Displaying PDF files with python3

Question

I want to write a python3/PyGTK3 application that displays PDF files and I was not able to find a python package that allows me to do that.
There is pypoppler, but it looks outdated (?) and does not seem to support python3 (?)

Do you have any suggestions?

EDIT: Note, that I don't need fancy features, like pdf forms, manipulation or writing.

ok...bt i provided u the link...before this comment came....bt u can chck that also.. — , Mar 13 '12 at 10:40
Embedding something, like ghostscript or other viewers, might be an option. Doens't need to be written in Python that way. — Lennart Regebro, Mar 13 '12 at 10:45
Embedding does not sound like a viable solution, as I need to manipulate the pixmap before displaying it. — Fabian Henze, Mar 13 '12 at 11:13
Technically, there is no such thing as PyGTK 3, it's (somewhat confusingly) called PyGObject now. — dumbmatter, Mar 13 '12 at 21:06
I know. PyGObject is what I mean. I wrote PyGTK3 to make clear that I plan to use the GTK3 library via PyGObject. — Fabian Henze, Mar 13 '12 at 23:13

score 15 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 03 '21 at 12:02

It turns out, that newer versions of poppler-glib don't require bindings as such. They ship with GObject Introspection files and can therefore be imported and used as follows:

#!/usr/bin/python3

import gi
gi.require_version('Poppler', '0.18')

from gi.repository import Poppler

document = Poppler.Document.new_from_file("file:///home/me/some.pdf", None)
print(document.get_pdf_version_string())

That was easy, wasn't it? It took me hours to find that out ...

Note that one needs at least poppler-0.18, if one wants to import GTK as well.

Here is another minimal example with a GUI:

#!/usr/bin/python3
import gi
gi.require_version('Poppler', '0.18')
gi.require_version('Gtk', '3.0')

from gi.repository import Poppler, Gtk

def draw(widget, surface):
    page.render(surface)
    
document = Poppler.Document.new_from_file("file:///home/me/some.pdf", None)
page = document.get_page(0)

window = Gtk.Window(title="Hello World")
window.connect("delete-event", Gtk.main_quit)
window.connect("draw", draw)
window.set_app_paintable(True)

window.show_all()
Gtk.main()

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:30

1

This post says that the latest development version of Evince (which I guess will become 3.4 shortly) supports embedding via PyGObject, which would probably work for your purposes.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:30

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answered Mar 13 '12 at 21:04

dumbmatter

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I don't think it would, because I could not access and modify the pixmap. I want to use a package to render the pdf file to a pixmap, modify it with (say) cairo and display it. Sorry, if my question was not clear enough – Fabian Henze Mar 13 '12 at 23:16

Displaying PDF files with python3

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