racket-poppler

This package allows you to read pdf files, render them to a drawing context and more.

As an application this package includes render-tex, which allows you to convert snippets of TeX into scalable picts. This can be used to make pretty mathematical formuals in slideshow and scribble.

The underlying work horse of this package is Poppler. Poppler is a C libary for rendering pdfs via Cairo. The license of Poppler is GPL.

In order for the rendering to work the Poppler library needs to be compiled to use the same version of Cairo as Racket uses. For that reason racket-poppler is distributed with Poppler precompiled for Windows and OS X. Thanks to Matthew Flatt for providing the binaries. The license of Poppler is GPL, so it can't be distributed with Racket.

Note: Use the development version of Racket - which uses a newer version of Cairo than the current release.

The racket-poppler package is based on code by Michael Wilber (https://github.com/gcr/pdf-render).

Example (assumes latex is installed):

> (require racket-poppler/render-tex)
> (latex-path "/usr/local/texlive/2013/bin/universal-darwin/pdflatex")
> (define p (latex->pict "$\\sqrt{x^2+y^2}$"))
> (pict->bitmap p)

Now let's do something with the picture:

> (define beside hc-append)
> (define above  vc-append)

> (pict->bitmap (above (beside (rotate p (- pi (/ pi 3))) (rotate p    (/ pi 3)))
                       (beside (rotate p (+ pi (/ pi 3))) (rotate p (- (/ pi 3))))))

This renders the formula of Pythagoras as a pdf, converts it into a pict, which is then rotated. The rotated pict is converted into a bitmap, and finally DrRacket shows the bitmap.

Note: DrRacket will currently not display the picts generated by latex->pict or pdf->pict directly. Wrap the picts in pict->bitmap to see them in DrRacket. (The cause of this is fact that pdf->pict draws directly the Cairo drawing context. DrRacket "copies" picts using a record-dc% and recording contexts doesn't record drawing operations that draw directly to the Cairo context.)

See Michael Wilber's original documentation for some ideas on how to use this library, but note that the API has changed slightly. In racket-poppler all operations are safe. http://planet.racket-lang.org/package-source/gcr/pdf-render.plt/2/2/planet-docs/main/index.html

For an extensive example see "examples/test-pdf-functions.rkt".

Warning: The documentation in doc/ has not been updated yet.

[1] OS X binaries for libpoppler and friends https://github.com/soegaard/racket-osx-libs/tree/master/lib

/soegaard