What is a PDF?

PDF stands for the Portable Document Format, used to display documents in an electronic form
independent of the software, hardware or operating system they are viewed on. Originally
developed by Adobe® Systems as a universally compatible file format based on the PostScript
format, it has become an international de-facto standard for exchanging documents and
information.

In 2008, Adobe relinquished control of PDF development to the ISO (International Organization
for Standardization) and by this PDF became an “open standard”. The specifications for the
current PDF version (2.0) are documented under ISO 32000-2. ISO is also in charge of updating
and developing future versions.

PDF File Format - What is a PDF file?

Portable Document Format (PDF) is a type of document created by Adobe back in 1990s. The
purpose of this file format was to introduce a standard for representation of documents and other
reference material in a format that is independent of application software, hardware as well as
Operating System. The PDF file format has full capability to contain information like text,
images, hyperlinks, form-fields, rich media, digital signatures, attachments, metadata, Geospatial
features and 3D objects in it that can become as part of source document.

In most of the cases, existing documents are converted to PDF rather than creating a new PDF
from scratch. But that doesn’t mean there are no software for creation or manipulation of PDF
files.

(Have to share something about PDF file format? You can post your findings in PDF File
Format News section.)

PDF File Format - Brief History

A quick go-through the timeline about the PDF file formation in terms of timeline is as follow:

1993 - Adobe Systems made the PDF specifications available free of charge

2008 - PDF was released as an open standard on July 1, 2008 and was published by the
International Organization for Standardization as ISO 32000-1:2008.

2008 - Adobe published a Public Patent License to ISO 32000-1 format royalty-free rights for all
patents owned by Adobe that are necessary to make, use, sell and distribute PDF compliant
implementations.

The first version of PDF designated as PDF 1.0 which later went through revisions up to PDF
1.7. PDF 1.7, which became the ISO 32000-1, include some non-standardized proprietary
technologies as well like Adobe XML Forms Architecture (XFA) and JavaScript extension for
Acrobat. It was on July 28, 2017 when PDF 2.0, known as ISO 32000-2:2017 was published
which doesn’t include any non-standardized technologies.

PDF File Format Specifications

A PDF file is a set of bytes that can be grouped in to tokens according to syntax rules defined by
PDF specifications. Once or more tokens are combined to form higher-level syntactic entities,
principally objects, which are the basic data values from which a PDF document is constructed.

File Structure of PDF Files

PDF file contents are arranged in the following sequence inside the file.

|Header |Body |Cross-Reference Table |Trailer

PDF File Header

Irrespective of the PDF version, a PDF file starts with a header containing unique identifier for
PDF and the version of the format such as %PDF-1.x where x ranges from 1-7.

File Body

The body of a PDF file consists of a sequence of indirect objects representing the contents of a
document. The objects, as described above, represent components of the document such as fonts,
pages and sampled images. Beginning with PDF 1.5, the body can also contain object streams,
each of which contains a sequence of indirect objects.

Cross-Reference Table

The cross-reference table contains information that permits random access to indirect objects
within the file so that the entire file need not be read to locate any particular object. The table
shall contain a one-line entry for each indirect object, specifying the byte offset of that object
within the body of the file. (Beginning with PDF 1.5, some or all of the cross-reference
information may alternatively be contained in cross-reference streams.

File Trailer

The trailer of a PDF file enables a conforming reader to quickly find the cross-reference table
and certain special objects. Conforming readers should read a PDF file from its end. The last line
of the file shall contain only the end-of-file marker, %%EOF. The two preceding lines shall
contain, one per line and in order, the keyword startxref and the byte offset in the decoded stream
from the beginning of the file to the beginning of the xref keyword in the last cross-reference
section.
PDF Objects

A PDF file includes several different type of objects that are of following types

 Boolean values - representing conditional true or false

 Numbers - Integer and Real values
 Strings - contains characters within parentheses
 Names - start with a forward / character e.g. /ASomewhatLongerName results in
ASomewhatLongerName
 Arrays - PDF supports one dimensional arrays. Arrays of higher dimensions can be constructed
by using arrays as nested elements
 Dictionaries - collection of objects as key-value pairs. It can have zero entries.
 Streams - represents sequence of bytes which can be of unlimited length as well
 Null Object - represents a null value

There can be other other objects like comments which are introduced with the % sign and may
contain 8-bit characters.

Indirect Objects

Any object in a PDF file may be labelled as an indirect object. Indirect objects are given unique
object identifier by which other objects can refer to it. Cross-referencing to these are maintained
in an index table and marked with the xref keyword which follows the main body and gives the
byte offset of each indirect object from the start of file.

Linear and Non-Linear PDF Layouts

PDF layouts are categorized as Llnear and non-linear depending upon the target applications and
other factors.

Non-Linear - Non-linear PDF files use less disk space as compared to linear PDF files. PDF
pages of the document reside in scattered form across the PDF file and that is why non-linear
files are slower as compared to linear files.

Linear PDF - Targeting online PDF viewers, Linear PDF files are constructed in such a way that
they are written to disk in a linear fashion. This doesn’t required browser plugins for whole
document to load first before display.

Objects Overview

As mentioned, PDF body is a collection of objects mentioned above. PDF is largely based on
PostScript without the control features of programming languages like if and loop commands.
Commands issued by Postscript code to generate graphical contents are collected and tokenized
in addition to any files, graphics or fonts referred by the document. All these contents are
accumulated to a single file, resulting in composed PostScript output.
Text

Text in PDF is represented by text elements which are actually displayed with glyphs from fonts.
A glyph is a graphical shape and is subject to all graphical manipulations, such as coordinate
transformation. Because of the importance of text in most page descriptions, PDF provides
higher-level facilities to describe, select, and render glyphs conveniently and efficiently.

Graphics

The graphics operators used in PDF content streams describe the appearance of pages that are to
be reproduced on a raster output device. The facilities are intended for both printer and display
applications. The graphics operators form six main groups:

 Graphics state operators manipulate the data structure called the graphics state, the global
framework within which the other graphics operators execute. The graphics state includes the
current transformation matrix (CTM), which maps user space coordinates used within a PDF
content stream into output device coordinates. It also includes the current colour, the current
clipping path, and many other parameters that are implicit operands of the painting operators.
 Path construction operators specify paths, which define shapes, line trajectories, and regions of
various sorts. They include operators for beginning a new path, adding line segments and curves
to it, and closing it.
 Path-painting operators fill a path with a colour, paint a stroke along it, or use it as a clipping
boundary.
 Other painting operators paint certain self-describing graphics objects. These include sampled
images, geometrically defined shadings, and entire content streams that in turn contain
sequences of graphics operators.
 Text operators select and show character glyphs from fonts (descriptions of typefaces for
representing text characters). Because PDF treats glyphs as general graphical shapes, many of
the text operators could be grouped with the graphics state or painting operators. However, the
data structures and mechanisms for dealing with glyph and font descriptions are sufficiently
specialized.
 Marked-content operators associate higher-level logical information with objects in the content
stream. This information does not affect the rendered appearance of the content; it is useful to
applications that use PDF for document interchange.