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