All notable changes to PaperForge will be documented in this file.
The format is based on Keep a Changelog, and this project follows Semantic Versioning.
0.2.0 - 2026-07-26
Added
Document configuration
- Added document-level configuration through
PaperForge.new/1. - Added the
:compressdocument option. - Enabled Flate stream compression by default.
- Added support for disabling compression with
PaperForge.new(compress: false). - Added the
:pdf_versiondocument option with"1.7"as the default. - Added validation for unsupported document options.
- Added validation for invalid compression and PDF version values.
Stream compression
- Added
PaperForge.Compression. - Added stream compression using the PDF
/FlateDecodefilter. - Added support for streams with zero, one, or multiple filters.
- Added automatic insertion of the
/Filterentry in stream dictionaries. - Added compression support for page content streams.
- Preserved JPEG image data without recompressing it.
- Added tests that decompress Flate streams and verify their actual commands.
Fonts
- Added a built-in font registry.
- Added automatic reuse of fonts already registered in a document.
- Added on-demand font registration when pages are compiled.
- Added sequential font resource names such as
/F1,/F2, and/F3. - Added support for the 14 standard PDF Type 1 fonts:
- Helvetica
- Helvetica Bold
- Helvetica Oblique
- Helvetica Bold Oblique
- Times Roman
- Times Bold
- Times Italic
- Times Bold Italic
- Courier
- Courier Bold
- Courier Oblique
- Courier Bold Oblique
- Symbol
- Zapf Dingbats
- Added font family and style metadata.
- Added support for WinAnsi and built-in font encodings.
- Added
PaperForge.Font.definition_to_dictionary/1. - Added built-in font metrics.
- Added text-width measurement through
PaperForge.TextMetrics. - Added tests for font registration, font reuse, unsupported fonts, and consecutive font resource names without relying on fixed object IDs.
Text layout
- Added text alignment:
- Left
- Center
- Right
- Added optional text width for alignment calculations.
- Added automatic text measurement using built-in font metrics.
- Added
PaperForge.TextWrapper. - Added automatic word wrapping.
- Added support for explicit newline characters.
- Added configurable line height.
- Added long-word splitting when a word exceeds the available width.
- Added
PaperForge.Graphics.TextBox. - Added multiline text boxes.
- Added optional text-box height limits.
- Added line-count and overflow information from text-box layout.
- Added support for text-box alignment.
- Added support for text-box fill color.
- Added support for selecting built-in fonts by atom.
Page coordinates and margins
- Added
PaperForge.Coordinates. - Added support for bottom-left page coordinates.
- Added support for top-left page coordinates.
- Added per-operation origin overrides.
- Added coordinate conversion for:
- Text
- Text boxes
- Lines
- Rectangles
- Circles
- Images
- Added
PaperForge.Margins. - Added uniform page margins.
- Added independent top, right, bottom, and left margins.
- Added margin validation against page dimensions.
- Added page content helpers:
- Added automatic text positioning based on page margins when
:xor:yare omitted.
Images
- Added JPEG image support.
- Added support for non-interlaced 8-bit grayscale, RGB, grayscale-alpha, and RGBA PNG images.
- Added JPEG signature validation.
- Added PNG signature validation.
- Added JPEG marker parsing without decoding image pixels.
- Added PNG IHDR and IDAT parsing without decoding image pixels.
- Added extraction of:
- Width
- Height
- Bits per component
- Number of color components
- Color space
- Added support for:
- Grayscale JPEG images
- RGB JPEG images
- CMYK JPEG images
- Grayscale PNG images
- RGB PNG images
- Grayscale PNG images with alpha
- RGBA PNG images
- Added PDF image XObjects using
/DCTDecode. - Added PNG image XObjects using
/FlateDecodeand PNG predictor decode parameters. - Added PNG transparency support using PDF soft masks (
/SMask). - Optimized PNG parsing to avoid unnecessary per-pixel reconstruction when the PNG can be inserted directly into the PDF.
- Added CMYK decode arrays for compatible JPEG images.
- Added
PaperForge.Image. - Added
PaperForge.ImageRegistry. - Added SHA-256-based image deduplication.
- Added sequential image resource names such as
/Im1and/Im2. - Added image loading from:
- File paths
- JPEG binaries
- PNG binaries
- Added automatic aspect-ratio preservation.
- Added image sizing using:
- Original dimensions
- Width only
- Height only
- Explicit width and height
- Added
PaperForge.Graphics.Image. - Added PDF image drawing using the
cmandDooperators. - Added page-level image operations through
PaperForge.Page.image/3. - Added tests for RGB, grayscale, CMYK, invalid, truncated, duplicated, and distinct JPEG image handling.
- Added tests for RGB, grayscale, grayscale-alpha, RGBA, invalid, truncated, deduplicated, and unsupported PNG image handling.
- Added PNG parsing benchmarks and large-image tests.
Page resources
- Added
PaperForge.PageResources. - Added centralized page resource management.
- Added automatic font resource dictionaries.
- Added automatic image XObject dictionaries.
- Added resource deduplication within pages.
- Added support for pages containing multiple fonts and images.
Metadata and string encoding
- Added
PaperForge.StringEncoding. - Added automatic PDF string encoding selection.
- Added literal PDF strings for compatible text.
- Added UTF-16BE encoding for Unicode metadata.
- Added Unicode support for:
- Title
- Author
- Subject
- Keywords
- Creator
- Producer
- Added creation-date metadata.
- Added modification-date metadata.
- Added PDF date serialization for:
- Added timezone-offset serialization for
DateTimemetadata. - Added metadata option validation.
- Added omission of empty metadata values.
- Added tests for Latin-1 and UTF-16BE metadata serialization.
Public API
- Added
PaperForge.new/1. - Added page creation with options through
PaperForge.add_page/3. - Added support for passing an existing page to
PaperForge.add_page/2. - Added support for passing a page callback to
PaperForge.add_page/2. - Added callback return-value validation.
- Added metadata creation through
PaperForge.metadata/2. - Added output-path validation for
PaperForge.write/2andPaperForge.write!/2.
Testing
- Expanded document graph tests.
- Added tests for document compression and PDF version configuration.
- Added tests for unsupported document options.
- Added tests for invalid compression values.
- Added tests for compressed PDF output.
- Added tests for uncompressed PDF output.
- Added tests for font reuse and additional font registration.
- Added tests for JPEG and PNG parsing, image registration, image deduplication, and image scaling.
- Added tests for top-left and bottom-left coordinate compilation.
- Added tests for margins and text-box layout behavior.
- Added tests that verify every xref offset points to the beginning of its object.
- Added a structural round-trip style writer test covering multiple pages, fonts, repeated images, metadata, compression, resources, and xref offsets.
- Updated writer tests so they no longer assume compressed stream contents are visible as plain text.
- Updated document tests to use explicit PDF reference fields.
- Restored compilation with
--warnings-as-errors.
Changed
- Changed the default page content stream behavior to use Flate compression.
- Changed document creation to accept configuration options.
- Changed document creation so only the page tree and catalog are created initially.
- Changed font creation to register standard Type 1 fonts only when used.
- Changed the next automatically allocated object identifier to start after the initial page tree and catalog objects.
- Changed page compilation to register fonts and images dynamically.
- Changed page image compilation to detect supported image formats before registering image XObjects.
- Changed page compilation to flow through
PaperForge.PageCompiler. - Changed page resource generation to use
PaperForge.PageResources. - Changed text rendering to use registered font resource names instead of a hardcoded font resource.
- Changed text positioning to support page margins and configurable origins.
- Changed metadata values to use automatic PDF string encoding.
- Changed JPEG files to be embedded directly as PDF image streams.
- Changed the document structure to use explicit reference field names:
root_referencepages_referenceinfo_reference
- Changed tests to validate behavior and structure rather than relying on compressed stream contents or fixed internal assumptions.
- Changed page streams to select filters from the document configuration.
- Changed multiline text rendering to use text wrapping and layout metrics.
Fixed
- Fixed duplicate
@docwarnings for multi-clausePaperForge.add_page/2. - Fixed the missing
PaperForge.Font.definition_to_dictionary/1function. - Fixed JPEG bitstring matching by pinning
payload_length. - Fixed compilation under
mix compile --warnings-as-errors. - Fixed font resource reuse across pages.
- Fixed repeated image embedding by deduplicating JPEG binaries.
- Fixed repeated image embedding by deduplicating PNG binaries.
- Fixed image aspect-ratio calculations when only one dimension is provided.
- Fixed top-left coordinate conversion for box-shaped operations.
- Fixed page resource dictionaries for multiple fonts and image XObjects.
- Fixed metadata encoding for characters outside simple PDF literal-string ranges.
- Fixed stream filter serialization for compressed page content.
- Fixed tests that referenced removed or renamed document fields.
- Fixed tests that expected uncompressed text while compression was enabled.
Internal
- Added
PaperForge.PageCompileras the central page operation compiler. - Added separate registries for fonts and images.
- Added normalized built-in font definitions.
- Added font metric tables.
- Added dedicated modules for:
- Compression
- Coordinates
- Margins
- Font registration
- Image registration
- JPEG parsing
- PNG parsing
- Page compilation
- Page resources
- String encoding
- Text measurement
- Text wrapping
- Text boxes
- Image drawing
- Continued using
iodatafor PDF command and document construction. - Kept PDF object references separate from indirect object values.
0.1.0 - 2026-07-26
Added
- Initial PaperForge project structure
- Pure Elixir PDF generation without external rendering tools
- PDF primitive serialization for:
- Null values
- Booleans
- Integers
- Floating-point numbers
- Names
- Literal strings
- Arrays
- Dictionaries
- Indirect references
- Streams
- Indirect PDF object representation
- PDF object references with generation numbers
- PDF stream support with automatic byte-length calculation
- Internal document object graph
- Automatic PDF object ID allocation
- Document catalog generation
- PDF page tree generation
- Multi-page document support
- Cross-reference table generation
- PDF trailer and
startxrefgeneration - Binary PDF output
- File-writing API
- Built-in Helvetica font support using WinAnsiEncoding
- A3, A4, A5, Letter, Legal, and custom page sizes
- Portrait and landscape page orientations
- Text drawing with:
- Position
- Font size
- Fill color
- Line drawing with:
- Start and end coordinates
- Stroke color
- Configurable line width
- Rectangle drawing with:
- Stroke
- Fill
- Stroke color
- Fill color
- Configurable line width
- Circle drawing using cubic Bézier curves
- RGB color support
- 8-bit RGB color helpers
- Grayscale color support
- Basic PDF metadata:
- Title
- Author
- Subject
- Keywords
- Creator
- Producer
- Example documents for text, multiple pages, and graphics
- Unit tests for the PDF serializer, document graph, pages, and writer
Technical details
- Uses
iodatainternally to reduce unnecessary binary concatenation - Produces traditional PDF cross-reference tables
- Uses generation
0for newly generated indirect objects - Uses native PDF coordinates with the origin at the bottom-left corner
- Isolates graphic operations using the PDF
qandQoperators