Short: PDF datatypes - read PDFs on your Amiga Author: marcus.gerards@googlemail.com (Marcus Gerards) Uploader: marcus gerards googlemail com (Marcus Gerards) Type: util/dtype Version: 1.0 Requires: AmigaOS 3.0 or newer. Builds for 68000/020/040/060 included. Architecture: m68k-amigaos >= 3.0 Distribution: NoCD Kurz: PDF-Datatypes: PDFs am Amiga lesen PDFDatatype 1.0 -- 15.8.2026 WHAT IT IS Three AmigaOS datatypes that teach the system to open PDF files. Install them once and a .pdf is an ordinary file: double-click it on Workbench, or open it in MultiView, and the page appears -- with buttons to turn pages and zoom, and text you can mark with the mouse and copy to the clipboard. Nothing else has to change. Any program that already shows a picture or a text file through the datatypes system now shows a PDF too. pdf.datatype plain text pages (a text.datatype subclass) pdfpic.datatype a page that is one image (a picture.datatype subclass) pdfdoc.datatype everything else (the general viewer) You do not choose between them; the file does. Each descriptor carries its own recognition code, reads the first page, and claims the file or declines it. WHAT IT READS Measured against real documents -- journal papers, slide decks, a hardware manual, contracts, a 290-page scanned book, work paperwork -- and not guessed from the specification. Yes PDF 1.0 to 1.7, from Acrobat, Word, LaTeX, OpenOffice, TCPDF, scanners, and from the Amiga's own PDFPrinter driver Yes compressed files (FlateDecode, RunLengthDecode), cross-reference streams, object streams, linearized files, page trees of any depth Yes positioned multi-font text, in colour, sideways, with umlauts and accents -- marked with the mouse and copied to the clipboard Yes scanned pages in black & white, grey and colour, JPEG included (handed to the system's own JPEG datatype) Yes figures placed on a text page Yes lines, boxes, rules, curves and filled shapes -- a schematic of a hundred thousand line segments draws in full No encrypted or password-protected files: they will not open at all No fillable forms and XFA, annotations, transparency, gradients and pattern fills, and re-usable drawing groups (Form XObjects) -- a page built entirely out of one comes up blank No CCITT G3/G4, JBIG2 and JPEG 2000 scans No embedded fonts: text is drawn in the nearest Amiga font at the nearest available size, spaced by the document's own measurements No non-Latin writing; no text search, no links, no editing The manual says all of this again, at length, in a form written for readers rather than for programmers. WHAT IT IS NOT A READING tool, not a proofing tool. It exists so a PDF can be read on a 640x256 screen, in sixteen colours, on a 68000 with two megabytes. It is NOT suitable for print production -- for judging, checking or approving anything going to a printing press. The typefaces are not the document's, the colours are the nearest your screen can manage, fine hairlines round to whole pixels, and some page content is not drawn at all and does not announce that it is missing. Use a real prepress application for that, on a machine built for it. For reading what a document says, what a drawing shows and what a table contains, this is exactly what it is for. WHAT YOU NEED AmigaOS 3.0 (V39) or newer -- that is when datatypes.library appeared. Developed and tested on AmigaOS 3.2. A 68000 with 2 MB is enough; big scans and dense drawings want more, and a page that will not fit is shown a zoom step smaller rather than refused. Pages that are pictures are decoded here and displayed by the system's own jpeg.datatype and bmp.datatype, both of which ship with AmigaOS. Text-only pages need neither. Four builds are supplied, one per processor family -- 68000, 68020, 68040 and 68060 -- and the Installer picks the one your machine has. About 400 KB installed. WHAT IS IN THE ARCHIVE Install the Installer script: processor, manual, languages, done Files/ four builds of the three classes and their descriptors Docs/ the manual, in English and German, as AmigaGuide Tools/ DTInfo and DTLoad, Shell diagnostics for when a PDF opens as plain text INSTALLATION Double-click the Install icon. It asks which processor you have (already detected and pre-selected), whether to install the manual, and in which languages -- then copies the classes into SYS:Classes/DataTypes, the descriptors into DEVS:DataTypes, and registers them. No reboot. Then open a PDF. LICENCE Copyright (C) 2026 Marcus Gerards. All rights reserved. This covers the datatype classes, their descriptors, the diagnostic programs and their documentation, icons and other supplied files. You may download, install and use the Software free of charge for your own private and personal purposes. It may NOT be sold or otherwise distributed commercially, in whole or in part. It may NOT be bundled or combined with any other software, hardware, magazine, cover disk, collection or product. It may NOT otherwise be published, redistributed or mirrored, in any form, whether modified or unmodified. Each of these requires the author's prior written permission -- please ask first: Marcus Gerards marcus.gerards@googlemail.com The Software is provided "as is", without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including but not limited to the warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and noninfringement. In no event shall the author be liable for any claim, damages or other liability arising from, out of or in connection with the Software or its use. All rights not expressly granted above are reserved by the author. The full text is in the manual, under "License".