I need to embed a PDF viewer in my application. Is there any free software I can use?
Thanks.
+2
A:
You could use libpopler, which is based on xpdf. There is a QT frontend, if you're already using that.
There is also ghostscript, which can render PDFs (and Postscript, of course). Generally, I'd prefer popler, as popler seems faster.
There is MuPDF, which is also an Artifex product.
Popler is under the GPL version 2 (or later, I believe). The newest versions of Ghostscript are GPL 3, but you can get commercial licenses to it (or at least older versions) from Artifex. MuPDF is GPL as well, with commercial licenses available from Artifex.
derobert
2009-08-16 13:47:02
this means i can't use it if the application is commercial?
2009-08-17 06:54:48
To use poppler you need to get a commercial license (xpdf from foolabs).
danio
2009-08-17 12:47:49
@danio: you are **wrong** about poppler and commercial license from Foolabs. poppler is a freedesktop.org-hosted fork from XPDF, and is GPL only! Foolabs **does** provide commercial licenses, but only for their version of XPDF-based products, not for poppler.
pipitas
2010-08-15 23:30:49
@pipitas My implication was that one should use xpdf from foolabs instead of poppler. "You cannot use poppler commercially but you can instead get a commercial license for xpdf components (XPdfWidget/QT seems to be the current best match product) which are derived from the same source code from www.glyphandcog.com."
danio
2010-08-17 06:58:54
A:
There is a list of development libraries on wikinfo. The only free PDF viewing libraries currently on there (MuPDF and Poppler) are GPL licensed so you cannot use them if your application is commercial.
danio
2010-08-17 08:03:18