[gdal-dev] On external PDF libraries

[Even Rouault]

Andreas,

> I am trying to test GeoPDF support in QGIS and have questions on the
> external library dependencies in GDAL. I am trying to interpret the
> notes on https://gdal.org/drivers/raster/pdf.html
> 
> Which of the three options (Poppler, PoDoFo, PDFium) is recommended? I
> work on Ubuntu 18.04 and I can build libraries from source if necessary.
> PoDoFo seems limited - so better not use it?

For non-rendering tasks such as creating a PDF, it should be OK, but I know I 
had issues at runtime with recent versions of PoDoFo

> PDFium seems to be
> complicated to install - 

Yes, and the driver assumes an old version of PDFium. Would require some work 
to make it work with newer ones.

> so perhaps poppler?

That's probably the simplest option and it will give you good results. No need 
to build it from source. The version already compiled in your distro is fine. 
Install the 'libpoppler-private-dev' package before building GDAL with
./configure --with-poppler

Even

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