PyMuPDF 1.18.0

Python bindings for the PDF rendering library MuPDF

Release date: October 7, 2020

Authors

• Jorj X. McKie

• Ruikai Liu

Introduction

This is version 1.18.0 of PyMuPDF, a Python binding for MuPDF - “a lightweight PDF and XPS viewer”.

MuPDF can access files in PDF, XPS, OpenXPS, epub, comic and fiction book formats, and it is known for both, its top performance and high rendering quality.

With PyMuPDF you therefore can access files with extensions *.pdf, *.xps, *.oxps, *.epub, *.cbz or *.fb2 from your Python scripts. A number of popular image formats is supported as well, including multi-page TIFF images.

PyMuPDF should run on all platforms that are supported by both, MuPDF and Python. These include, but are not limited to, Windows (XP/SP2 and up), Mac OSX and Linux, 32-bit or 64-bit. If you can generate MuPDF on a Python supported platform, then also PyMuPDF can be used there.

PyMuPDF is hosted on GitHub where you find up-to-date information of its features, our issue tracker, Wikis and much more.

Installation

For all MS Windows versions as well as popular Max OSX and Linux versions, we are providing Python wheels - see the download section of this site and the current release directory of our home page. Other platforms need to download and generate the MuPDF library first and then set up PyMuPDF. Do visit our GitHub home, which has more details on this, including latest bugfixes, pre-releases, etc.

Usage and Documentation

For all document types you can render pages in raster (PNG) or vector (SVG) formats, extract text and access meta information, links, annotations and bookmarks, as well as decrypt the document. For PDF files, these objects can also be created, modified or deleted. Plus you can rotate, re-arrange, duplicate, create, or delete pages and join or split documents.

Since version 1.16.0, PDF password protection is fully supported: owner and user passwords, encryption methods and permission levels can be set, changed or removed.

Specifically for PDF files, PyMuPDF provides update access to low-level structure information, supports handling of embedded files and modification of page contents (like inserting images, fonts, text, annotations and drawings).

Other features include embedding vector images (SVG, PDF) such as logos or watermarks, joining or splitting single PDF pages (including things like posterizing and 2-up / 4-up processing).

You can also create PDF Form fields with support for text, checkbox, listbox and combobox widgets.

Our home page provides many examples and How-Tos for all of this. At a minimum, read the tutorial and the the recipes sections of our documentation.

Written using Sphinx, documentation is available here:

• Read The Docs.

• Windows CHM