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Pages

This document describes a project known as the pages epic. The goal of the pages epic is to enable qpdf to properly preserve all functionality associated with a page as pages are copied from one PDF to another (or back to the same PDF). A secondary goal is to add more flexibility to the ways in which documents can be split and combined (flexible assembly).

This is a work in progress. As implementation proceeds, details will become more solid. Comments are encouraged. Please make comments in the QPDF pages epic discussion. As ideas are refined, they will be updated in this document.

Tasks

This a breakdown of work. It is near the top of the file for easy access but doesn't make sense without reading the rest of the file.

Create QPDFAssembler and incrementally move functionality from QPDFJob into it.
Create QPDFSplitter to use QPDFAssembler. Write a section in the manual describing how they work, but leave the detailed API documentation in the header files. Model after how QPDFJob is documented.
Break down remaining work, to include coming up with a mechanism for tracking destinations and creating helper classes for other document-level operations, then incrementally adding support for each idea. Keep the manual updated as we go.

Design and Background

Terminology:

Page-level data: information that is contained within objects reachable from the page dictionary without traversing through any /Parent pointers
Document-level data: information that is reachable from the document catalog (/Root) that is not reachable from a page dictionary as well as the /Info dictionary

PDF uses document-level data in a variety of ways. There is some document-level data that has each of the following properties, among others:

References pages by object ID (outlines, interactive forms)
Doesn't reference any pages (embedded files)
Doesn't reference any pages but influences page rendering (optional content/layers)
Doesn't reference any pages but contains information about pages (page labels)
Contains information used by pages (named destinations)

As long as qpdf has had the ability to copy pages from one PDF to another, it has had robust handling of page-level data. When qpdf creates a new PDF file from existing PDF files, it starts with a specific PDF, known as the primary input. The primary input may be a file or the built-in empty PDF. Prior to the implementation of the pages epic, qpdf has ignored document-level data (except for page labels and interactive form fields) when merging and splitting files. Any document-level data in the primary input was preserved, and any document-level data other than form fields and page labels was discarded from the other files. After this work is complete, qpdf will handle other document-level data in a manner that preserves the functionality of all pages in the final PDF. Here are several examples of problems in qpdf prior to the implementation of the pages epic:

If two files with optional content (layers) are merged, all layers in all but the primary input will be visible in the combined file.
If two files with file attachments are merged, attachments will be retained on the primary input but dropped on the others. (qpdf has other ways to copy attachments from one file to another.)
If two files with hyperlinks are merged, any hyperlink from other than primary input become non-functional.
If two files with outlines are merged, the outlines from the original file will appear in their entirety, including outlines that point to pages that are no longer there, and outlines will be lost from all files except the primary input.

Regarding page assembly, prior to the pages epic, qpdf allows combining pages from arbitrary numbers of input PDFs to create an output PDF, or in the case of page splitting, multiple output PDFs. The API allows arbitrary combinations of input and output files. The command-line allows only the following:

Merge: creation of a single output file from a primary input and any number of other inputs by selecting pages by index from the beginning or end of the file
Split: creation of multiple output files from a single input or the result of a merge into files whose primary input is the empty PDF and that contain a fixed number of pages per group
Overlay/underlay: layering pages on top of each other with a maximum of one underlay and one overlay and with no ability to specify transformation of the pages (such as scaling, placing them in a particular spot).

The pages epic consists of two broad categories of work:

Proper handling of document-level features when splitting and merging documents
Flexible assembly: greatly increased flexibility in the ways in which pages can be selected from the various input files and combined for the output file. This includes creation of blank pages and composition of pages (n-up or other ways of combining multiple input pages into one output page)

Here are some examples of things that will become possible:

Stacking arbitrary pages on top of each other with full control over transformation and cropping, including being able to access information about the various bounding boxes associated with the pages (generalization of underlay/overlay)
Inserting blank pages
Doing n-up page layouts
Creating single very long or wide pages with output from other pages
Re-ordering pages for printing booklets (also called signatures or printer spreads)
Selecting pages based on the outline hierarchy, tags, or article threads
Keeping only and all relevant parts of the outline hierarchies from all input files

The rest of this document describes the details of what how these features will work and what needs to be done to make them possible to build.

Architecture

Create a QPDFAssembler class to handle merging and a QPDFSplitter to handle splitting. The complex assembly logic can be handled by QPDFAssembler. QPDFSplitter can invoke QPDFAssembler with a previous QPDFAssembler's output (or any QPDF) multiple times to create the split files. This will mostly involve moving code from QPDFJob to QPDFAssembler and QPDFSplitter and having QPDFJob invoke them.

Prior to implementation of the pages epic, QPDFJob goes through the following stages:

create QPDF
- update from JSON
- page specs (--pages)
  - Create a QPDF for each input source
  - Figure out whether to keep files open
  - Remove unreferenced resources if needed
  - Remove pages from the pages tree
  - Handle collation
  - Copy or revive all final pages
    - When copying foreign pages, possibly remove unreferenced resources
    - Handle the same page copied more than once by cloning the page dictionary while sharing any indirect references
    - Preserve form fields and page labels
  - Delete pages from the primary input that were not used in the output
  - Delete unreferenced form fields
- rotation
- underlay/overlay
- transformations
  - disable signatures
  - externalize images
  - optimize images
  - generate appearances
  - flatten annotations
  - coalesce contents
  - flatten rotation
  - remove page labels
  - remove attachments
  - add attachments
  - copy attachments
write QPDF
- One of:
  - Do inspections
  - Write single file
  - Split pages
    - Remove unreference resources if needed
    - Preserve form fields and page labels

Broadly, the above has to be modified in the following ways:

The transformations step has to be pulled out as that will stay in QPDFJob.
Most of write QPDF will stay in QPDFJob, but the split logic will move to QPDFSplitter.
The entire create QPDF logic will move into QPDFAssembler.
QPDFAssembler's API will allow using an arbitrary QPDF as an input rather than having to start with a file. That makes it possible to do arbitrary work on the PDF prior to passing it to QPDFAssembler. The API contract will state that, if an existing QPDF is used as the primary input, the same QPDF will be returned. Effectively, QPDFAssembler will modify the QPDF in place.
QPDFAssembler and QPDFSplitter may need a C API, or perhaps C users will have to work through QPDFJob, which will expose nearly all of the functionality.

Within QPDFAssembler, we will extend the create QPDF logic in the following ways:

Allow creation of blank pages as an additional input source
Generalize underlay/overlay
- Enable controlling placement
- Make repeatable (done)
Add additional reordering options
- We don't need to provide hooks for this. If someone is going to code a hook, they can just compute the page ordering directly.
Have a page composition stage after the overlay/underlay stage
- Allow n-up, left-to-right (can reverse page order to get rtl), top-to-bottom, or modular composition like pstops
Add additional ways to select pages besides range (e.g. based on outlines)
Enhance existing logic to handle other document-level structures, preferably in a way that requires less duplication between split and merge.
- We don't need to turn on and off most types of document constructs individually. People can preprocess using the API or qpdf JSON if they want fine-grained control.
- For things like attachments and outlines, we can add additional flags.

Within QPDFSplitter, we will add additional ways to specify boundaries for splitting.

We must take care with the implementations and APIs for QPDFSplitter, QPDFAssembler, and QPDFJob to avoid excessive duplication. Perhaps QPDFJob can create and configure a QPDFAssembler and QPDFSplitter on the fly to avoid too much duplication of state.

Much of the logic will actually reside in other helper classes. For example, QPDFAssembler will probably not operate with numeric ranges, leaving that to QPDFJob and QUtil but will instead have vectors of page numbers. The logic for creating page groups from outlines, threads, or structure will most likely live in the document helpers for those bits of functionality. This keeps needless clutter out of QPDFAssembler and also makes it possible for people to perform their own subset of functionality by calling lower-level interfaces. The main power of QPDFAssembler will be to manage sequencing and destination tracking as well as to provide a future-proof API that will allow developers to automatically benefit from additional document-level support as it is added to qpdf.

Other notes:

Per jbarlow, raw pointers are hard to work with in pybind11. Use references or shared pointers instead for fluent interfaces.

Flexible Assembly

This section discusses modifications to the command-line syntax to make it easier to add flexibility going forward without breaking backward compatibility. In qpdf 11.9.0, we added non-positional options to --pages, --overlay, --underlay and modified configuration to make it easier to add new options.

In several cases, we allow specification of transformations or placements. In this context:

The origin is always lower-left corner.
A dimension may be absolute or relative.
- An absolute dimension is {n} (in points), {n}in (inches), {n}cm (centimeters),
- A relative dimension is expressed in terms of the corresponding dimension of one of a page's boxes. Which dimension is determined by context.
  - {n}{M|C|B|T|A} is {n} times the corresponding dimension of the media, crop, bleed, trim, or art box. Example: 0.5M would be half the width or height of the media box.
  - {n}+{M|C|B|T|A} is {n} plus the corresponding dimension. Example: -0.5in+T is half an inch (36 points) less than the width or height of the trim box.
A size is
- {w}x{h}, where {w} and {h} are dimensions
- letter|a4 (potentially add other page sizes)
A position is {x}x{y} where {x} and {y} are dimensions offset from the origin
A rectangle is {llx},{lly},{urx},{ury} (lower|upper left|right x|y) with llx < urx and lly < ury
- Examples:
  - 0.1M,0.1M,0.9M,0.9M is a box whose llx is 10% of the media box width, lly is 10% of the height, urx is 90% of the width, and ury is 90% of the height
  - 0,0,612,792 is a box whose size is that of a US Letter page.
- A rectangle may also be just one of M|C|B|T|A to refer to a page's media, crop, bleed, trim, or art box.

It's tempting to allow assemblies to be nested, but this gets very complicated. From the C++ API, there is no problem using the output of one QPDFAssembler as the input to another, but supporting this from the CLI is hard because of the way JSON/arg parsing is set up. If people need to do that, they can just create intermediate files.

Proposed CLI enhancements:

# --pages: inputs
--file=x [ --password=x ]
--blank=n  [ --size={size} [ --size-from-page=n ] ]  # see below
# modifiers refer to most recent input
--range=...
--with-attachments={none|all|referenced}  # default = referenced
--with-outlines={none|all|referenced}  # default = referenced
--...  # future options to select pages based on outlines, article threads, tags, etc.
# placement (matrix transformation -- see notes below)
--rotate=[+-]angle[:page-range]  # existing
--scale=x,y[:page-range]
--translate=dx,dy[:page-range]  # dx and dy are dimensions
--flip={h|v}[:page-range]
--transform=a,b,c,d,e,f[:page-range]
--set-box={M|C|B|T|A}=rect[:page-range]  # change a bounding box
# stacking -- make --underlay and --overlay repeatable
--{underlay|overlay} ... --
--file=x [ --password=x ]
--from, --to, --repeat  # same as current --overlay, --underlay
--from-rect={rect} # default = T -- see notes
--to-rect={rect} # default = M -- see notes
# composition -- a new QPDFJob stage between stacking and transformation
--compose=...  # see notes
--n-up={2,4,6,9,16}
--concat={h|v}  # concatenate all pages to a single big page
# reordering
--collate=a,b,c  # exists
--booklet=...  # re-order pages for book signatures like psbook -- see notes
# split
--split-pages=n  # existing
--split-after=a,b,c  # split after each named page
--...  # future options to split based on outlines, article threads, tags, etc.

Notes:

For --blank, --size specifies the size of the blank page. If any relative dimensions are used, --size-from-page=n must be used to specify the page (from n in the overall input) that relative dimensions should be taken from. It is an error to specify a relative size based on another blank page. (Let's not complicate things by doing a graph traversal to find an eventual absolute page. Just disallow a blank page to specified relative to another blank page.)
For stacking, the default is to map the source page's trim box onto the destination page's mediabox. This is a weird default, but it's there for compatibility. The --from-rect and --to-rect may be used to map an arbitrary region of the over/underlay file into an arbitrary region of a page. With the defaults, an overlay or underlay page will be stretched or shrunk if pages are of variable size. Absolute rectangles can be used to avoid this. If a rectangle uses relative dimensions, they are relative to the page that has the rectangle. You can't create a --to-rect relative to the size of the from page or vice versa. If you need to do this, use external logic to compute the rectangles and then use absolute rectangles.
--compose: XXX
--booklet: XXX
I'm not sure what impact composition should have on page labels. Most likely, we should drop page labels on composition. If someone wants them, they can use --set-page-labels.

Compose, Booklet

This section needs to be fleshed out. It is probably lower priority than document-level work.

Here are some ideas from pstops. The following is an excerpt from the pstops manual page. Maybe we can come up with something similar using our enhanced rectangle syntax.

This section contains some sample re‐arrangements. To put two pages on one sheet (of A4 paper), the pagespec to use is:

2:0L@.7(21cm,0)+1L@.7(21cm,14.85cm)

To select all of the odd pages in reverse order, use:

2:‐0

To re‐arrange pages for printing 2‐up booklets, use

4:‐3L@.7(21cm,0)+0L@.7(21cm,14.85cm)

for the front sides, and

4:1L@.7(21cm,0)+‐2L@.7(21cm,14.85cm)

for the reverse sides (or join them with a comma for duplex printing).

From issue #493

 pdf2ps infile.pdf infile.ps
 ps2ps -pa4 "2:0R(4.5cm,26.85cm)+1R(4.5cm,14.85cm)" infile.ps outfile.ps
 ps2pdf outfile.ps outfile.pdf

Notes on signatures (psbook). For a signature of size 3, we have the following assuming a 2-up configuration that is printed double-sided so that, when the whole stack is placed face-up and folded in half, page 1 is on top.

front: 6,7, back: 8,5
front: 4,9, back: 10,3
front: 2,11, back: 12,1

This is the same as duplex 2-up with pages in order 6, 7, 8, 5, 4, 9, 10, 3, 2, 11, 12, 1

n-up:

For 2-up, calculate new w and h such that w/h maintains a fixed ratio and w and h are the largest values that can fit within 1/2 the page with specified margins.
Can support 1, 2, 4, 6, 9, 16. 2 and 6 require rotation. The others don't. Will probably need to change getFormXObjectForPage to handle other boxes than trim box.
Maybe define n-up a scale and rotate followed by fitting the result into a specified rectangle. I might already have this logic in QPDFAnnotationObjectHelper::getPageContentForAppearance.

Destinations

We will have to keep track of destinations that point to a page when the page is moved or copied. For example, if an outline has a destination that points to a particular rectangle on page 5 of the second file, and we end up dropping a portion of that page into an n-up configuration on a specific output page, we will have to keep track of enough information to replace the destination with a new one that points to the new physical location of the same material. For another example, consider a case in which the left side of page 3 of the primary input ends up as page 5 of the output and the right side of page 3 ends up as page 6. We would have to map destinations from a single source page to different destination pages based on which part of the page it was on. If part of the rectangle points to one page and part to another, what do we do? I suggest we go with the top/center of the rectangle.

A destination consists of a QPDF, page object, and rectangle in user coordinates. When QPDFJob copies a page or converts it to a form XObject, possibly with transformations applied, it will have to be able to map a destination to the same triple (QPDF, page object, rectangle) on all pages that contain data from the original page. When writing the final output, any destination that no longer points anywhere should be dropped, and any destination that points to multiple places will need to be handled according to some specification.

Whenever we create any new thing from a page, we create derived page data. Examples of derived page data would include a copy of the page and a form XObject created from a page. We will have to keep a mapping from any source page to all of its derived objects along with any transformations or clipping. When a derived page data object is placed on a final page, that information can be combined with the position and any transformations onto the final page to be able to map any destination to a new one or to determine that it points outside of the visible area. There is already code in placeFormXObject and the code that places appearance streams that deals with these kinds of mappings.

What do we do if a source page is copied multiple times? I think we will have to just make the new destination point to the first place that the target appears with precedence going to the original location. If we can detect this, we can give a warning.

Document-level Behavior

Both merging and splitting contain logic, sometimes duplicated, to handle page labels, form fields, and annotations. We will need to build logic for other things. This section is a rough breakdown of the different things in the document catalog (plus the info dictionary, which is referenced from the trailer) and how we may have to handle them. We will need to implement various ObjectHelper and DocumentHelper classes.

7.7.2 contains the list of all keys in the document catalog.

Document-level structures to merge:

Extensions
- Must be combination of Extensions from all input files
PageLabels
- Ensure each page has its original label
- Allow post-processing
Names -- see below
- Combine per tree
- May require disambiguation
- Page: TemplateInstantiated
Dests
- Keep referenced destinations across all files
- May need to disambiguate or "flatten" or convert to named dests with the names tree
Outlines
Threads (easy)
- Page: B
AcroForm
StructTreeRoot
- Page: StructParents
- See jbarlow's comments in #1104 for additional notes
MarkInfo (see 14.7 - Logical Structure, 14.8 Tagged PDF)
SpiderInfo
- Page: ID
OutputIntents
- Page: OutputIntents
PieceInfo
- Page: PieceInfo
OCProperties
Requirements
AF (file specification dictionaries)
- Page: AF
DPartRoot
- Page: DPart
Version
- Maximum

Things that stay with the first document that has one and/or will not be supported

AA (Additional Actions)
- Would be possible to combine and let the first contributor win, but it probably wouldn't usually be what we want.
Info (not part of document catalog)
ViewerPreferences
PageLayout
PageMode
OpenAction
URI
Metadata
Lang
NeedsRendering
Collection
Perms
Legal
DSS

Name dictionary (7.7.4)

Dests
AP (appearance streams)
JavaScript
Pages (named pages)
Templates
- Combine across all documents
- Page: TemplateInstantiated points to a named page
IDS
URLS
EmbeddedFiles
AlternatePresentations
Renditions

Most of chapter 12 applies. See Document-level navigation (12.3).

Feature to Issue Mapping

Last checked: 2024-01-18

gh search issues label:pages --repo qpdf/qpdf --limit 200 --state=open

Allow an existing QPDF to be an input to a merge or underlay/overlay operation when using the QPDFAssembler C++ API
- Issues: none
Fixes to copying annotations
- Issues: #1116
- Notes:
  - This is a PR that includes some failing test cases
  - Fix /P
  - Allow copying of annotations from a region of a page (not sure I want to add that)
  - Allow selection of pages without annotations (not sure I want to do that)
Generate a mapping from source to destination for all destinations
- Issues: #1077
- Notes:
  - Source can be an outline or link, either directly or via action. If link, it should include the page.
  - Destination can be a structure destination, which should map to a regular destination.
  - source: page X -> link -> action -> dest: page Y
  - source: page X -> link -> action -> dest: structure -> page Y
  - Consider something in json that dumps this.
  - We will need to associate this with a QPDF. It would be great if remote or embedded go-to actions could be handled, but that's ambitious.
  - It will be necessary to keep some global map that includes all QPDF objects that are part of the final file.
  - An interesting use case to consider would be to create a QPDF object from an embedded file and append the embedded file and make the embedded actions work. This would probably require some way to tell qpdf that a particular external file came from an embedded file.
Control size of page and position/transformation of overlay/underlay
- Issues: #1031, #811, #740, #559
- Notes:
  - It should be possible to define a destination page from scratch or in terms of other pages and then place page contents onto it with arbitrary transformations applied.
  - It should be possible to compute the size of the destination page in terms of the source pages, e.g., to create one long or wide page from other pages.
  - Also allow specification of which page box to use
Preserve hyperlinks when doing any page operations
- See also "Generate a mapping from source to destination for all destinations"
- Issues: #1003, #797, #94
- Notes:
  - A link annotation that points to a destination rather than an external URL should continue to work when files are split or merged.
Awareness of structured and tagged PDF (14.7, 14.8)
- Issues: #957, #953, #490
- Notes:
  - This looks complicated. It may be not be possible to do this fully in the first increment, but we have to keep it in mind and warn if we can't and we see /SD in an action.
  - #490 has some good analysis
Interleave pages with ordering
- Issues: #921
- Notes:
  - From 921: interleave odd pages and reversed even pages. This might require different handling for even/odd numbers of pages. Make sure it's natural for the cases of len(odd) == len(even) or len(odd) == 1+len(even)
Preserve all attachments when merging files
- Issues: #856
- Notes:
  - If all pages of a file are selected, keep all attachments
  - If some pages of a file are selected
    - Keep all attachments if there are any embedded file annotations
    - Otherwise, what? Do we have a keep-attachments flag of some sort? Or do we just make the user copy attachments from one file to another?
Apply clipping to a page
- Issues: #771
- Notes:
  - Create a form xobject from a page, then apply a specific clipping region expressed in coordinates or as a percentage
Ability to create a blank page
- Issues: #753
- Notes:
  - Create a blank page of a specific size or of the same size as another page
Split groups with explicit boundaries
- Issues: #741, #616
- Notes:
  - Example: --split-after a,b,c
Handle Optional Content (layers) (8.11)
- Issues: #672, #9, #570
Scale a page up or down to fit to a size
- Issues: #611
Place contents of pages adjacent horizontally or vertically on one page
- Issues: #1040, #546
nup, booklet
- Issues: #493, #461, #152
- Notes:
  - #461 may want the inverse of booklet and discusses reader and printer spreads
Flexible multiplexing
- Issues: #505 (already implemented with --collate)
Split pages based on outlines
- Issues: #477
Keep relevant parts of outline hierarchy
- Issues: #457, #356, #343, #323
- Notes:
  - There is some helpful discussion in #343 including
    - Preserving open/closed status
    - Preserving javascript actions
Split pages: write pages to memory
- Issues: #1130

Other use cases

Other ways to specify pages besides numeric range
- all pages reachable from a section of the outline hierarchy
- something based on threads or document structure
- selection based on page labels
Placement for composition, overlay, underlay
- Scale the smaller page up to the size of the larger page
- Center the smaller page horizontally and bottom-align the trim boxes

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