MuPDF is a

free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

framework A framework is a generic term commonly referring to an essential supporting structure which other things are built on top of. Framework may refer to: Computing * Application framework, used to implement the structure of an application for an op ...

written in C that implements a

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

, XPS, and

EPUB EPUB is an e-book file format that uses the ".epub" file extension. The term is short for ''electronic publication'' and is sometimes styled ''ePub''. EPUB is supported by many e-readers, and compatible software is available for most smartphones ...

parsing and rendering engine. It is used primarily to render pages into

bitmap In computing, a bitmap is a mapping from some domain (for example, a range of integers) to bits. It is also called a bit array A bit array (also known as bitmask, bit map, bit set, bit string, or bit vector) is an array data structure that c ...

s, but also provides support for other operations such as searching and listing the table of contents and hyperlinks. The focus of MuPDF is on speed, small code size, and high-quality anti-aliased rendering. Since the 1.2 release, MuPDF has optional support for interactive features such as form filling,

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...

and transitions. The library ships with a rudimentary

X11 The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wi ...

and Windows viewer, and a set of command-line tools for batch rendering (mutool draw), examining the file structure (mutool show), and rewriting files (mutool clean). Later versions also have a JavaScript interpreter (mutool run) that allows for running scripts to create and edit PDF files. A number of free software applications use MuPDF to render PDF documents, the most notable being Sumatra PDF. MuPDF is also available as a package for most

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-li ...

operating system distributions. Independent parties have ported the library to many platforms, including the

Amazon Kindle Amazon Kindle is a series of e-readers designed and marketed by Amazon. Amazon Kindle devices enable users to browse, buy, download, and read e-books, newspapers, magazines and other digital media via wireless networking to the Kindle Store. ...

, HP TouchPad,

PlayStation Portable The PlayStation Portable (PSP) is a handheld game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on December 12, 2004, in North America on March 24, 2005, and in PAL regions on September 1, 2005, ...

Wii The Wii ( ) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released on November 19, 2006, in North America and in December 2006 for most other Regional lockout, regions of the world. It is Nintendo's fifth major ho ...

, and

DOS DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...

History

In 2002, Tor Andersson started work on MuPDF based on the

Libart Libart is a free software graphics library of functions for 2D graphics supporting a superset of the PostScript imaging model. Libart was designed to be integrated with graphics, artwork, and illustration programs. It is written in optimized C an ...

rendering library by

Raph Levien Raphael Linus Levien (also known as Raph Levien; born April 6, 1970) is a software developer, a member of the free software developer community, through his creation of the Advogato virtual community and his work with the free software branch of ...

. After Artifex Software acquired the MuPDF project, the development focus shifted on writing a new modern graphics library called Fitz. Fitz was originally intended as an R&D project to replace the aging

Ghostscript Ghostscript is a suite of software based on an interpreter for Adobe Systems' PostScript and Portable Document Format (PDF) page description languages. Its main purposes are the rasterization or rendering of such page description language files, ...

graphics library, but has instead become the rendering engine powering MuPDF. In 2005, the first version of MuPDF with the new Fitz library was released. In 2009, Artifex Software filed a

copyright infringement Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, s ...

lawsuit against

Palm, Inc. Palm, Inc. was an American company that specialized in manufacturing personal digital assistants (PDAs) and various other electronics. They were the designer of the PalmPilot, the first PDA successfully marketed worldwide, as well as the Treo 60 ...

for violating their copyrights on MuPDF. At that time Artifex offered MuPDF dual-licensed, either under

GPLv2 The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general us ...

or under a proprietary license meant by Artifex for commercial use. When Palm included MuPDF in

webOS webOS, also known as LG webOS and previously known as Open webOS, HP webOS and Palm webOS, is a Linux kernel-based multitasking operating system for smart devices such as smart TVs that has also been used as a mobile operating system. Initially ...

and complied with GPLv2 by releasing the changed

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...

of the library, Artifex claimed that the GPL version would be unsuitable for "commercial use" as the complete, aggregated product (PDFviewer, WebOS) would have to be placed under GPL. Artifex voluntarily dismissed the suit in 2011. In 2011, support for

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

's XPS was added, based on code from the GhostXPS library. Since February 2013, with the 1.2 release,

licensing A license (or licence) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit). A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another party (licensee) as an element of an agreeme ...

terms have changed from

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the Four Freedoms (Free software), four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was th ...

GNU Affero General Public License The GNU Affero General Public License (GNU AGPL) is a free, copyleft license published by the Free Software Foundation in November 2007, and based on the GNU General Public License, version 3 and the Affero General Public License. The Free So ...

v3.

References

External links

* * * {{XPS software 2005 software EPUB readers Free and open-source Android software Free PDF readers Free software programmed in C Graphics libraries Portable software Software using the GNU AGPL license

History

See also

References

External links