with an exact inverse so word boxes map back to the scan. The
  300 dpi normalization the steps are calibrated for runs only when a step is
  on: with every step off the render is read as rendered, as before. (Enlarging
  a 72 dpi render 4x on its own made the models read "due: €250" as "ue: ?250".)
  `OcrImage` is validated by construction (side and 64 MP area caps, checked
  before any buffer is allocated, including by the resize).
- Confidence bands (High >= 90, Medium 70-89, Low < 70) drive review.

pdfcraft-engine, pdfcraft-create
- `OcrSettings` gains engine, strategy, the four steps, output mode, region, the
  skip flags and the low-confidence threshold; Automatic reads confidence
  weighted unless a strategy is chosen.
- A recognition is a session: the document guard refuses a stale result with its
  reason, pages can be applied one at a time (the guard is taken again after each
  applied page), and applying is one undoable step. A per-language dictionary
  (a plain-text file: words added from any document stay on disk after it closes).
- Output is searchable (an invisible layer) or a NEW editable document of visible
  text at the recognized boxes (`create::from_contents`); words beyond WinAnsi use
  the Type3 faces of M10.20 in both, with the shared plan across pages.
- Engine discovery never blocks the interface: results are cached, a stale
  answer is shown while a background probe retries, and the models search and
  `--version` are cached. Batch: pages or files that already have text are
  skipped unless forced, and inputs sharing a file name are found up front.

pdfcraft-automation
- ocr_recognize (engine, strategy, steps, region, output mode), ocr_words (with a
  retained review handle), ocr_review_apply, ocr_dictionary, ocr_status and
  ocr_recognize_files. The editable `out` must be a new file inside --root and is
  refused for a searchable run (it used to be ignored), two batch inputs of one
  file name are refused before anything is read, and the batch folder is checked
  for existing outputs.

pdfcraft-ui-egui
- Only what the new API needs: the Recognize Text dialog reads with
  `recognizers(&settings)`. `ocr.correct` is registered with its label in every
  catalog; the screen itself is M10.22.

Tests: pdfcraft-ocr 78 passed; pdfcraft-create passed; pdfcraft-engine and
pdfcraft-automation 450 passed and 1 failed (the automation lib 17, automation.rs
157, hostile_args 2 among them); pdfcraft-ui-egui lib + ocr + control tests 391
passed; clippy -D warnings clean on the five crates. The one failure is in a
test this commit does not change:
recognize_text_makes_a_scanned_page_searchable fails where the models are
installed (they read "quick" as "auick" at that render size); the roadmap on main
already records it. The real tesseract binary ran in
tesseract::tests::recognize_runs_the_installed_binary (tesseract 5.4.0, PATH).

* M10.22: OCR Verify screen, the Recognize Text options and the interface catalogs (ui-egui)

Scan & OCR ▸ Correct recognized text: a full-window screen where a recognition
is reviewed before anything is applied, plus the dialog and batch options for
the engines of M10.21.

OCR Verify screen
- Four panes: the page list, the source page with confidence-coloured word boxes
  (click to select, drag to draw a region), the recognized text, and a zoom plus
  word inspector. Corrections commit on Enter (an empty commit removes the word),
  Remove/Restore, "+ Dictionary" (a per-language file in the preferences folder,
  so a word added from a document stays on disk after it closes), per-word and
  per-page Verified, F8 / Shift+F8 walk the low-confidence words, Ctrl+T marks the
  page reviewed, Ctrl+Tab moves the pane focus, and review edits undo within the
  panel.
- Re-OCR of the whole page or a drawn region. A region re-read moves the review
  marks of the words it keeps to their new positions and selects the first new
  word; a whole-page re-read clears that page's marks (and the undo brings them
  back). The region outline is scaled onto the pane, not mapped through user
  space again, so it is right on rotated and cropped pages.
- Accept / Reject per page or whole. Pages accepted one at a time each apply once
  (the document guard is taken again after each applied page; an edit made
  elsewhere in between is still refused with its reason), and Accept in
  searchable mode is one undoable step. Editable mode writes a NEW
  `<name>_ocr.pdf` through a save dialog and never the source. A real Cancel
  keeps the pages already read.
- The engine and strategy menus disable a choice that cannot run and say why;
  the check never waits on a process (a background probe fills a cache), and
  choosing Automatic moves "Primary only" to Confidence weighted.

Recognize Text dialog and batch
- Engine, strategy, the four clean-up steps and the skip flags are remembered with
  the other choices (a saved Automatic without a strategy reads confidence
  weighted). The batch refuses two inputs of one file name and existing outputs
  before reading anything, notes low-confidence pages at the settings' threshold,
  and its toast has a Cancel (the file in flight finishes).

Catalogs and attribution
- The 90 new interface strings are in all 21 catalogs (the Lithuanian ones were
  written without native review, and the Bulgarian ones avoid U+045D, which the
  bundled monospace face lacks). ATTRIBUTION.toml carries the new hashes, a
  note on the Lithuanian entries and the README screenshot; ATTRIBUTION.md is
  regenerated.
- README: a screenshot of the Verify screen, taken with
  `cargo xtask screenshots` from a synthetic scan (`shot --ocr-verify on`) built
  from allowed assets; the page reads it with the real engines.

Tests: pdfcraft-ui-egui lib 373 passed (1 ignored: the Windows hinting
measurement probe), tests ocr 6, control 46, fonts 9; clippy -D warnings clean on
the engine, ui-egui, pdfcraft and xtask packages; `cargo xtask assets` ok. The
review state machine has unit tests for every fix above; each was seen failing
with its fix reverted.

* M10.23: parity entries, roadmap and localization notes for the OCR workflow

Records what M10.20-M10.22 ship, and what they do not.

parity/acrobat-features.toml
- Status changes against main: ocr.rotation-detection and ocr.deskew planned ->
  shipped (the opt-in steps of M10.21, with their tests); ocr.correct-recognized-
  text and ocr.ocr-engines planned -> partial. Other Area I entries get their
  evidence and notes brought up to date.
- ocr.correct-recognized-text: the evidence includes the one-page-at-a-time accept
  and the region re-read tests; the notes say what the headless tools cover
  (ocr_words with a retained review, ocr_review_apply through the same stale-
  document guard, ocr_dictionary) and what is still UI-only (suggestions,
  per-word Verified marks, region re-reads).
- ocr.ocr-engines stays partial rather than shipped: part of its evidence is
  conditional (the real-binary test runs only where tesseract is installed and
  skips elsewhere, and the process-level tests are Unix-only). It cites the tests
  that always run (location validation and the fail-closed rule, --list-langs
  parsing from stdout or stderr, the merge rules, the default strategy) and says
  which part is not proven everywhere.
- `cargo xtask parity`: area I 32.7% -> 44.2% weighted (5 -> 7 shipped, 7 -> 9
  partial); overall 52.8% -> 53.0% shipped and 58.2% -> 58.5% weighted.

ROADMAP.md
- One progress-log entry (2026-10-13, newest first) and the banner line. It says
  the catalogs are 21 with the Lithuanian additions not natively reviewed, that
  the end-to-end redaction test of the Type3 layer needs the craft-fonts build
  input, and that recognize_text_makes_a_scanned_page_searchable still fails where
  the models are installed, as main's log already records.

docs/localization.md, docs/localization-parity.md
- The Lithuanian entry count (2,578 -> 2,668) and the counts of the other
  catalogs that carry entry counts are re-measured with the 90 new entries; the
  Lithuanian OCR entries are marked as not natively reviewed.

Checked: `cargo xtask parity` (numbers above, evidence tests exist) and
`cargo xtask assets` pass on this tree.

* M10.24: ocr: apply a late result only to the document it was read from

The Recognize Text dialog closes on Go, so the document can be edited, or have
text redacted, while a long run is still reading. The result was applied
without the stale check the tools and the Verify screen use, so words read
before a redaction could be written back as invisible text. The run now keeps
its guard and applies through the checked path.

Accept with the editable output in the Verify screen had the same gap (Exit
keeps the review open): it now refuses when the document changed since the
review started.

Both new tests fail with their guard switched off.

* M10.25: ocr: ocr_dictionary takes dictionary file names only

Updating sorts, lower-cases and rewrites the file it is given, so pointed at
.env or a README it would corrupt it. The tool now accepts only
ocr-dictionary-<language>.txt style names, for reading as well as writing.

The size-limit test used a file name the rule now refuses first, so it renamed
its fixture to keep testing the size limit. The new test fails with the rule
switched off.

* M10.26: pt-BR: keep (s) on the word counts and say mecanismo for engine

Two review fixes from a native speaker: the two word(s) lines had lost their
(s), so a count of 1 read as 1 palavras, and engine was translated both as
motor and mecanismo. Mecanismo is the Brazilian word for a software engine and
two lines already used it, so the other six now match.

* M10: fit the rebased OCR workflow to current main's structure

* Fix OCR workflow issues from the review

Honor the Recognize dialog's editable-output choice: its result opens in
the review screen (whose Accept writes the editable document) instead of
an invisible layer. Make page acceptance idempotent: a second Accept
entire page never appends the OCR layer twice and keeps later
corrections. Move page and region re-OCR onto a worker thread with a
status line and a cancel that discards the reading. Skip the Tesseract
probe for jobs that name their engines. Bound Tesseract's stderr while
the child runs, not only after it exits. Surface the editable output's
substitution notes in the tools' and the run's results.

Also repair the OCR batch tool against the current structure: inputs are
held to the read root again, and a batch whose inputs share an output
name is refused before the output folder is created, compared the way
the default filesystem compares names; and the editable writer test's
word stays inside the fixture's pages.

* Apply pre-review fixes to the OCR workflow

Hold the automation OCR tools to the document's copying permission, as
the other text tools are: the recognized text is left out of the
results when copying is forbidden, and the paths that carry the words
out of the document (the editable output, the review word list) are
refused. Mark the ocr_dictionary tool as overwriting its path. Close
the searchable layer's graphics state around its invisible text so the
rendering mode cannot leak into later content. Read the OCR user
dictionary folder from the portable data folder in portable mode, like
the recovery store does. Resolve the attribution manifest's leftover
conflict markers and regenerate the generated attribution. Describe the
review flow, the searchable layer's Type3 fonts and the parity evidence
references accurately, and drop an undeclared copy of the recovery
module.

* OCR: reject readings that exceed the word limit

Assisted-by: OpenAI Codex

* OCR: new documents go through the page tree builder main added

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* OCR: review notes and lints

The editable output refuses a file created during recognition. ocr_words takes
skip_text_pages and force_ocr. Automatic OCR checks the engine it will use. The
stderr test stays below the kill cap, and a failed --ocr-verify shot exits with
an error.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* OCR: restore the Verify screenshot attribution, follow the moved constants

The merge dropped the screenshot row with the translation rows. The model
filename constants live in ocrs.rs now, so the license check reads them there.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* Attribution: the Verify screenshot entry goes after the header comment

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* Attribution: the screenshot row in the table follows the manifest order

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

---------

Co-authored-by: eliets2 <287273517+eliets2@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: FredApps <FredApps@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: FredApps <153173854+FredApps@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-11-05 23:39:55 +01:00

42 KiB
Raw Blame History

ArtCraft

PdfCraft icon: an engraved lion on a red tile

PdfCraft

The PDF workbench; an open-source, modern PDF reader and editor, built in pure Rust.
Read, organize, combine, split and secure PDFs in a fast, native app, written in Rust from the ground up.
macOS · Windows · Linux · FreeBSD · the web

License: MIT OR Apache-2.0 Written in Rust Platforms: macOS, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, web No account, no telemetry
Scanned by SonarCloud Reviewed by CodeRabbit

Join the ArtCraft community on Discord

PdfCraft on getartcraft.com · ArtCraft · All Crafting Apps


PdfCraft with the PdfCraft Showcase cover page open, the All tools panel on the left and 20 threaded comments on the right
The PdfCraft Showcase, a 13-page specimen PDF, open with the All tools panel and threaded comments.

Note

ArtCraft is a community of artists from all walks of life. Digital, generative, music, games — if you make things, you're one of us. Come say hi on Discord.

Highlights · Read · Find · Organize · Combine & split · Protect · Forms & layers · Everywhere · Agents · How it's built · Get started · What's next · Downloads · Crafting Apps


Community

PdfCraft is part of ArtCraft. Come say hello, get help and follow development:

The ArtCraft name and logos in docs/brand/ are trademarks of the ArtCraft Team and are not open source. They may be used only unmodified, and only as part of PdfCraft (see docs/brand/LICENSE-brand.txt). Forks and modified versions must remove them.

Highlights

Faithful

Real-world typography: world scripts, vertical Japanese, colour emoji, gradients, soft masks and transparency. All of it renders the way the author intended.

Fearless

Ordinary saves append your changes and leave the original bytes untouched. Edits to damaged objects whose xref and header generations disagree use a full rewrite, keeping both accepted references connected to the same repaired object. Writes are atomic, undo runs deep, and nothing is lost if you close by mistake.

Yours

No account, no telemetry, no cloud. It works offline and opens instantly. The engine, CLI and app are all open source.


Read anything, beautifully

PdfCraft renders PDFs with care for the details that make a page feel right: kerning and ligatures, right-to-left and complex scripts, vertical CJK, colour emoji, shadings, blend modes, soft masks and optional content.

The Scripts of the World page: Arabic, Hebrew, Devanagari, Thai, Greek, Cyrillic, Chinese, Korean, IPA, Armenian, Georgian and Tamil samples, with vertical Japanese in the right margin
Twelve writing systems on one page, plus vertical Japanese, at 125%.

  • Deep zoom stays sharp. Large pages render in tiles, so text stays crisp at any magnification.
  • Built to survive bad files. Every page renders in isolation and damaged documents are repaired. Across the 983-file pdf.js test corpus the result is 0 crashes.
  • Layouts for every task: continuous, single page, two-up, view rotation, full screen and a distraction-free Read mode.
  • Light and dark themes, both designed to be easy on the eyes for long sessions.
Two facing pages in Read mode with the dark theme: the Foreword and the Setting Text chapter with its drop cap and pull quote The dark theme showing the Code and Images chapter, a syntax-coloured listing and a fractal image, with the comments panel open
Two-up Read mode, ready for long reading The dark theme, with the comments panel open

Find it, select it, copy it

Search the whole document as you type, step through matches with ⌘G, and select text that comes out in the right reading order. That holds for columns, right-to-left runs and CJK too.

Navigate long documents

Launch with pdfcraft --two-paged file.pdf (or pdfcraft file.pdf --two-paged) to open each command-line PDF in noncontinuous two-page view. This optional launch override does not change saved default-layout preferences or PDFs restored from the previous session. An explicit --layout option takes precedence on the active document regardless of argument order; --default-layout retains its existing behavior for subsequently opened documents.

Right-click a PDF tab to close it, reopen the last closed file-backed tab, or reveal its file. Closing still asks about unsaved changes. Reopening reads the saved file from disk; it does not restore discarded edits. Reveal selects the file in Explorer or Finder. On Linux and FreeBSD it requests org.freedesktop.FileManager1.ShowItems, falling back to opening the containing directory with xdg-open when that service is unavailable. Reopen and Reveal are unavailable on the web; Reveal is also unavailable for pathless documents.

Bookmarks, page thumbnails and the document's own page labels (i, ii, 1, 2…) keep you oriented in long documents. Search bookmark titles in the Bookmarks panel to find nested entries even when their parents are collapsed. Matches keep their ancestors for context; Clear restores the unfiltered tree without changing its expansion state.

In Inspector > Pages, use Thumbnail size and the smaller/larger buttons to show more pages or inspect larger previews (50–150%). This changes only the thumbnails, keeping multi-page selection and the current page in view. The size belongs to the open document view and survives reloading its file; it is not remembered after restarting. Agents can set it with ui.set {"key":"thumbnail-zoom","value":"75"} and read active.thumbnail_zoom from ui.state.

The find bar showing match 10 of 16 for the word 'type', highlighted in the Expressive Type chapter heading The Bookmarks panel showing the nested outline of the showcase, with page labels such as Cover, i and ii, next to the Scripts of the World page
Find as you type: match 10 of 16 Nested bookmarks with the document's own page labels

Organize pages like cards on a table

Open Organize pages to see every page at once:

  • Select pages: click, ⌘-click or ⇧-click.
  • Change them: rotate, delete, insert blank pages, insert pages from another file, and move them earlier or later.
  • Undo anything: ⌘Z, then save.

The Organize pages grid with the showcase's pages as thumbnails, three of them selected, and the page toolbar above
Organize pages with three pages selected and the page tools in the toolbar above.

Undo that goes the distance. Each change is one step in a history you can walk backwards and forwards. The Edit menu names the step ("Undo Rotate pages"), and undo still works after you save.

Saves you can trust:

  • Incremental: the original bytes stay byte-for-byte intact.
  • Atomic: the file is written to a temporary copy, then swapped in.
  • Verified: independently checked with qpdf, on every CI run.

When open documents exceed the window width, scroll over the tab strip with the mouse wheel or trackpad, or use its horizontal scrollbar. Opening or switching to a document brings its tab into view.

Unsaved documents carry a dot on their tab, and closing or quitting asks before anything is lost. Changes are autosaved every minute. If PdfCraft ever quits unexpectedly, it offers to recover your work the next time it opens. Encrypted documents stay encrypted on disk.

The Split document dialog over the organize view, set to one page per file and reporting that it creates 13 files from 13 pages
Split document: one page per file makes 13 files.

Combine and split without losing a thing

Combine files merges any number of PDFs into one. Each file gets a bookmark, with its own bookmarks nested underneath.

Extract copies the pages you select into a new document. Split divides a document every n pages, or before the pages you choose.

Nothing quietly disappears along the way:

  • links and named destinations are rewired to the copied pages;
  • form fields stay interactive;
  • layers keep their on/off defaults;
  • attachments come along.

Every page of a combined document renders pixel-identical to its source.

pdfcraft-cli combine report.pdf appendix.pdf --out combined.pdf
pdfcraft-cli extract report.pdf --pages 1,3,5-8 --out highlights.pdf
pdfcraft-cli split   report.pdf --every 10 --out-dir parts/

Open protected documents and respect their rules

PdfCraft implements the PDF standard security handler completely:

  • every revision, from 40-bit RC4 to AES-256;
  • user and owner passwords, including Unicode passwords normalised with SASLprep;
  • crypt filters and attachment-only encryption.

Documents restricted by their author show a clear notice, and PdfCraft honours their permissions. Enter the owner password and the restrictions lift. Edits to encrypted documents are saved encrypted, under the same keys.

The Document Properties dialog on its Description tab, with editable title, author, subject and keywords, and tabs for Security, Fonts and Advanced
Document Properties, Description tab

Document Properties shows:

  • the document's title, author, subject and keywords, which you can edit;
  • the fonts it uses and whether each is embedded;
  • PDF version, page size, tags, fields, layers and attachments;
  • the full security picture: encryption method, which password opened it, and each permission.

Comments, forms, layers and attachments

The Interactive Form page with highlighted text fields, checkboxes, radio buttons, a list and a signature field, and the Fields panel listing all 13 fields and their values The Review and Markup page with highlights, shapes, ink and an APPROVED stamp under a DRAFT watermark, and the Layers panel with Draft watermark and Print-only notes
Forms: every field with its current value, field highlighting, and checkboxes, radio buttons, lists and signatures drawn the way their author designed them. Layers: switch optional content on and off and the page re-renders instantly. Comments appear as threaded conversations, and attachments can be opened or saved.

Scan pages, then read the words back before trusting them

Scan & OCR ▸ Recognize text turns a scan into searchable text — the current page, a range, or a folder of files written as searchable copies — with optional cleanup before reading (auto-rotate, deskew, denoise, binarize; word boxes map back to the original scan) and a second engine: an installed Tesseract joins the built-in one, merged per your strategy. A searchable result applies as one undoable step; the Editable text output opens the OCR Verify screen instead, where each word carries the engine's confidence as a colour, suspects are one keypress away, and corrections, a user dictionary and Re-OCR of a region or a page happen before Accept writes the new document. Scan & OCR ▸ Correct recognized text reviews any recognition there before it is applied.

The OCR Verify screen: a scanned note with each recognized word boxed in its confidence colour, the info strip reporting a 95% average confidence and one low-confidence word, and the confidence legend with its thresholds below
The OCR Verify screen: words coloured by confidence — the legend spells the thresholds out — reviewed and corrected before anything is applied.


Every tool, one keystroke away

Press ⌘K to search every tool and command, or browse the All tools catalogue. Tools that are still in development are marked with the milestone that will ship them.

The command palette searching for 'page', listing Page grid, Page labels, Rotate pages, Insert pages, Delete pages, Extract pages and more, each with the tool it belongs to The Welcome to PdfCraft home screen with recommended tools, a recent file, a privacy note, and the full tool catalogue in the side panel
The ⌘K command palette The home screen and the All tools catalogue

Runs everywhere, stays yours

  • Native on macOS, Windows, Linux and FreeBSD, and in the browser through WebAssembly, from the same Rust codebase. Windows builds come for x64, x86 and ARM64 (Windows on ARM, no emulation); every ARM64 change is tested on ARM64 hardware in CI.
  • Private by design. Documents never leave your machine. There's no account, no telemetry and no cloud processing.
  • Engine first. Parsing, rendering and editing live in reusable library crates. The interface is one swappable layer on top.
  • Scriptable. The pdfcraft-cli tool (see Built for agents, too) covers inspecting, rendering, extracting text, editing, combining, extracting pages and splitting. Robustness sweeps run on the same engine as the app.
pdfcraft-cli info  form.pdf                                  # structure as JSON
pdfcraft-cli text  paper.pdf --page 3                        # reading-order text
pdfcraft-cli edit  in.pdf --rotate 1,2:90 --delete 5 --title "Q3" --out out.pdf

Built for agents, too

Every engine feature is reachable without the GUI, through one table of JSON-Schema-described tools: open, inspect, render pages to PNG, extract and find text, rotate, delete, move and insert pages, edit bookmarks and page labels, add, reply to, restyle and delete comments (highlight a phrase just by naming it), list and fill in form fields, protect with passwords, set metadata, undo and redo, save, combine, extract and split. Three front doors share it:

  • pdfcraft-cli run, for one-off calls and JSON scripts:

    pdfcraft-cli tools                                        # every tool and its JSON Schema
    pdfcraft-cli run text_find doc=1 query=invoice            # key=value; values parse as JSON
    pdfcraft-cli run --script review.json                     # e.g. comment_add {"type": "highlight", "find": "total due"}
    pdfcraft-cli run --script steps.json --root ./work        # several steps in one session
    pdfcraft-cli run --script steps.json --report             # one JSON document: per step its number, tool, status, result or error
    

    With --root, every file the script's steps read or write stays in that directory, including the PNG a step saves with "out" (the script itself is read from wherever you name it).

  • An MCP server, for AI agents such as Claude. It is opt-in: PdfCraft never starts it on its own, and it opens no network port. It runs only while an agent launches pdfcraft-cli mcp, talks over stdin/stdout, and stops when the agent disconnects. To enable it, add it to your agent's MCP configuration:

    { "mcpServers": { "pdfcraft": { "command": "pdfcraft-cli", "args": ["mcp", "--root", "/path/to/your/pdfs"] } } }
    

    --compact shrinks the tool list the agent has to read: tools/list returns about ten core tools plus tool_search and tool_call, which find and run every other tool, so the list costs far fewer tokens. Every tool still works.

    --root confines every file the agent can read or write to one directory. Builds that should not include the server at all can use cargo build -p pdfcraft-cli --no-default-features.

  • The Rust API (pdfcraft_automation::Automation::call), for embedding.

Edits stay in memory, undoable, until doc_save. Saving to the same file appends an incremental update, so the original bytes are preserved, and the write is atomic. Unsaved changes are never discarded silently.

Driving the app itself

Start the desktop app with pdfcraft --control ~/.pdfcraft-control.json and an agent can see and operate the real interface: the widget tree with labels and positions (from the accessibility tree), clicks, typing, keys, commands, view options and screenshots. This is also off by default. It listens only on loopback, and every connection must present the random token written to that file, which only you can read.

Keep the control file in a folder only you can write, not a shared one such as /tmp: another user could create the file there first and receive your commands. pdfcraft-cli ui refuses a control file that is a symbolic link, and on macOS, Linux and FreeBSD one that another user owns or can read or write. The app doesn't start if it can't write the file.

pdfcraft-cli ui --control ~/.pdfcraft-control.json inspect query=rotate      # find widgets
pdfcraft-cli ui --control ~/.pdfcraft-control.json click label="Organize pages"
pdfcraft-cli ui --control ~/.pdfcraft-control.json key key=K modifiers='["command"]'
pdfcraft-cli ui --control ~/.pdfcraft-control.json command id=comment.square   # pick a tool, then draw:
pdfcraft-cli ui --control ~/.pdfcraft-control.json drag from='[400,300]' to='[600,420]'
pdfcraft-cli ui --control ~/.pdfcraft-control.json screenshot --out window.png
pdfcraft-cli ui --control ~/.pdfcraft-control.json resize width=1200 height=800
pdfcraft-cli ui --control ~/.pdfcraft-control.json focus label="Read"
pdfcraft-cli ui --control ~/.pdfcraft-control.json inspect focused=true
pdfcraft-cli ui --control ~/.pdfcraft-control.json quit

ui.panel opens, closes or sizes a side panel: {"panel":"tools"|"side","open":true|false,"width":320}. tools is the Tools panel and side the panel the rail opens (reopening it shows the one open last). width is clamped to the panel's limits (Tools 240–520, side panel 260–520 points). ui.dock.reset resets the side panels: Tools open on the left, default widths. The control channel accepts these methods directly; ui.command also accepts {"id":"ui.panel","params":{...}}. Saved preferences keep the Tools side, the open panels and their widths. Invalid requests return an error without changing the document or the panels.

resize requests a native inner-window size in logical points (each dimension must be between 320 and 8192); the window manager may constrain it. state reports the observed window.width, window.height and window.pixels_per_point. focus accepts exactly one widget id or unique enabled, focusable label; subsequent key requests traverse or activate the actual widgets. inspect includes focusability and accepts a focused filter. quit takes no parameters: clean documents exit normally, while unsaved edits or typing open the existing Save/Don't save/Cancel prompt and return quitting: false, needs_confirmation: true. It never silently discards work. Window resizing and application quit are native-only.


How it's built

PdfCraft is a Cargo workspace of focused crates, layered so the core never depends on the UI:

Crate What it does
pdfcraft-filters Every PDF stream filter (Flate, LZW, ASCII85, RunLength, predictors), encode and decode, property-tested
pdfcraft-crypt The standard security handler: RC4, AES-128/256, revisions 2–6, permissions
pdfcraft-cos The PDF object layer: tolerant parsing, repair, copy-on-write edits, incremental and full writing
pdfcraft-organize Page operations, combine / extract / split, bookmarks, page labels, document information
pdfcraft-fonts Font metrics and encodings for generated appearances
pdfcraft-annot Comments: builders and appearance streams for notes, text markup, shapes, ink and text boxes; replies, status, edits
pdfcraft-forms Interactive forms: the field model, filling with regenerated appearances, Clear form
pdfcraft-render Rendering, inspection and text extraction with reading order
pdfcraft-engine The façade every frontend uses: sessions, edits, undo, saving, the tool catalogue
pdfcraft-automation Agent control: the headless tool table, pdfcraft-cli run, and the opt-in MCP server
pdfcraft-ui-egui The desktop and web interface

Quality gates. Every change passes the same automated checks:

  • formatting, and Clippy with warnings as errors;
  • 200+ unit, property and UI tests;
  • crate-layering rules and a WebAssembly build check;
  • an asset-licence audit.

On top of those, two corpus sweeps run over real-world files:

  • Opening and rendering: of the 983 pdf.js test files, 963 open and render cleanly, with 0 crashes.
  • Open, edit and save round trips: 958 succeed.

The output is verified against independent implementations: hayro and qpdf on every CI run, and poppler over the corpus on demand (cargo xtask text-oracle).

PdfCraft is a clean-room implementation. Its behaviour comes from the ISO 32000 specification and black-box observation, never from anyone else's code. Every icon, font and image is openly licensed and listed in ATTRIBUTION.md.

Get started

Building needs Rust 1.95 or later.

git clone https://github.com/storytold/pdfcraft
cd pdfcraft
cargo xtask models                                # fetch the OCR models Scan & OCR needs (release builds include them)
cargo run --release -p pdfcraft -- some.pdf     # desktop app
cargo xtask demo-pdf                              # build the showcase PDF used in these screenshots
cargo xtask screenshots                           # regenerate every screenshot in this README

The interface language is chosen in Menu → Edit → Preferences… (Command-comma on macOS, Ctrl-comma elsewhere, also with no document open; Auto follows the system language; see docs/localization.md) and saved. Japanese covers commands, dialogs, panels and keyboard shortcuts. Command search accepts the translated label, the English label and the stable command id; filenames, PDF contents, author names, custom action names and error details from the engine or the operating system keep their own text.

Japanese fonts come from craft-fonts, an optional build input that every release includes. To build with them (Japanese interface text, and Japanese text in edited PDFs):

git clone https://github.com/storytold/craft-fonts ../craft-fonts
CRAFT_FONTS_DIR=../craft-fonts cargo run --release -p pdfcraft -- some.pdf

Each GitHub release has ready-made builds for macOS, Windows, Linux (AppImage, Flatpak, .deb, .rpm and a tarball), FreeBSD and the web; see Downloads. On Gentoo, the community ::snakebyte overlay packages the Linux release as app-text/pdfcraft-bin (not maintained by the PdfCraft team):

eselect repository add snakebyte git https://github.com/switch87/snakebyte-overlay.git
emaint sync -r snakebyte
echo 'app-text/pdfcraft-bin ~amd64' >> /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords/pdfcraft
emerge --ask app-text/pdfcraft-bin

Logs, environment variables and other development notes are in docs/development.md.

What's next

PdfCraft is young and moving fast. The aim is a workbench where you can view, organize, annotate, fill, sign and edit PDFs, for professional and everyday workflows.

Where it stands (October 2026), honestly: PdfCraft is alpha. Most essential offline PDF features exist in some form (57% of the features tracked in docs/target-app-parity.md, 94% of core essentials). For everyday work (viewing, commenting, filling and signing forms, organizing pages) readiness is about 55%; across all professional workflows, about 49%; for someone who only needs the essentials, about 66%. Every everyday workflow can be completed, but converting and sharing is weak: no office-document-to-PDF, and .docx export that loses layout.

  • Good today: viewing and search; organizing, combining and splitting; most kinds of comment; filling and authoring forms (with sandboxed JavaScript); passwords, redaction and sanitizing; basic digital signatures; printing; the Accessibility Checker; agent control through the CLI and MCP.
  • Still borrowed: pages are drawn by the hayro crate while our own renderer is built.
  • Thin or missing: reliable editing of existing text (especially CJK and right-to-left), OCR beyond Latin script, office document import/export, signature tokens and online long-term validation, Preflight and PDF/X/UA, printing from the web build, physical printer fidelity, and full XFA forms.
  • Hardening: fuzzing still turns up crashes and hangs on hostile files; each one is fixed with a regression test. Quality has not yet been benchmarked side by side.

Next, in order: office-document-to-PDF and a .docx export that keeps layout, the reported bugs and the Chinese interface font, a fidelity harness against a reference renderer, editing existing content, then professional workflows (OCR, office formats, Preflight, signatures, accessibility tagging) and 1.0 polish.

The summary is in ROADMAP.md; the full assessment by dimension and area is in docs/target-app-parity.md, the ranked gaps in docs/gaps.md, and the milestones in docs/roadmap.md.


Downloads

New to PdfCraft? Download it from the PdfCraft page on getartcraft.com. That's the easiest way to install it.

Want a specific build or format? On GitHub, the latest release has every build listed below, and all releases has earlier versions and their notes. <ver> in the file names is the version number, and SHA256SUMS.txt lists a checksum for every file.

Windows

Build Installer Portable
x64 (64-bit Intel/AMD) pdfcraft-<ver>-windows-x64.msi pdfcraft-<ver>-windows-x64-portable.zip
arm64 (Snapdragon and other ARM PCs) pdfcraft-<ver>-windows-arm64.msi pdfcraft-<ver>-windows-arm64-portable.zip
x86 (32-bit) pdfcraft-<ver>-windows-x86.msi pdfcraft-<ver>-windows-x86-portable.zip

Installers and executables are code-signed.

The portable zip runs from any folder, a USB stick included. Its portable.txt keeps the settings, logs and crash recovery in a PdfCraftData folder next to pdfcraft.exe, so nothing is written to %APPDATA%; delete that file to use the normal per-user folders.

The MSI installs for your account only by default, without administrator privileges. Choose "Everyone on this computer" on its first page, or pass ALLUSERS=1 from an elevated terminal, to install for all users. It adds "Edit with PdfCraft" to the right-click menu of PDF files and "Create PDF with PdfCraft…" to the right-click menu of images (.png .jpg .jpeg .tif .tiff .gif .bmp .jp2 .j2k .jpx) in File Explorer (on Windows 11, under "Show more options"), without changing which app opens them by default. For unattended deployment without a desktop shortcut (add ALLUSERS=1, from an elevated terminal, for an all-users install):

msiexec /i "pdfcraft-<ver>-windows-x64.msi" /qn /norestart INSTALLDESKTOPSHORTCUT=0
Property =0 leaves out
INSTALLDESKTOPSHORTCUT the desktop shortcut
INSTALLPDFCONTEXTMENU "Edit with PdfCraft" on PDF files
INSTALLIMAGECONTEXTMENU "Create PDF with PdfCraft…" on images

All three are on for a first install. An upgrade keeps what the installed version has: a shortcut or menu entry that is there stays, and one that is missing (left out at install, or a desktop shortcut someone deleted) stays missing, so you don't need to pass them again. A value on the command line always wins: =1 puts one back and =0 removes it. Upgrading from a release that didn't have a menu yet (0.6.0 and earlier for the PDF menu, 0.2.1 and earlier for the image menu) adds it, as a first install would. Use the MSI for your architecture. Per-user installation overrides are not supported.

Pin the checksum, not just the version. Release candidates of a version share its MSI version (MSI versions are numbers only, so 1.2.3-rc.1 and 1.2.3 are both 1.2.3), and the installer lets an MSI of the same version replace the installed one without asking. Two different 0.7.1 MSIs can't be told apart by version, so if your deployment tool checks the file, pin its SHA-256 from SHA256SUMS.txt (Get-FileHash <file> -Algorithm SHA256).

Signing identities. The Windows MSIs and both executables are signed through Azure Trusted Signing with a certificate issued to Learning Machines Inc (Atlanta, Georgia, US). The macOS app and command-line tool are signed with the Developer ID Learning Machines LLC (DJ6XS33FX8) and notarized. The MSI's manufacturer, shown as the publisher in Installed apps, is Learning Machines LLC.

macOS

Build File Notes
App, universal (Apple silicon + Intel) pdfcraft-<ver>-macos-universal.dmg Signed and notarized
Command-line tool, universal pdfcraft-cli-<ver>-macos-universal.zip Signed and notarized

Linux

Format x86_64 aarch64 (ARM64) Notes
AppImage pdfcraft-<ver>-linux-x86_64.AppImage pdfcraft-<ver>-linux-aarch64.AppImage Runs anywhere; updates itself with AppImageUpdate (.zsync files)
Flatpak pdfcraft-<ver>-linux-x86_64.flatpak pdfcraft-<ver>-linux-aarch64.flatpak Sandboxed; flatpak install --user <file>
Debian/Ubuntu pdfcraft-<ver>-linux-x86_64.deb pdfcraft-<ver>-linux-aarch64.deb
Fedora/RHEL/openSUSE pdfcraft-<ver>-linux-x86_64.rpm pdfcraft-<ver>-linux-aarch64.rpm
Tarball pdfcraft-<ver>-linux-x86_64.tar.gz pdfcraft-<ver>-linux-aarch64.tar.gz Unpack anywhere
Command-line tool pdfcraft-cli-<ver>-linux-x86_64.tar.gz pdfcraft-cli-<ver>-linux-aarch64.tar.gz pdfcraft-cli alone (and its opt-in MCP server), for servers, CI and agents

RISC-V (riscv64) builds come as tarballs only: pdfcraft-<ver>-linux-riscv64.tar.gz and pdfcraft-cli-<ver>-linux-riscv64.tar.gz. They are cross-compiled and need glibc 2.39 or newer (Ubuntu 24.04+, Debian 13+).

Every other Linux build needs glibc 2.35 or newer (Ubuntu 22.04+, Debian 12+, Fedora 36+, RHEL 10).

FreeBSD

Build File
x86_64 pdfcraft-<ver>-freebsd-x86_64.tar.gz

Web (WebAssembly)

Build File Notes
Static site pdfcraft-web-<ver>.zip Runs in a modern browser; host it on any static server

The Crafting Apps

PdfCraft is one of the Crafting Apps: free, open-source creative tools from the ArtCraft team, each written from scratch in Rust and each able to stand on its own.

App What it's for Code Learn more
PhotoCraft Image editing: layers, masks, type and real PSD files GitHub Website
VectorCraft Vector illustration GitHub Website
FilmCraft Video editing, color and sound GitHub Website
LightCraft Photo library and raw development GitHub Website
PdfCraft Reading, organizing and protecting PDFs GitHub Website
EffectCraft Motion graphics and visual effects GitHub Website
DesignCraft Page layout and publishing GitHub Website
FigCraft Interface design and prototyping GitHub Website
WordCraft Word processing and documents GitHub Website
SoundCraft Audio recording and editing GitHub Website
DeckCraft Presentations and slide decks GitHub Website
CADCraft Computer-aided design GitHub Website
GridCraft Spreadsheets and data GitHub Website
TextureCraft 3D texture painting GitHub Website
Craft Anything See how any software works, then build your own GitHub Website
SolidCraft Parametric 3D CAD by Tangency Labs (community app) GitHub

And ArtCraft itself, our AI image and video studio for artists who want real control.


Join the ArtCraft community on Discord

Come make things with us

Our Discord is where artists of every kind hang out: people who paint, shoot, draw, cut film, set type, and people still figuring out what they like to make. Share what you're working on, ask for help, tell us what's broken, or tell us what you wish these tools could do. Whatever your medium and however long you've been at it, you're welcome here.

discord.gg/artcraft · getartcraft.com · The Crafting Apps · PdfCraft


License and credits

PdfCraft is dual-licensed under MIT or Apache-2.0, at your option. Copyright (c) 2026 ArtCraft Team and the PdfCraft contributors. Required notices are in NOTICE.

Bundled fonts, icons, images and other assets keep their own open licenses; each one is listed with its author, source and license in ATTRIBUTION.md. Release builds also embed the Japanese fonts of craft-fonts (SIL Open Font License 1.1).

The ArtCraft name, wordmark and logos in docs/brand/ are trademarks of the ArtCraft Team and are not covered by this license. They may be used only unmodified, and only as part of this repository and PdfCraft, under docs/brand/LICENSE-brand.txt. Forks and modified versions must remove them.

ArtCraft
Made by the ArtCraft team and community.

The Tools panel sits on the left, or on the right with Preferences ▸ Tools panel side. The rail stays at the right edge and opens one side panel beside it. Drag a panel's inner edge to resize it; widths are remembered. F4 shows or hides the side panel and Shift+F4 the Tools panel (also in the View menu); View ▸ Reset side panels restores the default arrangement.