An invoice laid on a letterhead template
An invoice laid over a letterhead supplied as a PDF file.
An archivable PDF/A-3 form
A form and an archival file pull in opposite directions. A form leaves its fields for reading software to draw; an archival file forbids exactly that, because a document that must still be readable decades from now cannot depend on software nobody has written yet. Any bank, insurer or public body that has to keep filled-in forms meets that contradiction on the first day.
Each field carries its own drawing — the typed value drawn letter by letter, a tick or a dot drawn line by line — so the file shows the same thing in all reading software, out of the fonts it already carries with it. Every field has a frame around it so it is plain where to click, and the page says so; the frames stay optional, and the same form is valid without them.
What this example shows
- Fields already drawn into the file, instead of left to reading software.
- Ticks and dots drawn line by line rather than with characters.
- A form that passes archival validation as PDF/A-3.
The source code, complete
Nothing is left out and nothing is simplified: this is the program exactly as it runs, for the developer who uses this library. The third is the description itself: a plain list of what the page has to say, which is what the service is sent.
Read the Rust source Read the Python source Read the JSON source
The document itself
Optimised, this document weighs 22.8 kB — at least 80 % lighter than most PDF generators would write it
The document is lighter than it was, and every page still looks exactly the same. See this document's row in the table of every example.
Examples near this one
An agreement received and added to without a byte moved
A maintenance agreement somebody else sent, with a signature area, a date and a line of one's own laid over its last page and an annex added after it, every byte of the agreement left where it was.
An agreement built on three supplied templates
A supply agreement standing on three templates the customer sent: a headed page under the front page, a plain page under every page the schedule runs to, and a page of conditions that goes in whole.
The watermark a trial copy carries
What you get before you pay anything: a watermark across every page, and the same pages under it, laid out exactly as a paid copy lays them out. This is also the document that says what a licence key changes, and why every figure on this site is measured with one.
An interactive form
A form a reader fills in: text boxes, a check box, a drop-down, radio buttons.
A document signed with a demonstration certificate
A page carrying a digital signature that any change to the file breaks, made with a certificate that exists only for the demonstration. Every command that made the key and the signature is printed on the page, with the one that checks it without this library.