HexaPDF Code and First Version Released

After two years in the making HexaPDF is brought into daylight

As of today the HexaPDF source code is available on Github and the first version has been released.

HexaPDF is a pure Ruby library with an accompanying application for working with PDF files. In short, it allows

  • creating new PDF files,
  • manipulating existing PDF files,
  • merging multiple PDF files into one,
  • extracting meta information, text, images and files from PDF files,
  • securing PDF files by encrypting them and
  • optimizing PDF files for smaller file size or other criteria.

HexaPDF was designed with ease of use and performance in mind. It uses lazy loading and lazy computing when possible and tries to produce small PDF files by default.

The initial version provides the basic functionalities for reading and writing PDFs as well as low-level support for creating PDFs. You can find some code examples on how to use the library on the HexaPDF website.

The command line application currently provides commands for

  • getting general information about a PDF file,
  • extracting files from a PDF file,
  • modifying a PDF file (file size optimization, decryption, encryption, page selection and page rotation),
  • and for inspecting the internal objects and streams of a PDF file.

In the future the application will provide the full range of standard PDF operations. This means, for example, that commands for merging and splitting will be added.