qpdf/TODO

4.1.0
=====

 * The mingw64 package is broken.  It contains a 32-bit version of
   libstdc++-6.dll.  Fix this and make sure it can never happen
   again.  Ideally we should test in a sandbox, but failing that, at
   least run file on all the dlls to make sure they are of the right
   type.

 * Add to documentation, and mention this documentation in
   README.maintainer:

   Casting policy.

   The C++ code in qpdf is free of old-style casts except where
   unavoidable (e.g. where the old-style cast is in a macro provided
   by a third-party header file).  When there is a need for a cast, it
   is handled, in order of preference by rewriting the code to avoid
   the need for a cast, calling const_cast, calling static_cast,
   calling reinterpret_cast, or calling some combination of the above.
   The casting policy explicitly prohibits casting between sizes for
   no purpose other than to quiet a compiler warning when there is no
   reasonable chance of a problem resulting.  The reason for this
   exclusion is that it takes away enabling additional compiler
   warnings as a tool for making future improvements to this aspect of
   the code and also damages the readability of the code.  As a last
   resort, a compiler-specific pragma may be used to suppress a
   warning that we don't want to fix.  Examples may include
   suppressing warnings about the use of old-style casts in code that
   is shared between C and C++ code.

   There are a few significant areas where casting is common in the qpdf
   sources or where casting would be required to quiet higher levels
   of compiler warnings but is omitted at present:

    * signed vs. unsigned char.  For historical reasons, there are a
      lot of places in qpdf's internals that deal with unsigned char,
      which means that a lot of casting is required to interoperate
      with standard library calls and std::string.  In retrospect,
      qpdf should have probably used signed char everywhere and just
      cast to unsigned char when needed.  There are reinterpret_cast
      calls to go between char* and unsigned char*, and there are
      static_cast calls to go between char and unsigned char.  These
      should always be safe.

    * non-const unsigned char* used in Pipeline interface.  The
      pipeline interface has a write() call that uses unsigned char*
      without a const qualifier.  The main reason for this is to
      support pipelines that make calls to third-party libraries, such
      as zlib, that don't include const in their interfaces.
      Unfortunately, there are many places in the code where it is
      desirable to have const char* with pipelines.  None of the
      pipeline implementations in qpdf currently modify the data
      passed to write, and doing so would be counter to the intent of
      Pipeline.  There are places in the code where const_cast is used
      to remove the const-ness of pointers going into Pipelines.  This
      could be potentially unsafe, but there is adequate testing to
      assert that it is safe in qpdf's code.

    * size_t vs. qpdf_offset_t.  This is pretty much unavoidable since
      offsets are signed types and sizes are unsigned types.  Whenever
      it is necessary to seek by an amount given by a size_t, it
      becomes necessary to mix and match between size_t and
      qpdf_offset_t.  Additionally, qpdf sometimes treats memory
      buffers like files, and those seek interfaces have to be
      consistent with file-based input sources.  Neither gcc nor MSVC
      give warnings for this case by default, but both have warning
      flags that can enable this.  (MSVC: /W14267 or /W3 (which also
      enables some additional warnings that we ignore); gcc:
      -Wconversion -Wsign-conversion).  This could matter for files
      whose sizes are larger than 2^63 bytes, but it is reasonable to
      expect that a world where such files are common would also have
      larger size_t and qpdf_offset_t types in it.  I am not aware of
      any cases where 32-bit systems that have size_t smaller than
      qpdf_offset_t could run into problems, though I can't
      conclusively rule out the possibility.  In the event that
      someone should produce a file that qpdf can't handle because of
      what is suspected to be issues involving the handling of size_t
      vs. qpdf_offset_t (such files may behave properly on 64-bit
      systems but not on 32-bit systems and may have very large
      embedded files or streams, for example), the above mentioned
      warning flags could be enabled and all those implicit
      conversions could be carefully scrutinized.  (I have already
      gone through that exercise once in adding support for files >
      4GB in size.)  I continue to be commited to supporting large
      files on 32-bit systems, but I would not go to any lengths to
      support corner cases involving large embedded files or large
      streams that work on 64-bit systems but not on 32-bit systems
      because of size_t being too small.  It is reasonable to assume
      that anyone working with such files would be using a 64-bit
      system anyway.

    * size_t vs. int.  There are some cases where size_t and int or
      size_t and unsigned int are used interchangeably.  These cases
      occur when working with very small amounts of memory, such as
      with the bit readers (where we're working with just a few bytes
      at a time), some cases of strlen, and a few other cases.  I have
      scrutinized all of these cases and determined them to be safe,
      but there is no mechanism in the code to ensure that new unsafe
      conversions between int and size_t aren't introduced short of
      good testing and strong awareness of the issues.  Again, if any
      such bugs are suspected in the future, enable the additional
      warning flags and scrutinizing the warnings would be in order.

 * New public interfaces have been added.


General
=======

 * Consider providing a Windows installer for qpdf using NSIS.

 * Improve the random number seed to make it more secure so that we
   have stronger random numbers, particularly when multiple files are
   generated in the same second.  This code may need to be
   OS-specific.  Probably we should add a method in QUtil to seed with
   a strong random number and call this automatically the first time
   QUtil::random() is called.

 * Consider the possibility of doing something locale-aware to support
   non-ASCII passwords.  Update documentation if this is done.

 * Consider impact of article threads on page splitting/merging.
   Subramanyam provided a test file; see ../misc/article-threads.pdf.
   Email Q-Count: 431864 from 2009-11-03.  Other things to consider:
   outlines, page labels, thumbnails, zones.  There are probably
   others.

 * See if we can avoid preserving unreferenced objects in object
   streams even when preserving the object streams.

 * For debugging linearization bugs, consider adding an option to save
   pass 1 of linearization.  This code is sufficient.  Change the
   interface to allow specification of a pass1 file, which would
   change the behavior as in this patch.

------------------------------
Index: QPDFWriter.cc
===================================================================
--- QPDFWriter.cc	(revision 932)
+++ QPDFWriter.cc	(working copy)
@@ -1965,11 +1965,15 @@
 
     // Write file in two passes.  Part numbers refer to PDF spec 1.4.
 
+    FILE* XXX = 0;
     for (int pass = 1; pass <= 2; ++pass)
     {
 	if (pass == 1)
 	{
-	    pushDiscardFilter();
+//	    pushDiscardFilter();
+	    XXX = QUtil::safe_fopen("/tmp/pass1.pdf", "w");
+	    pushPipeline(new Pl_StdioFile("pass1", XXX));
+	    activatePipelineStack();
 	}
 
 	// Part 1: header
@@ -2204,6 +2208,8 @@
 
 	    // Restore hint offset
 	    this->xref[hint_id] = QPDFXRefEntry(1, hint_offset, 0);
+	    fclose(XXX);
+	    XXX = 0;
 	}
     }
 }
------------------------------

 * Provide APIs for embedded files.  See *attachments*.pdf in test
   suite.  The private method findAttachmentStreams finds at least
   cases for modern versions of Adobe Reader (>= 1.7, maybe earlier).
   PDF Reference 1.7 section 3.10, "File Specifications", discusses
   this.

   A sourceforge user asks if qpdf can handle extracting and embedded
   resources and references these tools, which may be useful as a
   reference.

   http://multivalent.sourceforge.net/Tools/pdf/Extract.html
   http://multivalent.sourceforge.net/Tools/pdf/Embed.html

 * The description of Crypt filters is unclear with respect to how to
   use them to override /StmF for specific streams.  I'm not sure
   whether qpdf will do the right thing for any specific individual
   streams that might have crypt filters, but I believe it does based
   on my testing of a limited subset.  The specification seems to imply
   that only embedded file streams and metadata streams can have crypt
   filters, and there are already special cases in the code to handle
   those.  Most likely, it won't be a problem, but someday someone may
   find a file that qpdf doesn't work on because of crypt filters.
   There is an example in the spec of using a crypt filter on a
   metadata stream.

   For now, we notice /Crypt filters and decode parameters consistent
   with the example in the PDF specification, and the right thing
   happens for metadata filters that happen to be uncompressed or
   otherwise compressed in a way we can filter.  This should handle
   all normal cases, but it's more or less just a guess since I don't
   have any test files that actually use stream-specific crypt filters
   in them.

 * The second xref stream for linearized files has to be padded only
   because we need file_size as computed in pass 1 to be accurate.  If
   we were not allowing writing to a pipe, we could seek back to the
   beginning and fill in the value of /L in the linearization
   dictionary as an optimization to alleviate the need for this
   padding.  Doing so would require us to pad the /L value
   individually and also to save the file descriptor and determine
   whether it's seekable.  This is probably not worth bothering with.

 * The whole xref handling code in the QPDF object allows the same
   object with more than one generation to coexist, but a lot of logic
   assumes this isn't the case.  Anything that creates mappings only
   with the object number and not the generation is this way,
   including most of the interaction between QPDFWriter and QPDF.  If
   we wanted to allow the same object with more than one generation to
   coexist, which I'm not sure is allowed, we could fix this by
   changing xref_table.  Alternatively, we could detect and disallow
   that case.  In fact, it appears that Adobe reader and other PDF
   viewing software silently ignores objects of this type, so this is
   probably not a big deal.

 * Pl_PNGFilter is only partially implemented.  If we ever decoded
   images, we'd have to finish implementing it along with the other
   filter decode parameters and types.  For just handling xref
   streams, there's really no need as it wouldn't make sense to use
   any kind of predictor other than 12 (PNG UP filter).

 * If we ever want to have check mode check the integrity of the free
   list, this can be done by looking at the code from prior to the
   object stream support of 4/5/2008.  It's in an if (0) block and
   there's a comment about it.  There's also something about it in
   qpdf.test -- search for "free table".  On the other hand, the value
   of doing this seems very low since no viewer seems to care, so it's
   probably not worth it.

 * QPDFObjectHandle::getPageImages() doesn't notice images in
   inherited resource dictionaries.  See comments in that function.

 * Based on an idea suggested by user "Atom Smasher", consider
   providing some mechanism to recover earlier versions of a file
   embedded prior to appended sections.

 * From a suggestion in bug 3152169, consider having an option to
   re-encode inline images with an ASCII encoding.

 * From github issue 2, provide more in-depth output for examining
   hint stream contents.