pdfmaker

A modern C++17 library for generating PDF documents. It wraps libharu (libHPDF 2.4) with RAII ownership, typed handles, and exception-based error handling, and adds a higher-level layout engine for flowing documents (paragraphs, headings, lists, tables, images, a table of contents, and running headers/footers).

The library exposes two tiers that can be mixed freely:

Tier	Entry point	Use it for
Low-level	pdfmaker::Document + pdfmaker::Page	Hand-placing text, shapes, and images at absolute coordinates. Full control, no layout.
High-level	pdfmaker::DocumentBuilder	Multi-page flowing content with automatic pagination, word wrap, page numbers, and a TOC.

Features

• RAII everywhere. A Document owns the underlying HPDF_Doc; Page, Font, and Image are cheap non-owning handles. No manual HPDF_Free.
• Deferred error checking. libharu reports errors through a recorded error state rather than across C call frames; pdfmaker surfaces them as a PdfError exception at well-defined points (Document::check(), Document::save()), avoiding undefined behaviour.
• UTF-8 / Cyrillic support via embedded TrueType fonts.
• Layout engine: paragraphs with justification and red-line indent, level styled headings, ordered/unordered lists, auto-sized tables, scaled images with captions, a two-pass table of contents, page breaks, and {page}-substituting headers/footers.
• GOST 7.32-friendly geometry helpers (A4, configurable margins, first page number offset for an external title page).

Requirements

• C++17 compiler (MSVC 2019+, GCC 9+, Clang 10+)
• CMake 3.16+
• Internet access on first configure: zlib, libpng, and libharu are pulled in via FetchContent and built statically.

Building

cmake -B build -G "Visual Studio 17 2022"   # or "Ninja", "Unix Makefiles", ...
cmake --build build --config Release

CMake options:

Option	Default	Effect
PDFMAKER_BUILD_EXAMPLES	ON	Build the programs under examples/.
PDFMAKER_BUILD_TESTS	ON	Build and register the test targets.

Note (Windows/MSVC): the dependencies are fetched and compiled with the chosen generator. If you switch generators, delete build/ first — a stale CMakeCache.txt from a different generator causes a configure error.

Using it from another CMake project

add_subdirectory(pdfmaker)        # or FetchContent_Declare the repo
target_link_libraries(my_app PRIVATE pdfmaker)

Then include the umbrella header:

#include <pdfmaker/pdfmaker.hpp>

Quick start — low-level (Document / Page)

Draw directly at absolute coordinates. The origin is the bottom-left corner; y grows upward (PDF convention).

#include <pdfmaker/pdfmaker.hpp>

int main() {
    pdfmaker::Document doc;
    doc.set_title("Hello");

    pdfmaker::PageStyle style;        // A4, default margins
    pdfmaker::Page page = doc.add_page(style);

    pdfmaker::Font font = doc.get_font("Times-Roman");

    {
        auto text = page.begin_text();         // RAII BeginText/EndText
        page.set_font(font, 14.0f);
        page.set_fill_color(pdfmaker::Color::black());
        page.text_out(85.0f, page.height() - 60.0f, "Hello, World!");
    }

    doc.save("hello.pdf");            // throws pdfmaker::PdfError on failure
}

See examples/hello_world.cpp for a fuller example with rectangles, lines, and colours.

Quick start — high-level (DocumentBuilder)

The builder lays out flowing content across as many pages as needed. Methods are chainable.

#include <pdfmaker/pdfmaker.hpp>
using namespace pdfmaker;

int main() {
    DocumentBuilder builder;

    builder.title("Report")
           .author("Jane Doe")
           // Embed TrueType fonts so Cyrillic / UTF-8 text renders.
           .load_ttf_fonts("times.ttf", "timesbd.ttf", "timesi.ttf",
                           "timesbi.ttf", "cour.ttf")
           .footer("", "{page}", "");          // centered page number

    builder.add_toc("Contents")
           .add_page_break();

    builder.add_heading(1, "Introduction")
           .add_paragraph("This document was produced with pdfmaker. "
                          "Long paragraphs wrap and paginate automatically.")
           .add_list(ListType::Unordered, {"First point", "Second point"})
           .add_image("chart.png", "Figure 1 - Quarterly results");

    builder.build("report.pdf");
}

Documentation

• docs/api.md — full reference for every public type.
• docs/guide.md — task-oriented guide: fonts & UTF-8, styling, tables, images, TOC, headers/footers, and a complete GOST 7.32 document walkthrough.

Error handling

Almost every operation can fail inside libharu. pdfmaker collects those errors and raises pdfmaker::PdfError (derived from std::runtime_error) at build() / save() / check():

try {
    builder.build("out.pdf");
} catch (const pdfmaker::PdfError& e) {
    std::cerr << e.what()                       // human-readable message
              << " (code 0x" << std::hex << e.code() << ")\n";
}

License

See the repository for license terms. Bundled dependencies (zlib, libpng, libharu) retain their respective licenses.