PDF.Delphi

PDF.Delphi — PDF rendering, 100% Delphi. No wrappers.

PDF.Delphi is a complete PDF engine written in pure Object Pascal (parser, fonts, decoders and renderer), compiled straight into your app with no third-party PDF libraries. Drop TPdfViewer on a form, call LoadFromFile, and you're done: zoom, search, text selection, links, bookmarks and thumbnails included. One engine, two frameworks: the same component for VCL and FMX, on every platform FMX supports.

_{pdf.js (Apache 2.0) served as the reference for structure and edge cases; see NOTICE.}

Requirements

• Delphi 13.x with the bundled Skia (System.Skia, FMX.Skia, Vcl.Skia). Pdf.Core and Pdf.Font use only the RTL and compile for every platform; Pdf.Render and the framework-independent viewer logic (Pdf.Viewer.*) add System.Skia; only FMX.Pdf* depends on FMX and only Vcl.Pdf* on the VCL.
• Tests: DUnitX as shipped with Delphi ($(BDS)\source\DUnitX).

It wil probably also work for Delphi 11 and 12 but you need to use Unit aliasing because the names of the used Skia units are different.

Quick start

Components installation

In Packages open the projectgroup PdfDelphi. Then:

• For FMX: Build PdfViewerFMX, then install
• For VCL: Build PdfViewerVCL, then install

This wil get TPdfViewer and TPdfThumbnails on the "PDF" palette page, or create the viewer in code:

uses FMX.PdfViewer;

Viewer := TPdfViewer.Create(Self);
Viewer.Parent := Self;
Viewer.Align := TAlignLayout.Client;
Viewer.ZoomMode := zmFitWidth;             // or zmFitPage, or Zoom := 1.5
Viewer.OnPageChange := ViewerPageChange;   // (Sender; PageIndex: Integer)
Viewer.LoadFromFile('brochure.pdf');       // optioneel password as 2e parameter
Viewer.GoToPage(3);

Pages are rendered at Zoom x screen scale on a background thread; the UI thread only draws finished ISkImages and shows the nearest cached rendition scaled while a sharp one is pending. CacheLimitMB bounds the memory (256 MB by default, 96 MB on mobile). RenderPageToImage(Index, Scale) returns a page as an image for thumbnails or export.

Further viewer features:

• Layout: DisplayMode chooses continuous or one-row-at-a-time scrolling, with single or facing pages (FacingCoverPage keeps the first page alone); Rotation (0, 90, 180, 270) rotates the whole view on top of each page's own /Rotate. RowPages returns the pages shown side by side.
• Encrypted files: OnPasswordRequest asks the application for a password and retries; without a handler the load fails with EPdfPasswordError.
• Companion controls: AddChangeListener reports document, page, zoom, scroll, rotation, layout, selection, search and rendered-image changes; RequestPageImage / TryGetPageImage render through the viewer's own background queue and cache. TPdfThumbnails (FMX.PdfThumbnails) uses these for a thumbnail strip that follows and navigates a TPdfViewer.
• Links: clicks follow GoTo destinations and Named actions directly; URIs go to OnOpenURI (the control never launches a browser itself). OnLinkClick can intercept any action.
• Bookmarks: Outline (a tree of TPdfOutlineItem), GoToOutlineItem, GoToDestination; all navigation data is available through Navigation.
• Text: dragging over text selects it (double-click a word, Ctrl+A the page), Ctrl+C copies, SelectedText; Find(text) highlights every match in the document, FindNext/FindPrevious (F3 / Shift+F3) jump to them, Esc clears. TextPage(Index) returns the extracted text with glyph positions. Text extraction briefly pauses the render thread, because the object model is not thread-safe. SearchMatch(I) and GoToMatch(I) expose the results for a result list.
• Touch (Android, iOS): a finger always scrolls, also over text, with the platform's momentum through FMX's TAniCalculations (KineticScrolling, FMX only); pinch zoom scales the page smoothly and renders it sharp when the fingers lift.
• Input: mouse wheel scrolls (Ctrl+wheel zooms, Shift+wheel scrolls horizontally), drag pans, pinch and double-tap zoom on touch devices, keyboard navigation with the arrow, page and home/end keys, +/-/0.

Demo

DemoFMX\PdfViewerDemo.dproj is a complete desktop viewer built on the two controls, with everything placed at design time: an icon toolbar with page field and zoom slider, a sidebar with thumbnails, bookmarks, search results and document properties, a status bar, light and dark theme (the dark theme is the Dark.style that ships with Delphi, embedded as a resource), drag and drop, recent files, rotation and page-layout modes, PNG export, clipboard (page image and text), printing, a password prompt and a keyboard-shortcut overlay (F1). Settings persist in %APPDATA%\PdfViewerDemo\settings.ini.

DemoVCL\PdfViewerVclDemo.dproj is a small VCL counterpart: a toolbar (open, page navigation, zoom, fit width/page, rotate, search), a thumbnail strip and the viewer, placed at design time (install PdfViewerVCLDsgn first). Files open from the button, Ctrl+O, drag and drop or the command line.

DemoMobile\PdfViewerMobileDemo.dproj is a minimal FMX demo for Android and iOS (it also runs on Windows): it opens the sample test.pdf, embedded as a resource so that nothing has to be deployed, with pinch to zoom, double tap, dragging, a fit-width button and previous/next page buttons.

For performance on mobile devices, the demo switches FMX to the Skia canvas with the GPU back ends before the application starts (in the .dpr, with FMX.Types and FMX.Skia in the uses clause). The same settings can help in your own apps:

GlobalUseSkia := True;   // FMX draws through Skia
GlobalUseMetal := True;  // GPU rendering with Metal on iOS and macOS
GlobalUseVulkan := True; // GPU rendering with Vulkan on Android

PDF.Delphi

PDF.Delphi is released under the Apache 2.0 license. A copy of the Apache 2.0 license can be found here: http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0