annotate mupdf-source/docs/reference/c/introduction.md @ 20:eb3dd22fef2c

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author Franz Glasner <fzglas.hg@dom66.de>
date Thu, 18 Sep 2025 22:04:13 +0200
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1 # Introduction
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3 This is the MuPDF C API guide for developers. In this document we will guide
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4 you through the public and stable bits of the MuPDF library. This is intended
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5 to both provide an introduction to new developers wanting to use low level
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6 features of MuPDF, and as a reference guide to the public interface.
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8 We will be explaining the basics, enough to get you started on a single
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9 threaded application. There are more functions and data structures used
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10 internally, and there are also ways to use MuPDF from multiple threads, but
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11 those are beyond the scope of this document.
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13 The functions and structures documented in this document are what we consider
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14 stable APIs. They will rarely change, and if they do, any such changes will be
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15 noted in the "api-changes" document along with instructions for how to update
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16 your code.
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18 ## Core
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20 The core contains the runtime context, exception handling, and various string
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21 manipulation, math, hash table, binary tree, and other useful functions.
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23 ## I/O
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25 The I/O module contains structures and functions for buffers of data, reading
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26 and writing to streams, compression, and encryption.
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28 ## Graphics
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30 The graphics module contains graphic resource objects like colors, fonts,
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31 shadings, and images.
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33 ## Device
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35 The device interface is how we provide access to the contents of a document. A
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36 device is a callback structure, that gets called for each piece of text, line
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37 art, and image on a page. There are several device implementations. The most
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38 important one renders the contents to a raster image, and another one gathers
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39 all the text into a structure that can be used to select and copy and search
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40 the text content on a page.
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42 ## Document
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44 The document module handles reading and writing documents in various formats,
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45 and ties together all the preceding modules to provide rendering, format
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46 conversion, and search functionality for the document types we support.
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48 ## PDF
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50 The PDF module provides access to the low level PDF structure, letting you
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51 query, modify, and create PDF objects and streams. It allows you to create new
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52 documents, modify existing documents, or examine features, extract data, or do
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53 almost anything you could want at the PDF object and stream level that we don't
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54 provide with the higher level APIs.