What's new in pCOS 2?

The new pCOS Cookbook's many code samples help to query a variety of interesting information from a PDF document by facilitating the task of retrieving complex PDF objects.

The enhanced command-line tool extends the variety of available command-line options.

pCOS 2 extends the set of pseudo objects which were available in pCOS 1. The following PDF objects and properties can be conveniently queried without getting bogged down in the details of the PDF syntax:

images, including bit depth, color properties, and compression filter

color spaces, including simplified access to details of complex color spaces, e.g. Separation

other page resources, such as graphics states, patterns, etc.

page labels (e.g. roman numerals instead of decimal numbers)

PDF/X and PDF/A status

article threads (beads) including the number of the destination page

The PDF parser in pCOS 2 includes the following improvements:

supports the AES encryption algorithm so that AES-encrypted PDF documents are accepted as input

implements the CCITTFax, RunLengthDecode, and DCTDecode compression

filters for image streams

Predictors are supported for Flate and LZW compression (relevant for compressed image data)

repair mode for damaged PDF input

Other changes:

pCOS_get_stream( ) now also supports string objects in addition to stream objects. This is useful for rare cases where PDF string objects are used to carry binary information, e.g. the color palette in an Indexed color space.