CAM::PDF - PDF manipulation library


LICENSE

Copyright 2006 Clotho Advanced Media, Inc., <cpan@clotho.com>

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.


ABOUT CLOTHO

"CAM" stands for Clotho Advanced Media Inc. (www.clotho.com) which
developed this module.  Contact us at info@clotho.com.


INSTALLATION

Install via one of the following:
  perl Makefile.PL
  make
  make test
  make install

or

  perl Build.PL
  perl Build
  perl Build test
  perl Build install


DESCRIPTION

This package reads and writes any document that conforms to the PDF
specification generously provided by Adobe at
http://partners.adobe.com/asn/developer/acrosdk/docs/filefmtspecs/PDFReference.pdf
(3rd edition, for PDF v1.4 as of May 2002)

The file format is well-supported, with the exception of the
"linearized" or "optimized" output format, which this module can read
but not write.  Many specific aspects of the document model are not
manipulable with this package (like some font details), but if the
input document is correctly written, then this module will preserve
the model integrity.

This library grants you some power over the PDF security model.  Note
that applications editing PDF documents via this library MUST respect
the security preferences of the document.  Any violation of this
respect is contrary to Adobe's intellectual property position, as
stated in the reference manual at the above URL.


COMPARISON TO OTHER MODULES

Other Perl libraries which implement the PDF specification are
Text::PDF, PDF::API2, PDFLib.  PDF::API2 supercedes Text::PDF.  PDFlib
is a wrapper around the superb C library by www.pdflib.com.

All three of those libraries are optimized for programatically
creating new PDF documents from scratch.  If that is your goal, then
we highly recommend that you look at those.  On the contrary, CAM::PDF
is optimized for reading and manipulating existing PDF documents.

We use CAM::PDF in production Linux environments to customize template
PDF documents that were often created by non-programmers using
standard tools.

We have a couple of older demonstrations of the dynamic document
functionality at http://www.clotho.com/pdfdemo/
