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I'm looking for a (free, GUI) tool to explore the internals and structure of PDF files on macOS (10.14.1). It looks like PDFXplorer from OS solutions (http://www.o2sol.com/pdfxplorer/overview.htm) would meet my needs, but no Mac version is available. I do not have Adobe Acrobat Pro. Surely, with the broad use of macOS in desktop publishing, there must be a tool to inspect the innards of a PDF! Any thoughts?

Clint Laskowski
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    Clint, tool recommendations are deemed off-topic on Stack Overflow as they are highly subjective (as "the best") and tend to attract opinions and spam. See the [help/on-topic]. That said: can I interest you in taling a look at Python? It has a number of very good (3rd party) libraries that allow easy access to the internals of a PDF file. – Jongware Dec 08 '18 at 21:52

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You may find an answer here, which includes lists of tools for parsing PDF data.

Best tool for inspecting PDF files?

Generally, in desktop publishing, the data streams of PDF are of little interest. Any problems, and the PDF will be re-made from the source artwork files, or edited/adjusted with Acrobat's preflight utility, or with a third-party tool like PitStop.
But this is without any user awareness of the actual data objects.

benwiggy
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